Sometimes on Saturday

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Abby Norman

Sometimes all it takes is making coffee with the french press to be reminded; Out of what looks like muddy water to us, God makes beautiful things.

Sometimes your friend sends you a text message with the word “ass” in it and it makes you think: “She has grown so much since I have known her!”

Sometimes you wake up to your oldest babbling through the baby monitor. She tells Teddy all about J, and M, and S each in turn. You are reminded how blessed you are that God saw it fit to give your daughters a whole bonus family.

Sometimes you are sitting in the bathroom waiting for your child to agree to get out of the tub when she stands up and announces “All done!, Towel.” When you wrap it around her, she insists on crawling into your lap and having you rub the towel close. You learned how to do this from your mom. You tell her that this is the very best part of the bath and she agrees.

Sometimes both kids take a nap at the same time and the dog insists you sit outside with him. You agree so you don’t have to clean the house.

Happy Saturday! Hope yours is going just as swimmingly.

Easter Sunday: Still Not Over It

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Abby Norman

I wrote yesterday about my reminder on Easter Sunday, that I follow a God who came as a man and defeated death. I don’t ever remember not knowing…but it somehow struck me as new. Maybe that is a part of the whole “God’s mercies are new every morning” business.

Not only have I been marveling at the fact that it happened, that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. I have been thinking about the implications of it. What exactly does that mean for me if I identify with Christ? (Which I do, see here.)

Somewhere along the way I became deeply connected to my identity with Christ on the cross. In the third grade, when I prayed the sinners prayer after Wednesday Night Alive with Mrs. Wiegand, it was because I knew that I was not enough. Somewhere deep in that 9-year-old body I knew that I was never going to be good enough on my own. I needed saved. I did not have to be convinced of my own sinful nature. I just knew.

If the gospel ended right there, if Jesus dying for our sins was the last chapter in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, then that would have been it. No Acts to Revelation. No early church, no current church, no Christians. The power of the cross is only realized when linked with the power of the resurrection. Jesus died for our sins, yes. Sin leads to death so even though it is an amazing sacrifice that someone else would die for my sins, a sinless God who is also fully man, in a way it is expected, credible. The story had to go there if we were to be saved.

I am in no way trying to diminish what Jesus did for me. I am so very grateful He did it. But I think perhaps I have been ending my reflection there, at the cross. The reason Jesus died on the cross for me, and for you, is so that the story doesn’t end in death.

The story doesn’t end there. There is more. Jesus Christ was resurrected into a new body, a new creation. The old went and the new came. My sins died on the cross with Jesus, and I have been resurrected with him. I am a new creation too. The sacrifice on that cross lead to the incredible miraculous transformation of the resurrection. The man who was killed, became the living God. Hallelujah. It is unexpected. It is incredible. It is beautiful, and miraculous, and completely indescribable. It is big and unexplainable. Perhaps that is why I have kept my distance. But the resurrection is also personal.

I am supposed to identify with the resurrection as much as I do with the cross. I am a new creation. When I got baptized on Easter Sunday morning in the sixth grade, Mrs. Wiegand’s husband, Pastor Wiegand, didn’t leave me at the bottom of the baptismal, symbolically buried with my sins. He brought me back up, as a new creation. I was buried with my sin and then resurrected as new.

The newness, the holiness, the miracles. I get to claim those too right along with the sinful nature now pierced and dead. Because the story didn’t end at the cross. There was a resurrection. I don’t know that I have been lately, claiming the new creation that Christ has promised me. Sometimes the sinful nature still seems so evident to me. I am sure I have not been identifying other Christians in their newness.

The sinful nature not only can be conquered, it has been conquered. The old has gone, the new has come. Hallelujah. I am not sure what exactly this means, walking it out day by day. But I am excited by the possibilities that this newness has to offer, the hope of the resurrection. Yes that sounds good to walk in. I’ll take more of that.

A Note.

Aside

Today on the white board at the front of my room, I noticed a note from one of my students left sometime without my permission. It read:

Grace was here.

Yes. Yes it was.

Grass Day 4: Rainy Weekend

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Abby Norman

The forecast for this weekend is rain. Normally I would be bummed about this. I love a good sunny weekend. And the potty training is defnitely benefitted from the Peanut running around the backyard naked peeing with the dog. But not today. Today I am hopeful for the rain. Rain makes grass grow.

You see that green? That is what I am holding out for.

It is inconvenient, rain. It makes people stay inside and ruins thier plans. Rain makes everyone in the city of Atlanta drive like an idiot. Seriously, light showers will make everyone turn on their blinkers and drive thirty miles an hour on the interstate. And when you pass them they honk at you like you are the moron who can’t drive. No one is excited that there is rain.

But I am. Because rain is beneficial to making things grow. All of those tiny seeds need rain.

A month or two ago I tweeted this “Take my pride oh Lord, steal it from me.” And the Lord is faithful and is answering that prayer. It is hard and sometimes inconvenient. It is a little gloomy and doesn’t feel nice all the time. Sometimes I had other emotional plans that get rained out.

But without rain there is no growth. So I am learning to be thankful for the rain. Hopeful about the promise of growth in it.

There is no shame

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Abby Norman

No one ever told me how strange it would be, to see the things that I had been battling my whole life show up on the face of my daughter. Not yet two years from the day I had her, and already it happened.

The Peanut is a chatty one, and friendly as can be. She is especially friendly when she gets the sense that her parents like the person she is meeting. Our good friend Betsy recently moved back to Atlanta (forever, please). She was awesome enough to babysit on Valentines day and then this weekend she accompanied us to the farmers market. We were consistently mistaken as the two hottest lesbian moms in the place.

But before we left for the farmers market, the Peanut was showing off her new tricks by naming the people we pointed at. Mommy, check. Daddy, check. Rilla, check. She even informed us that Rilla also went by sister. But then we pointed at Betsy. She has said Betsy’s name before, which is pretty impressive considering the Peanut is not yet two and this was the second time she had met Betsy. But in that moment, she didn’t know it. And she looked for a long time at Betsy, then looked to the ground, crawled off Betsy’s lap, and walked over to her daddy, being cute.

I suppose I could be projecting on her, but somehow I don’t think so. She was embarrassed, ashamed that she could not remember someone’s name. Someone that mommy and daddy like.

In the past I have been easily shamed. I can remember verbal smacks from elementary school teachers that I didn’t even like. And to this day they burn. I used to spend hours at night reviewing in my head things that were said to me, things that I said, what I should have said, why that person said what they did. It was so much wasted time, wasted energy, wasted moments when I could be sleeping. For whatever reason, I could not let those things simply roll off my back. I was embarrassed; sometimes I was ashamed.

It has taken me a long time to fully embrace the grace that Christ has to offer. To simply think “when you know better, you do better” and then go on about the business of attempting to do better. And even now, the people who are closest to me know that I am a serial apologizer. I say “sorry” for things that are not at all my fault. But I am working on it. I am doing better every day.

I don’t want my daughter to carry the that weight, the weight that I was carrying around for years. The weight that I now leave at the cross. I don’t want her to feel embarrassed or ashamed when she doesn’t know something or makes an honest mistake.

I want her to know that God’s grace isn’t just sufficient enough to cover our sins and squeak us barely in to heaven. It is abundant, and covers the rest when our best isn’t good enough. God’s grace is sufficient enough to take what you give Him and turn it into something beautiful. Even if what you give him isn’t the perfect right thing. It doesn’t have to be, just your best love. God thinks that is grand,

And I want her to know that we think her best is grand too. And all the people who love her, they think her best is perfect. Even when it isn’t good enough.

The Norman Family Creed

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Abby Norman

A week or two ago at Bible study Christian was talking about something that looked like it was going to be terrible. And suddenly a thought occurred to him: