Gifts are Bridges

Here we go. Day two.

This year my little people are in school- so I have two hours, three days per week to write.

I’m approaching the blog a little differently this year.

I have never considered myself to be a blogger. I have considered myself to be a noticer and thinker and peace maker and serious writer (jeez) who happens to be practice her serious writing voice in blog format. And so it has seemed reasonable to me that at any moment, I might scootch on over from blogger to Nobel or Pulitzer Prize Winner. Which means that I often agonize over wording as if each essay is being published in a book. And there is something to be said for this sort of attention to detail. But it’s also tiring, and it gets in my way sometimes. It makes me nervous and stifles my voice. Perfectionism is just really, really bad, I think. It keeps us from doing what we need to do and being who we need to be.

So a few weeks ago, I thought . . . you know what? Maybe I AM a blogger. Maybe I’ll be a blogger forever. This format seems to be helping others more than a book might. Our communication is more real, more immediate, more raw, maybe even more genuine and helpful here than it would be if we spent a year on the editing floor before we reached each other. So…I have decided that I’m going to relax and be what I am. Which means that three mornings per week, I am going to sit down and write about what’s on my mind, no matter how random it is. And then after an hour and a half, I am going to hit publish, no matter how imperfect the essay is.

I love this plan. It’s relaxing.

Also, sometimes I actually won’t show up because any sort of long term commitment makes me shake and sweat. So if there’s no essay at all, don’t be mad. Like Bart Simpson says, I can’t promise to try…but I’ll try to try. That’s the best I can do.

Kay, here’s what I’m thinking about today: Gifts.

I think God gives us each a gift or two so that we have something special to offer to others. But sometimes we make the mistake of assuming that the things we’re good at are common to everyone. We don’t recognize that our gifts are unique and therefore worth offering. For example, I am a good writer and a good listener. Pretty darn good at both. Like, when my friends think of me, they think, “Glennon - she’s a good writer and a good listener.” But I never really KNEW these skills were unique 'till a few years ago.

Once I was in my dear friend Michelle’s kitchen, and we were talking about an upcoming party. I said: “You know, Michelle, parties just stress me out because everyone brings delicious fancy dishes to share and I don’t really even own any dishes to put a dish on even if I wanted to make a dish. Which I don’t, by the way. So sometimes I avoid gatherings just because I’m too annoyed about all the dish bringing. I mean, even stopping at the store for a bag of chips seems overwhelming to me. I don’t know why. Sometimes I think I need to add a sign to place underneath my “I CAN DO HARD THINGS” sign that says “BUT I CANNOT DO EASY THINGS.”

And Michelle said, “Yeah. Maybe you don’t bring amazing dishes. But you know what you do bring? You have a way of making me feel important when we talk. You really listen to me. That’s why I like having you at our parties. You are a great listener.”

And I thought….hmmmm.

Now, when people invite me to things and they ask what I’ll bring, I say: “I WILL BRING MY AMAZING LISTENING EARS.” If they love me, this will be fine with them. They’ll understand. If it is not fine with them, they will stop inviting me to things. Win/win.

Another one of my gifts is writing. This is the one I want to talk about today.

Here is one of my dearest, best friends on Earth, Dana.

Dana lost her daddy a couple of weeks ago. It was shocking and horrific and awful and it still is. Dana is a daddy’s girl through and through. And she honored her father and their relationship by writing and delivering the eulogy at his memorial service. Can you imagine? A week after she lost him, she stood up in front of hundreds of his friends and her entire family and spoke eloquently of his greatness and their loss. It was one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. Certainly one of the bravest. Heroic, really.

A couple of nights before the memorial, Dana asked me to take a look at the eulogy she’d written and revise it for her. It’s a good thing she did, because after reading it several times with a very critical eye, I had to tell her that in my expert writing opinion, she should consider changing the “but” in the third paragraph to an “and.” True story. Dana didn’t really need me at all. But she thought of me because she knows I’m a writer. And since I’m a writer, I got invited into one of the most important moments in her family’s life. It was such an honor. I just can’t tell you what an honor it was, to read that love letter to her daddy. To read it first. To feel, at the memorial, like I was up there on the altar with her.

That got me thinking about all the other ways that writing has served as an invitation into my friend’s important moments.

My Christy invited me to help write a toast to her mother and father for her wedding day.

My Joey and her Brock invited me to help write their wedding vows to each other. Those were pretty damn good vows, if I do say so myself.

And I’ve written and delivered many, many toasts for people I love.

Writing, it turns out, has been my ticket into other’s lives.

And this got me thinking about my friend Kim, who is beautiful and has a gift for making other people beautiful, too. She has done the make-up and hair of all our friends on their wedding days. And so on Sister’s wedding day, we thought of Kim and invited her to help us get ready. Since Kim accepted our invitation and offered her gift to help us, she will always be in our memories of one of the most important days of my family’s life.

And my friend Gena - she has a gift for hostessing.

Gena doesn’t just use her beautiful home to hostess, she uses her whole heart. She throws opens her doors and invites people to step inside and celebrate life. Her gift is celebration, creating an atmosphere in her home and presence in which her friends feel loved and honored. She has hosted each of my last four birthday parties.

She hosts a huge Christmas party every year for all of us. She hosts everything. It doesn't stress her out, she loves it. It's her gift. Welcoming people. And because she offers it to me, Gena’s face will be front and center in our family’s celebration memories forever and ever. There are many, many bridges between us.

And then there’s Sister’s best friend, Allison. Allison is an artist, and her medium is the camera. She feels at home behind the camera, and God has given her the gift of noticing the important moments and capturing them. Like a writer, actually. And so her friends and family invite her into their important days to help them grab the magical parts and keep them forever. And so Allison becomes a part of those days, those memories, forever. She’s all tangled up in there. It's funny, Allison is quiet at events - she's more of an "ahh, there you are" person than a "HEY! Here I am!" person. But when you look at her pictures, you realize that she was actually there-er than anyone else. She soaked up every meaningful moment.

And so, anyway. I was just thinking that God must really want us to connect with each other. He must want us to become a part of each other’s lives and memories, and he must want our hearts to get all tangled up with other hearts. So He gives us each gifts to use as bridges into each other’s lives. We lay out our gift, and we walk right over it and straight into another heart.

What is your gift, your bridge towards other's hearts? What thing do you do that helps you get tangled up with other people? If you don't know, ask a friend. It's important to know, I think.

Love You.

Sacraments

They’re gone.

All three kids are at school.

I have an hour and a half to sit in a quiet house and write to you. There are other things I might be doing instead. My house is a mess. There is clutter everywhere and unfinished paperwork and grocery shopping and well, you know. I’m ignoring it. That stuff will get done, eventually. But if I don’t sit down and focus, what I had to say today will be gone forever.

A little story for you.

Last week I woke up confused and sad and sick.

I have Lyme disease and sometimes it leaves me alone and I’m fine and other times it just clobbers me. I’m on forty two million pills each week (312 to be exact), so sometimes I can’t tell if it’s the pills or the disease that’s making me feel sick.

Ahh . . . the good old days, when taking drugs was such great fun. Not so much anymore. I love Jesus, but sometimes I believe in Karma a little, too.

Here are my pills.

Lots of those are supplements that are supposed to boost my immune system and help me fight the Lyme . . . I take things like BEE POLLEN and KELP and I eat things like Spirulina Cashew bars for lunch and kale smoothies for breakfast. I exercise several times a week and then sit in the sauna till I can’t take it anymore and then I scrub my skin with loofahs afterwards. All of this is supposed to release Lymie toxins from my skin. It’s all sort of insane. I have got to be the healthiest chronically unhealthy girl on Earth. Jesus, Spirulina?? These sorts of words are second nature to me now . . . a year ago Baked Cheetos were my healthiest choice. Life and Lyme are strange.

Anyway, this one particular day last week, I woke up feeling Lymie and stressed and confused about the adoption. We still have hope, there is hope, and this hope keeps us on edge. But still....nothing keeps happening. Nothing, nothing, and then additionally a little more of nothing for good measure. And so we hold out hope with no real reason to, other than our belief that hope is good. And so I was feeling both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by life.

I walked down the stairs to start the laundry and saw this on my doorstep. I have glass doors, so this gal was peering into my foyer, waiting to be noticed.

Just sitting there.

And I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Amma ran up behind me and yelled “WHAT ON THE HECK?” That’s her new thing.

I stepped outside and found Kristi in the bushes. Back story. Thank you, Bloggess.

I have tried to explain what Beyonce means to me to several people and I can’t seem get it out right. I’ll try again.

Last week at church my minister was serving communion and he held up the bread and explained to us that communion is a sacrament. He said that a sacrament is something visible, that points to something invisible. A sacrament is an earthly reality we create to point to a spiritual reality. It's something we create, a symbol, that we can look at and touch to help us remember what we believe. Like a wedding ring. Because things we believe are usually invisible, making them trickier to keep believing in. We need to use our senses to help us keep believing. Humans need to see things, to touch things, to understand ideas.

And so that's when I realized . . . Beyonce is a sacrament.

Stay with me here.

My friend Kristi, who I only met through Momastery, is deeply touched by my writing and yours. This community has gotten to her. She has always believed, deep down, that Love Wins, and that women should take care of each other, and that courage and kindness are what matter . . . but she’s never seen it proven right in front of her like she has here. She is inspired by us and our commitment to goodness and laughter. We help her believe, so she wanted to say thank you in a big way.

And one day she was driving down an old country road and she saw this rooster just sitting there. And she just knew. So she stopped her car and she said, Hey, how much for this chicken? This five foot, jagged edged, one eyed, rainbow rooster? And the lady told her, and she paid the lady. A lot, I think. Then she went to her house and made one of her amazing signs. And she turned the sign into a necklace and drove Beyonce and the sign to my house. Then she pulled Beyonce out of her truck by herself, risking Tetanus and all sorts of other diseases (because Beyonce will CUT YOU!) and she lugged her to my porch. And then she knocked, hid in the bushes and waited.

Kristi is a busy woman. She doesn’t really have time for a wild rooster chase. But it turns out she did have time, actually.

So now, every time I look at Beyonce . . . I think of how people will do crazy things for love. And how even though life is hard and there seems to be lots of nonsensical pain . . . there’s also plenty of nonsensical joy. She also reminds me to follow my God voice…because the God voice is what led me to start this blog . . . and good things have come of it. She reminds me that God uses my writing to move people and to help them laugh and forget some of the urgent things in their lives long enough to remember the important things. Like making each other smile.

I love Beyonce. She makes me smile.

Even so, she is a huge rainbow metal chicken. And we live in a fancy neighborhood in which yard art is not encouraged. So everyday Craig and I wait for our letter from the HOA suggesting that we “KINDLY REMOVE THE METAL ROOSTER FROM THE PORCH.”

But don’t worry. I’ve already prepared my defense. I will argue that Beyonce is an expression of my religious freedom. She is a SACRAMENT. She is a visible reminder of something invisible…of love, hope, joy, friendship. Removing her would be AGAINST my RELIGION. Beyonce and I'll see ya at the Supreme Court, HOA.

For fun, I went through my house to show you the other sacraments I keep around, to remember what I believe.

I believe these three things.

I believe I have four children.

I believe my fourth is a baby boy. And that he’s in Africa.

I believe in Jesus. Crazy about the guy. Totally worship him.

I believe in Sisterhood. All kinds.

I believe in prayer as an act of love. I believe most everything is a prayer.

This sacrament is my favorite.

It's a monkee painted on a rock. My mama made it for me last month. I rub it every time I get scared about the adoption or about my Lyme. So, all day. It says to me, your mom believes in you and loves you. Even when you do these crazy things, she believes in you. Even when she doesn’t understand what you’re doing, she believes that you do.

I love you guys. I’ll make you a Monkee rock if you need a reminder that you’re loved. I’m going to ask my mom to teach me.

My time’s up.

Love, G

Oh, one more thing. Great news on the VMAs Sunday nite.

Beyonce, With Child.

Yay.

Destiny's Children

Chase, Tish, Amma, and Beyonce on their First Day of School.

BYE, BABIES.

JOY TO THE WORLD.

xoxoxo,

G

Dear Chase

Hey Baby.

Tomorrow is a big day. Third Grade – wow.

Chase - When I was in third grade, there was a little boy in my class named Adam.

Adam looked a little different and he wore funny clothes and sometimes he even smelled a little bit. Adam didn’t smile. He hung his head low and he never looked at anyone at all. Adam never did his homework. I don’t think his parents reminded him like yours do. The other kids teased Adam a lot. Whenever they did, his head hung lower and lower and lower. I never teased him, but I never told the other kids to stop, either.

And I never talked to Adam, not once. I never invited him to sit next to me at lunch, or to play with me at recess. Instead, he sat and played by himself. He must have been very lonely.

I still think about Adam every day. I wonder if Adam remembers me? Probably not. I bet if I’d asked him to play, just once, he’d still remember me.

I think that God puts people in our lives as gifts to us. The children in your class this year, they are some of God’s gifts to you.

So please treat each one like a gift from God. Every single one.

Baby, if you see a child being left out, or hurt, or teased, a little part of your heart will hurt a little. Your daddy and I want you to trust that heart- ache. Your whole life, we want you to notice and trust your heart-ache. That heart ache is called compassion, and it is God’s signal to you to do something. It is God saying, Chase! Wake up! One of my babies is hurting! Do something to help! Whenever you feel compassion – be thrilled! It means God is speaking to you, and that is magic. It means He trusts you and needs you.

Sometimes the magic of compassion will make you step into the middle of a bad situation right away.

Compassion might lead you to tell a teaser to stop it and then ask the teased kid to play. You might invite a left-out kid to sit next to you at lunch. You might choose a kid for your team first who usually gets chosen last. These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things.

Sometimes you will feel compassion but you won’t step in right away. That’s okay, too. You might choose instead to tell your teacher and then tell us. We are on your team – we are on your whole class’ team. Asking for help for someone who is hurting is not tattling, it is doing the right thing. If someone in your class needs help, please tell me, baby. We will make a plan to help together.

When God speaks to you by making your heart hurt for another, by giving you compassion, just do something. Please do not ignore God whispering to you. I so wish I had not ignored God when He spoke to me about Adam. I remember Him trying, I remember feeling compassion, but I chose fear over compassion. I wish I hadn’t. Adam could have used a friend and I could have, too.

Chase - We do not care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest. There will be lots of contests at school, and we don’t care if you win a single one of them. We don’t care if you get straight As. We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess. We don’t care if you are your teacher’s favorite or not. We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most Pokemon cards or coolest gadgets. We just don’t care.

We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done.

We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.

Kind people are brave people. Because brave is not a feeling that you should wait for. It is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

Trust me, baby, it is. It is more important.

Don’t try to be the best this year, honey.

Just be grateful and kind and brave. That’s all you ever need to be.

Take care of those classmates of yours, and your teacher, too. You Belong to Each Other. You are one lucky boy . . . with all of these new gifts to unwrap this year.

I love you so much that my heart might explode.

Enjoy and cherish your gifts.

And thank you for being my favorite gift of all time.

Love, Mama

Better?

Here’s another one that sort of poured out- I’m not editing – my deepest apologies to my grammar and spelling experts.

I wish you guys could experience how scary and exciting this completely blank page feels to me each time I sit down to write. This empty, white page waiting for me to fill it up with something good – the black cursor hounding me with its relentless pulsing.

Oh blank page, hello. We meet again. You scare me, but I love you.

It’s appropriate that scared and sacred are virtually the same word. Those two often walk hand in hand towards me.

Here’s our Momastery FAQ for the day: I get lots of variations, but let’s use this one:

“G- I’ve seen some of your pictures on Facebook and you look really skinny. Makes me wonder. Are you sure you’re “better”?”

AHH.

We addicts, we refer to ourselves as recovering, never as recovered. Because recovery is a process, sort of like trying to be a person of faith or a decent parent or a loving spouse or a good friend . . . you’re never done. You gotta start over every single moment. By start over I mean constantly make decisions that carry you out of your hiding place and keep you bravely marching (or crawling) toward the light.

I’ll give you the real, raw skinny (so to speak) about my eating first, so you don’t become afraid that I plan to hide behind phrases like “bravely marching toward the light” throughout this essay. I swear I can hear Bubba gagging on that one all the way from the bay.

Speaking of gagging, I became bulimic when I was in fifth grade, and I binged and purged several times a day until I became pregnant with Chase, at twenty-five. I was never truly overweight, but when I was young I was never skinny either, and most of my friends were. At some point this difference started to make me uncomfortable. Back then I didn’t know that discomfort was an inevitable part of life. I thought the fact that I was uncomfortable meant that something was wrong with me that needed to be fixed. Bulimia seemed like a good plan to fix my wrongness. Anorexia was not an option because I found too much comfort in food. Binging helped me forget my worries, numb myself from anxiety, and best of all - hide from life, relationships, my own dramatic thoughts and everything else scary.

I lived in my little Bulimia World instead of the Real World, and it was a kind of a depressing, gross, unhealthy world but at least I understood it and I made the rules and there weren’t many surprises. In my Bulimia World, I was not vulnerable to other people or even to myself. Nobody was allowed in to my world but me. And really, I wasn’t even allowed in because there was no space for real emotion or thought in my world. The only feelings I allowed myself were, “fat” and “skinny.” And since those aren’t even real feelings, bulimia was a lot like being dead. Dead is safe.

In middle school my bulimia got bad, in high school it became worse, and in college it got ridiculous. My friends knew that I threw up after every meal. They’d wait for me outside the dining hall bathrooms. I constantly avoided the pained looked on my best friend Brookie’s face as I exited the stalls each day. There was a group of us who were known as bulimics, and it was cool . . . it was no problem. At least we were taking care of ourselves was the attitude of the guys I hung with. I don’t remember my college boyfriend, with whom I spent most waking hours, ever saying anything to me about my bulimia at all- other than a few jokes here and there. That ex-boyfriend’s best friend nicknamed me “Smush-Face,” and still calls me “Smushy” to this day. It’s an affectionate term, and I love it. Who doesn’t love a nickname? Makes ya feel loved. But it’s funny because the reason he called me “Smush-Face” was that I had these chipmunk cheeks (think Renee Zellwegger) that are often a dead give-away for bulimia.

I remember this formal announcement being made at a meeting in my sorority house: “Guys, if you’re going to throw up, please remember to flush. It makes us look bad when people come to visit and there’s puke in the stalls.” I also remember passing out twice in the bathroom of my college dining hall and then waking up, walking out, and joining my friends to go party. All of this seemed normal to me. It’s a scary thing- what can become normal.

The point is, I was really bulimic, really sick. And I needed my bulimia. I chose it, everyday. I think it started out as a way to control my weight but turned into a way to control everything. You can’t take away someone’s bulimia without offering something else better to replace it - a better way to control things, a less harmful way to handle life’s discomfort.

But even better - the best thing a bulimic can be offered is the idea that she doesn’t have to control anything at all. That the things she’s so desperately trying to fix don’t have to be fixed, ever.

I don't know how to teach that or learn it- but it feels kind of like when Tish cries because she colored outside the lines in her coloring book and she’s saying tearfully “I messed it all up, mommy” and I tell her- Actually -that’s the way I like it. I can’t stand always staying in the lines. THAT- what you did there- is art.

She’s not sure she believes me yet – but maybe one day.

Until recently, I never had any idea how to just breathe and let life happen. How to say - yes, yes, that’s okay, and that, too- and even that. I never knew how to let things be and trust that I am enough and that everyone else is fine and that I don’t need to be liked or even loved by everyone at all times. That I was always going to feel a little left out, and that's okay. I didn’t know that the moods and actions and words of other people did not have to affect my peace. I didn’t know how to forgive people even before they hurt me because they are doing the best they can. I didn’t know that it wasn’t all about me, anyway.

I just didn't know that everything was okay. That my messiness and my dramatic, worried heart were what made me beautiful. I didn’t know that no one needed me to fit in. And I hadn’t learned that sadness and loneliness and differentness and fear and anger are not problems to be fixed or avoided, but inevitable places humans have to go and stay sometimes to learn and grow. That life is not a science, it’s art. And outside the lines is better.

I think I’m done for the day.

Stay dry and safe and I love you.

G

"Be Kind, For Everyone You Meet Is Fighting A Battle"

I know I already posted, like ten minutes ago. But then Christine shared this incredible thing on the Momastery Facebook page, and I couldn’t wait to share it with you all. So wonderful. Just perfect. Thank you, Melody and the Brave Girls.

Love, G

Church

Most of the questions I get from readers are about my faith, my weight, my addictions, or my marriage.

Today-faith.

My relationship to God is the most important thing in my life. I say to instead of with because I experience my faith journey more like an effort to align myself rightly with Him than to be friends with Him. I don’t get Him enough to try to be friends. I find Him entirely too unpredictable. To be friends with someone, I gotta be able to predict with some confidence what she’s going to do next, so I’m not constantly sweating. God makes me sweat profusely. Guessing God’s next move is like trying to make a casserole…no matter how closely I try to follow directions, I NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT. Scary.

Still, aligning myself correctly to Him is my only real goal down here. My relationship to Him is what sets right all the secondary relationships in my life - my marriage, my friendships, my parenting, my writing. And so I am constantly thinking about God. Truth, you can call it if you’re uncomfortable with the G word. I am always considering - What am I supposed to learn about God, about what is True… from this argument, this seashell, this tragedy, this rainbow, this friend, this enemy, this child, this disease? I believe that everything that enters my life is an invitation further into the heart of God, and if I accept the invitation, and step closer instead of hiding, I learn and grow and my perspective broadens ever so slightly. Things get lighter and clearer.

Drinking and smoking and binging and purging were all my ways of rejecting Life’s Invitations. I still reject them now, through over-shopping and overeating and talking too much and zoning out on the internet and TV, but my rejections are less frequent and less dramatic, and I call that progress.

You know, it’s a tricky thing- writing to a specific and incredibly diverse audience about my particular faith. Especially because I have never, ever, in my whole entire life, met anyone who agrees with my faith ideas. So please, don’t worry- I don’t expect you to, either. It is certainly okay if you think I’m wrong- as a matter of fact, I am certain that I’m wrong. How could any of us be “right” when guessing about God? I agree with whomever said that we have as good a chance of understanding the mind of God as a colony of ants has of understanding the minds of humans. And I’m just an ant, but so is everyone else. Even the most educated gals, even the guys behind the pulpits . . . they’re still ants like me. And I’d rather make my own mistakes about God than someone else’s. So I think and listen and write and pray and read and try, try, try to learn, to receive. And I trust that God can speak to me, and that it’s okay if I write about it.

A minister once wrote to me and said, “Isn’t this privatization of faith that you discuss dangerous? Everyone cannot just believe whatever he wants. What keeps people from deciding then, Jesus is a cantaloupe!”

Well, I guess I believe that things get more dangerous when faith is not privatized. When people are not encouraged to study and listen and think for themselves. It seems to me that things get dangerous when people blindly follow religious leaders. Because leaders can be good or they can be bad. And so I think that we can ask for counsel from educated religious leaders, yes. But as with everything else important in our lives . . . our health, our parenting, we must ultimately be our own leaders when it comes to faith. Because we can each read, we can each pray, we can each think, and we can each sit silently and listen. We cannot count completely on others to have the answer for us, ever. God is speaking to each of us, always. And I don’t necessarily want to know what He’s saying to you, I need to know what He’s saying to me.

And so I told the kind minister that while I respected him and his vocation immensely, I didn’t believe in mediators between God and man. I told him that I do believe in teachers. And I told him that I was a teacher too, and that I considered my most important role to be teaching students how to think for themselves.

And I told him that when I die, I expect to sit down with God to discuss my life. I expect that only She and I will be at that meeting - not She and I and my minister. And so I live that way now, too. It is not a lack of respect, it is just respecting everyone equally, including myself.

*As a side note, since receiving this email I have considered at least twelve ways that Jesus is just like a cantaloupe. But that’s for another day.

In general, my faith revolves around questions rather than answers, and I think that’s okay. I am very wary of people with too many answers about God. Faith is supposed to be a mystery. If anyone tells that you they’ve figured it out, they know all the answers, the rules, the system or equation that will set you right with God, run. If someone makes God small enough to fit inside her head, she’s made Him too small, I think.

Craig and I are considering becoming official members of our neighborhood church. This is a big deal for us, because a few years ago we promised ourselves we wouldn’t choose a denomination. We couldn’t imagine the need for it. Still can’t, really. We considered ourselves religious rolling stones. But we’ve fallen for this little church, and we started wondering if our religious “freedom” wasn’t just another word for nothing left to lose (thank you Janis.) Because we know that any faith worth a damn is a faith worked out over a lifetime of relationships with other people. It’s a commitment to and with other people, is all. Church is just a commitment to try to live a life of a certain quality, a life of love, of humility, of service, alongside others whom you will care for and allow to care for you, even when you are difficult. It’s a group of regular old humans trying to love each other and the world in superhuman ways. And so it’s a hard way of life, but to me, the only way of life that makes any sense. When people ask me if faith, if church, is comforting to me, I say - sort of. But mostly it's challenging.

Anyway -I was afraid to join. Because I don’t want to pretend to believe anything I don’t believe. And I don’t want to pretend not to have doubts. And I don’t want my children to be taught things about God that I’ll have to undo. Before I joined any church, I needed permission from whomever was in charge to be different.

So I invited one of the ministers of the church over to my house.

I was scared.

But we talked for two hours. And I told her my concerns. I told her that I thought I wanted to join her church, but that first, I wanted to make sure she wanted me. I told her that I am a troublemaker.

I told her that I love Jesus madly and deeply, but my problem in church always seems to be that I understand Him differently than many other Christians seem to. And I love these other Christians, and I don’t want to bother or offend them. So I just felt like maybe it was better for me to remain unattached to any particular church than to disrupt a perfectly lovely one. She seemed to understand exactly what I meant by this. She reads the blog sometimes, I think

I went on to admit that I had all kinds of doubts and questions and even negative feelings about the Church’s role throughout history. But I told her I still loved the Church so much, which I thought was weird and interesting. I felt kind of like St. Augustine, who said, “The church is a whore, but she’s my mother.” I told her that if I were to be a member of her church, I would need her permission to speak respectfully but freely and differently at appropriate times. To be myself.

Basically, she said she wanted me. She liked me, I think. She said our church would fit me just fine. She doesn’t mind a troublemaker or two in her fold.

So we’ll see. My biggest fear when entering any church is always…Oh, Jesus. What are they going to teach my babies about God? This worry makes me sweat, too. So guess what I did? I signed up to teach Sunday school. And I’ve already fallen in love with my Sunday School Team. I’m not sure they know I’m a troublemaker yet, though. God help them.

I realize I didn’t get to my faith-y questions and doubts yet, but this is getting long. Next time.

Love you all.

G

A Place of One's Own

Next week all three of my beloved kiddos will head back to school, where they belong.

For the first time, I’ll have six hours a week of empty house, and I’ve decided to spend these hours writing. I am thrilled and delighted and committed. I have promised myself that I will let nothing encroach on my writing time. I will not volunteer, I will not clean, I will not shop, I will not visit, I will not facebook, I will not, not, not. I will write, as a gift to myself.

I just finished re-reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. She says, “If a woman is going to write, she will have to step on a few toes.” * Yes. Ma’am. I shall step, step, step away. I shall take my time. Just take it, since it belong to me. Love that woman. Love that woman. I so wish she hadn’t killed herself, so she could have told us even more. I'm grateful she gave what she could.

Monkee-ville seems to grow and then rest - grow and then rest. Lately, we’ve been growing like mad. I’m receiving more emails than ever before. I love your emails. They feel like love letters. If I ever stopped writing this blog, the love letters are what I would miss the most.

I love getting to know you by reading your stories. I’ve mostly stopped responding, but I read every single email, and when a Monkee asks for prayer I write her name on a little piece of paper and put it on my bedside table. Honestly, I don’t always remember to say a prayer. But I consider writing the name with love to be a prayer, since my heart always flutters a teeny bit as I write. I believe that flutter to be the triangular connection between God, the Monkee, and me.

Many of the Monkees who write ask me the same questions. . . so I'm going to answer a few FAQs.

During the past month, I’ve received twenty-one of these requests: “G, will you promote my cause on the blog?”

These requests thrill me. The beauty of this blog is that it attracts people who want to spread hope and help and light. And that is a good, good thing. So here is what I’ve decided: I will promote each and every one of your causes on the Momastery Facebook Page. I will link to your project with lots of exclamation points!!!! and thousands of people will read about your cause and celebrate your efforts and those who are particularly touched by it will have an opportunity to become involved.

But for now, this blog’s cause is simple and clear and one. After much thinking over the past month, it has become clear to me that Momastery’s cause is you. Which means that my cause is you. The Monkees -as a group and individually. So you Lovies go ahead and take care of the world and your partners and kiddos and neighbors and enemies and while you are doing so, my job will be to help care for you. Because you’re bound to get tired, and I want this to be a place for you to refuel and fill up. You gotta fill up if your gonna pour yourself out.

And so - the efforts I'll support here at Momastery will be Love Projects that benefit Monkees.We are a group of people who will be known by how uniquely and completely we love each other. Yes, please.

If your family needs help, you tell us. We will help. I’m not sure how it’ll work, I just know that it will work. In real life, I have no idea what I’m doing. But when it comes to this blog, I know exactly what I’m doing. I just know. And I assure you that we can expect miracles here. God will provide.

Speaking of miracles . . . let’s talk back to school. For the next few weeks, let’s keep this in mind. It’s all going to be okay. They're going to be okay. They already are.

*And as Beth so wisely suggested - remind your child to find the new student and ask him to play. The best way to overcome nervousness is to help another little one overcome hers. That's the important stuff.

Love You,

G

*That’s not the exact quote. Went back through my book and can’t find it. But it’s the jist. Love.