We Have A Lot of Stuff Going On Here

“Mommy, I have a lot of stuff going on here,” my daughter complains, staring at the screen of her iPad during distance learning, a scene that’s become all too familiar in our house. Remnants from a full morning of schooling—papers, crayons, snack wrappers, a whiteboard—are scattered across her desk: a very literal visual of a lot of stuff going on over here. I wander over and watch as she stumbles over some of the longer words in an assignment’s written instructions.

I look at her screen, at the bevy of assignments related to sight words and skip counting and something called fact families. I swipe down on the screen to view the directions.

“You can listen to the instructions,” I tell her. The first-grade teachers have prepared for the exact situation, of their still-young readers being overwhelmed by large blocks of text, “Remember? Press play right here. It will tell you exactly what to do next.”

I tiptoe away so I don’t interrupt her brother’s voice recording. I sit down at my own computer screen in the kitchen, far enough away I can’t see them, but close enough to be interrupted if they need me, which is approximately every 2.65 minutes. I look at my own screen with six tabs too many open and find similar words bouncing around my own brain.

What was I doing?
Where was I?
I’ve got a lot of stuff going on here.

Unlike my daughter, I don’t have an older, wiser person nearby to help me figure it all out. There’s no one around to check that I’ve done my work, for me to interrupt every couple of minutes to ask what I need to do next. Also, I’m 33 years old. In the language of the millennial memes I see around me, it’s my job to get this adulting done on my own.

But adulting is frequently the actual last thing I want to do. At my worst, when I’m feeling anxious and lazy and anything but capable, this devolves into a social media doomscroll on my phone. Or I wander around, half-completing tasks, as I wait out the minute or two or five I have before the inevitable interruption that is distance learning with three kids.

Read more about “all the stuff we have going on here” over on Twin Cities Mom Collective.

Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any mystery or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. I also enjoy hearing about what other people are reading, watching, and listening. Here's my two cents worth.

READ
Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption
This book was a delight. I’d read some of these pieces before, (Modern Love is a column in the New York Times, this book is a compilation of many of them), and it was so fun to revisit some of my favorites. Even better to read so many I hadn’t seen before. The perfect cozy-up-by-the-fire read.

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
I am here for Melinda Gates. I am here for everything she stands for: raising up women and girls through education, access to healthcare, and workplace equality. It was also interesting to read about her work (much of it behind-the-scenes) with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That said I got about two-thirds of the way through this book and then put it down. While the stories were inspiring, it got repetitive, and I had other books to dive into!

And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Stories from the Byways of American Women and Religion
I found this while browsing through a bookstore and was intrigued. Especially when I picked it up to find it was an NPR Best Book of 2017. It was beautiful and interesting. Each chapter gives a vivid portrait of a different American woman and her theology, from Eliza Snow of the LDS church (one of my favorite chapters) to Marie Laveau, a 19th-century Voodoo priestess from New Orleans. Highly recommend.

Southern Lady Code
This book is a light, quick read of essays. I realized while reading that it was written by the sister of a host of one of my favorite podcasts (One Bad Mother). This book skims through how the author navigates New York City despite being a girl raised in the south. Helen Ellis is funny - I initially thought the book was going to be more serious. It kind of left me wishing there were more moments of thoughtfulness to balance the (sometimes forced) levity.

Thick and Other Essays
Tressie McMillan Cottom is unapologetically “thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less”. (And that’s just in the first essay!) I’m not sure there’s a topic she doesn’t touch. These essays are packed full of original cultural analysis. And just like Tressie McMillan Cottom herself, they are full of “more” - but I certainly don’t want them to be less. I definitely had to lean into my discomfort, in the best of ways. (If that’s possible!)

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
I literally read this right after Thick and I wish I could write like these women. They give new meaning to the term “essay”. This book is so much more than that. It’s thought-provoking, insightful, and sometimes explosive. Jia Tolentino tackles our culture in much the same way as Thick - this is a book I will be coming back to for sure. Her analysis on the Internet and modern America - especially for us Millennials - is intriguing, relatable, and sometimes hard to swallow.

The Book of Separation
This. Book. One of my top reads of the year. A memoir by Tova Mirvis that covers one year, from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah - a year that happens to include her divorce from her husband as well from the Orthodox Judaism she’s spent most of her life in. For anyone who has found themselves wandering the wilderness of religion - religion of any sort - this book is for you. Five million stars.

Consider the Women: A Provocative Guide to Three Matriarchs of the Bible
I stumbled upon this one in my library’s collection of ebooks. Written by a local (St. Paul-based) pastor, Debbie Blue, the book walks through the narratives of three women in the Bible: Hagar, Esther, and Mary. She explores the three women through the lenses of the Abrahamic religions: Hagar as the mother of Islam, Esther as a Jewish heroine, and Mary as Christianity’s matriarch. I thought it was timely and fascinating - all the more so because she mentions local resources for organizations to help connect me with neighbors of other faiths.

Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House (re-re-read)
I’ve read this book a handful of times and love it. It’s one of the most well-done biographies I’ve ever read. Sally Bedell-Smith takes a look at the Kennedys through the lens of their friends and private residencies, hobbies, etc. It’s full of rich detail and an intelligent look at what might be our most famous First Couple.

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
This was a beautiful look at other religions from the lens of Barbara Brown Taylor, who was inspired to write this book because of a class she taught on world religions. While she never loses her own Christian faith, she finds much to admire in the traditions of others. The book goes back and forth from the classroom to various field trips, and her students are by turns illuminating and horrifying in their reactions. It wasn’t my favorite BBT read, yet I so appreciate her giving a (Christian) voice to other traditions around us.

The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty
I think we could solve the divisiveness in our current political climate if we just made people read biographies of people from the other side of the aisle. This biography was well done - I found much to love about Barbara Bush (though I like her already, TBH). I especially appreciated the work done to dive in and truly humanize her - especially through some episodes in her life such as the death of her three-year old daughter, an episode of depression in the ‘80’s, and detailing her true thoughts on abortion (read: that it should be legal).

Three Women
This book was hard for me to get into at first. It’s written in a detached, clinical way. But the stories of these three women - real-life stories following women and sexual desire - were riveting. I thought about putting it down a couple of times (some of it is hard to read), yet I couldn’t stop wondering how things all turned out. It’s easy to judge; I often found myself thinking what I would or wouldn’t have done in their different situations, yet that’s not the point here. These are their stories - mostly the bare-boned facts, and regardless of how you feel about them, this is what and how they’re living with their own individual choices.

WATCHED
Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates
It was all we could do to not binge watch these three episodes back-to-back-to-back. (Note: staying up until 1 am is not a good look for us anymore.) I’m fascinated by Bill Gates - and Melinda, who features fairly prominently here, too. This was a fantastic look into both the history of Bill Gates and Microsoft, but also to feature the philanthropy they’re involved with as a couple now. The thoughtful, innovative approach they take to tackling the world’s problems is so encouraging.

American Factory
Tyson suggested this one - I was skeptical but ended up riveted. (Also I discovered it’s the first documentary produced by Barack and Michele Obama’s production company, so that was recommendation in and of itself.) (Do I trust their instincts better than that of my own husband? The answer is yes.) This documentary followed an American auto factory which is taken over by a Chinese manufacturer. There’s no overarching narrative here - not once does this documentary ever tell you what to think. It just plays out the events of about a year in the life of this factory and leaves you to think about it all for yourself.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
We’re not big movie people but I absolutely had to get to the theater to see this. Such a delight. I am here for the Fred Rogers moment our country is having right now.

Frozen II
So I just said we’re not big movie people and yet I saw this not once but twice with the kids. Mostly because I wanted to see it a second time. Disney: please keep doing THIS. Give women good (i.e. non-romantic) storylines, get political, keep giving us these SOUNDTRACKS. I’m here for it all.

The Crown (season three)
Hi. We love this show and yes I am a basic American bitch who also loves all things royalty. What of it?

LISTENED
Dolly Parton’s America
Hi, in case you’ve been living under a rock (or just don’t frequent the same corners of the Internet I do) I’m here to tell you that this podcast is fan-freaking-tastic. Who knew Dolly Parton - and everything she (or what people think she) stands for - could be so nuanced? This podcast is FASCINATING. I love everything about it, maybe Dolly’s own refreshing, uncompromising honesty most of all.

Note: any links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links.

A Week in the Life

On Monday, they have VBS. I drop the kids off in the church basement, which is decorated for a journey into both outer space and scripture. Even Nolan, at three, is old enough to join his brother and sister. They all wave to me cheerfully, hardly a half-glance back after I sign them in. Their friends greet them with smiles as they race to their spots on the floor to learn a new song and hand motions. 

“Have fun!” the volunteers tell me before I escape. I give them both a smile and a silent prayer of thanks for their willingness to step in here so I have a morning to myself. They’ll spend the next three hours singing, dancing, creating, snacking, and laughing while I run errands, write words, and rotate loads of laundry in a quiet house.

I walk up the steps and back out into the sunshine. It’s amazing how much easier I can breathe without six little hands pulling on my arms, my shirt, bumping into my legs, without little voices asking for a snack, if they can go to a friend’s house, wondering where the moon is during the day.

Tuesday afternoon, we set up a lemonade stand at the end of the driveway. I’m sure we’ve become a familiar sight to the neighbors, since we’ve been out here at least once or twice a week for most of the summer. Caden’s cries of, “Lemonade! Lemonade! Who wants lemonade?” reverberate around the neighborhood.

A lawn crew drives up and stops. They walk over and contribute two whole dollars to our cause. Nolan pours wobbly cups of lemonade and my daughter hands them out. The nine-year old from around the corner stops by, too. She passes her quarter to Caden and says she told her friend we were outside, that she would be over soon to drink lemonade and to play.

It doesn’t take long before we’ve gathered an entire group of neighbors in the front yard. Kids ride back and forth on the path in front of our house on scooters, balance bikes, and skateboards. Another mom, a friend from just down the street plops in the grass beside me. Some of the older kids race around to the back of our house to play on our playset and Nolan follows. I’m grateful for these pre-teens. I need a break from his energy, and they can wear him out better than I can. I take advantage of their enthusiasm until it’s time to go inside for dinner.

Wednesday, I text with a group of friends from the twins’ first year of preschool. We text often and still see each other occasionally for playdates or cocktail hour. They’re an easy group of moms to be with—they’re funny and easy-going. I can tell them that my kids are jerks and receive commiseration, not judgment. They understand, they’ll say, since their kids are jerks, too.

“I may have set a world record for the number of curse words said in a single morning,” I send out one day.

“It’s something in the air!” one replies, “I called my mom and dropped them off with her so I didn’t hurt them yesterday!”

“My husband and I have nicknamed our five-year old ‘the little twerp’ this summer,” another responds.

I’m in good company here. Despite these text threads, no one takes anyone else too seriously. We still think all of our children are lovely, intelligent, delightful human beings. Except for the times they’re not. And then it’s nice to have the space to vent without fear of judgment.

Read about the rest of my week in the life over on Kindred Mom.

Raising the Good Guys and Bad Guys

The three people in my house under the age of five have been obsessed with the idea of good guys and bad guys lately.

“I’m Batman!” Caden, my four-year-old-son, proclaims as he runs around in his blanket cape.

“And Robin!” the two-year-old replies, right behind him.

“Let’s get the bad guys!” they cry in unison.

My husband and I are usually stand-ins for the villains. I sigh inwardly at their use of the term “bad guys”. But this is all so developmentally appropriate, this cop-and-robber-type play, I’m not sure I should step in, or even what to say if I do.

+++++

“The world turned upside down. The world turned upside down,” The kids and I sing along to Hamilton as we color at the kitchen table. “The world turned upside down.”

“What’s this song about?” Caden asks me. His twin sister perks up to hear my answer to his question. (The two-year-old continues on his mission to break every crayon we own.) I pause. While we’ve been singing along to this soundtrack for months, this is the first time they’ve asked about it. Usually it’s enough for them that “My Shot” makes an excellent dance tune.

“Well...” I fumble. I minored in history in college. My brain tumbles over facts and stories, but which ones are appropriate for preschoolers? “A long time ago, our country fought another country. They were kind of in charge of us but we didn’t think they treated us very nicely. So we fought them and, well, we won.” I’m not sure they even have any concept of what a country is yet.

“We won?” he asks, eyes brightening. This he understands.

“We did.”

“And the bad guys lost?”

“Well...they weren’t really bad. They just believed different things than we did. They weren’t bad people, we just didn’t feel like they were treating us fairly. So we fought for what we thought was right. And they fought for what they thought was right.”

I’ve lost him now, though. He goes back to coloring, now singing his own little song under his breath that talks about how “we won and the bad guys lost.” Well. I tried.

+++++

Continue reading how I’m working to teach my children about the shades of gray in the world over at SheLoves Magazine.

My Own Search for Sunday

The last day at our old church, not one month ago, I left the group of volunteers I led with these words from Rachel Held Evans’ blog:

“When writing about her troubled marriage, author Glennon Melton wisely avoids telling other women what to do, and instead puts the choice this way:

‘Does a Love Warrior Go? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do. Does a Love Warrior Stay? YES. If that’s what her deepest wisdom tells her to do. Both roads are hard. And both roads can lead to redemption.’

The same is true for church. There is no single road to redemption.  And there is certainly not a straight one. As novelist Marilynne Robinson has said, ‘grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways.’”

As excited as I was to find our new church, this volunteer position - these volunteers - were the reason I stayed for so long. I spoke these words with a slight catch in my voice as I told everyone I was leaving, that we had found a new church. These words helped reassure me, helped give me the strength to leave.

Just five days later, I learned that Rachel Held Evans was admitted to the hospital and had been put in a medically-induced coma.

This past Saturday, my social media feeds became plastered with her image after she passed away.

+++++

At our “old” (read: just two months ago) church, I was in charge of the 30 or so volunteers in the birth-Kindergarten children’s ministry area. I filled snack cups, checked nametags, paged parents, sent out reminder emails, and led huddle for our group, filling them in on announcements and coming up with some sort of inspiration for the hour.

The night before my last day, I sat with my laptop and a notebook, searching for the words to tell my group I was leaving. How did I tell them we’d found a different church? How did I tell them I just couldn’t stay here anymore? It didn’t take long for me to search Rachel Held Evans’ blog, to scroll through the archives and find the one titled “Life After Evangelicalism”. It was there I found her (and Glennon’s, and Marilynne’s) words to sum up my decision.

It was Rachel’s words I so often turned to when I couldn’t find words of my own. When my own brain was in tumult, she projected clarity. She was a writers’ writer and a thinker’s thinker; someone who could harness into words what felt trapped in my own head.

I’d read Searching for Sunday a couple years ago, about her own journey through and with and out of the evangelical church. Of course she had the words to sum up my decision to leave.

+++++

Maybe I should back up to the whole “we left our church and found a new one” part. It’s a decision that may seem sudden to those on the outside. To me, it’s a long-overdue change. It’s a decision I’ve been wrestling with for at least two years, if not longer. To say it has consumed my thoughts is an understatement.

It was a whole host of factors; far more than I can go into detail with here. It was the lack of acceptance of the LGBTQ community. It was not seeing women in the highest positions of leadership, or even quoted from the stage. Along those lines, it was the realization that the faith leaders I turned to (Glennon Doyle, Anne Lamott, Rob Bell, Jen Hatmaker, Richard Rohr) were never mentioned; it was always men (James Dobson, Henry Cloud, John Piper). It was never discussing social justice, or really anything out in the great, wide world outside the church walls. (Refugees? Immigrants? Hurricane victims? Anything? Nothing.) It was the fact that the messages had gotten so repetitive - literally the same exact stories repeated two, three, four times, so often I knew the punchlines and could repeat them myself - that I got virtually nothing out of going to church. And by the way, do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? (Yes. Next. Can we talk about something else, please?)

Then there was the 2016 election. To learn that over 80% of white, evangelical Christians in this country had deemed Donald Trump worthy of the presidency felt like the ultimate betrayal. To go to church and feel like a stranger. To feel like the church had completely abandoned everything I thought it stood for. To wonder where all the people were who felt the way I did - surely they were out there, weren’t they?

I talked it over with Tyson for more hours than either he or I can count. Bless him for listening to my constant dialogue of “do we stay or do we go”. I’d thought about and written out pros and cons lists over and over and over again.

I became hostile to church. Volunteering was the only thing I enjoyed anymore. More often we sat towards the back, me with my arms crossed, eyes narrowed, ready to pounce and critique anything and everything the pastor said.

I knew enough to realize this was an extremely unhealthy posture towards a church I tithed to, a church where I led other volunteers, a place I had called my own.

In March of this year, finally, I decided it was time.

“We have nothing going on this weekend. Let’s check out this other church,” I told Tyson. He was game, along for my existential faith-crisis journey. He was probably relieved.

So we did.

+++++

To walk into a new church (a UCC denomination) that first Sunday was a little like stepping into my past. It was much smaller, sure, but the pews, the hymnals, the altar were all familiar from my Catholic upbringing. I was hopeful but guarded, running through the checklist of requirements in my head.

The pastor kicked off with an announcement about helping the flood victims in Nebraska and Iowa. (Acknowledging the world outside this church: check.) He talked about caring for refugees and our broken immigration system in his sermon. (Social justice: check.) The Lord’s Prayer, printed in the bulletin, allowed us to call God a name of our own choosing, whether Father, Mother, or God. (LGBTQ/allowing for other genders: check.) The choir sang “You Will Be Found” from Dear Evan Hansen. (Broadway music: BONUS!)

Tyson turned to me with a smile on his face when the service was over, “They couldn’t have put together a church service that would have resonated with you more.”

And just like that, we’d found our new church home.

+++++

This church change is now tangled up with Rachel Held Evans’ death in my head. Her death lends a sadness to this time, a time where I’ve been feeling alive again, energized (maybe like never before) by the church. I needed her words to transition me out of the evangelical church world. I needed her encouragement - her own “searching for Sunday” journey to help me along in my own.

(Of note: the pastor at my new church acknowledged her death this past weekend. I’m certain our old church did not.)

Rachel Held Evans ended her post, “Life After Evangelicalism”, with these words:

“You are not alone.

There is life after this. There is faith after this.

Hold on.”

That seems as good a way as any to close out my tangled emotions on her death and our own church change.

There is life after this. There is faith after this. Amen.