Popsicles and Kinship

"Kinship--not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not 'a man for others;' he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that." 

--From Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle

The line wrapped around the building: Families, kids making up games to pass the time, grandparents trying to corral the same kids. I looked down at the two little girls holding my hands, then shared a knowing glance with their mom. This was going to take a while. We were at a back-to-school event, one that promised a backpack full of school supplies to every child who waited the two hours it would take to reach the front of the line. The four of us had only known each other for a couple of months, but ours was a relationship that had progressed rather quickly out of necessity. When I met her, I thought I was going to serve her by inviting her girls into my home for several weeks. What can I say? The savior complex is hard to dismantle. 

We had been waiting for maybe an hour when she told me she was going to run back to her home across the street for some snacks to feed the girls. I held our place in line, inching forward and trying to keep the girls from running out of my sight. When she returned, she carried popsicles and water bottles because back to school in Indiana means sweat and mosquitos. She extended me a popsicle and water bottle, a generous gift from what little she had. Without even considering my response, I turned her down. I swear her face fell a little, and when I realized the gravity of what I had just done, my heart sank. 

I still consider that moment to be one of my biggest regrets. In that popsicle offering, I believe she extended more than frozen sugar water. There was opportunity for mutuality, for friendship and shared resources. In the many months that have passed since that day, I have thought a lot about this idea of kinship: "Not serving the other, but being one with the other." Am I willing to step down off my pedestal of privilege, to learn from the wealth of knowledge and experience generously proffered by the other? Can I show up with empty hands and allow them to be filled?

I am most broken when I think I have it all together, destitute when I think I am rich. 

And I find that my hands overflow when I let go of all I think I have to give and choose instead to stand in kinship with the other, receiving out of her generous bounty.

Singleness Is Not A Condition to Be Cured

We had just finished playing a board game at his kitchen table when it happened. I thought, “Maybe being single isn’t so bad.” The past few days had landed me on a roller coaster of emotions, riding the hills of giddy excitement all the way to plummeting valleys of disappointment and even anxiety. The last hour had confirmed that exchanging my singleness for a relationship with this specific person was not a good idea. But even beyond that, I began to see the beauty that had been cultivated in my life specifically because I was single.

My name is Abigail, I am 28 years old, and I am single.

Why does that sound like a dreaded confession? Maybe because we treat singleness like a condition to be cured, rather than a season to be lived.

For those of you who are married, can I have your ear for a couple minutes? Goodness knows I’ve sat through countless sermons on marriage and parenting. (You probably don’t need to ask how many I have heard on singleness. Oh, and by the way, the two I sought out and listened to were taught by men who got married in college....).

For the sake of your kids, your bachelor brother, your unmarried friends, even that crazy cousin you don’t talk about…we have got to change the way we talk about singleness. Or, in some cases, maybe just start talking about it at all.

When I was a little girl, all conversations about the future went something like this: “When I am married and have a family of my own…” Every single decision I made assumed that narrative would unfold somewhere in the pages of my life. Not only was that story affirmed by those around me, it was encouraged. I can’t tell you how many conversations I had in high school and college about purity (solely for the sake of my future marriage) and healthy dating relationships. No one talked to me about the beautiful parts of being single.

Maybe that's because we treat singleness like a condition to be cured, rather than a season to be lived.

So in case you haven’t heard, some men and women will never get married. In fact, as of two years ago, 53% of women in the U.S. and 47% of men were single. That means I am in the majority, not the minority. Can we stop operating under the assumption that marriage is in the cards for everyone? Also, news flash! There are amazing benefits to being single.

A year ago, I quit my job and moved across the country. In the months that have unfolded since then, I have taken spontaneous weekend trips, played countless late night games of pinochle with my roommates, snuggled a sweet new babe who is not my own (and handed her back at the end of the night), and devoted hours of my time to learning from families at the local homeless shelter. My life is full and beautiful, and I am confident that all this never would have come to pass if I had exchanged "Miss" for "Mrs." even a few years ago.

There are so many things I want to tell you about what I have learned from this journey of singleness, but I will keep it to just a few points right now:

      1)    Be intentional about learning from the single people in your life. Don’t assume that they have nothing to teach you about relationships or parenting. I may have very little firsthand relationship experience, but I have spent the last decade carefully observing a LOT of relationships. I have lived with multiple families and learned enough about parenting to fill many books. I have had to figure out how to function as an independent (or at least semi-independent, ha!) adult apart from another person. You know that single person in your life? You might be surprised by the perspective he or she can bring to your marriage, your parenting journey, your life.

2)    Propose singleness as a viable life plan. Introduce your kids to single adults who are doing amazing things. Talk to them about the benefits of being single. Celebrate the accomplishments of the single people in your life. And when that single person laments the challenges of being single, please don’t respond with some variation of “Don’t worry, it will happen eventually.” Because that’s not necessarily true. Instead, try this approach: Listen. Acknowledge the difficulties they are facing. Offer practical support. Include them in your life and family.

3)    Particularly in a church and ministry context, be intentional about integrating singles into your community. Of all the churches I have attended over the years, I think I can count on one hand the number of single people in positions of leadership. Whenever there is a lack of diversity of any kind within a leadership structure, the message proliferated is likely going to be biased. Consider diversifying your leadership structure (in every way!).

       4)    Single friends, let’s not feed the lie that singleness is a condition to be cured. Live your life, and live it to the fullest! Whether it is a season that will pass or a season that will last a lifetime, take advantage of your singleness! Find ways to serve others with the extra time you have. Do fun, spontaneous things! Live in community. For sure, lament (again and again) the challenges and unfulfilled desires...But don’t waste your singleness pining for what you do not have. If you do, you will miss the beauty all around you!

There is a sweet dissonance to life, isn't there? Those moments of aching beauty that rush in right alongside a deep well of pain, sadness, or longing. I'm sure you have experienced a moment like this at some point or another. Nothing has taught me about this dissonance quite like my singleness has. It is good, and hard, and lonely, and filled to the brim with adventure and intimate community. Both/and. That is the message I want to hear about singleness, and the message I want you to share with your kids.

Single friends, what would you add? Let’s keep the conversation going.

What It Looks Like to Respect a Woman

"A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink.'" 

The woman said to him, 'Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.' Jesus said to her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.'" (From John 4)

He never should have talked to her.

She was a woman, and it was well understood that a man never talked to a woman alone. To do so outside of a family context, then to drink after her? Scandalous. Not only that, but her ethnic background would have induced marked hostility between their communities. For both of these reasons, she would not have been permitted to engage in what the Jewish people defined as true worship. She would have been considered impure. Whether her five husbands had come and gone from her life by way of divorce or death, even her own community would have seen her either as a rebellious sinner or cursed. Probably both, since she was living with a man who was not her husband. 

She could not have had more strikes against her if she had tried.

Which is probably why she was at the well in the middle of the day. It would have been unbearably hot, reason for most everyone else to avoid hauling water at that time. I imagine she was highly accustomed to being shamed and excluded, and maybe she hoped to avoid the sharp glances and muttered remarks from the other women for just one day. Instead, she encountered a man who would slowly dismantle every single reason for her shame and exclusion. 

He engaged her, extending her respect and dignity as an intelligent human being. 

He invited her into radical inclusion, revealing his divinity and inviting her into a worship even truer than the temple worship from which she would have been barred. 

He extended her the most radical kind of grace. Grace that acknowledged her broken past while inviting her into a better story. Grace that allowed her to become a mouthpiece for Jesus' divine identity...a role that, in that culture, should have been reserved for a man because no one believed a woman's testimony. But Jesus believed her. Jesus accepted her without condition or merit. Jesus included her in a radical new community of worship. Jesus engaged her when no other man, not even a man from her own community, would. Jesus dismantled her shame and replaced it with dignity. Jesus stood against the rules of culture, religion, and social convention to redefine her worth and identity. 

If you want to know what it looks like to respect a woman, Jesus captured it pretty well. 

Let's park our carts for a bit and breathe, shall we?

I was standing on a street corner, and across the way I saw him. It wasn't really his person that caught my eye as much as it was the grocery cart he pushed in front of him. It was piled precariously high with an odd assortment of things. I couldn't distinguish what those "things" were, but they must have been important to him. As the light changed, signaling that pedestrians could cross, he started pushing the cart into the street. He soon disappeared behind the mound that had to reach at least seven or eight feet in height. I noticed as I passed him that he had strategically used bungie cords to hold everything in place, almost like an odd sculpture of sorts. I continued walking toward my destination, but even after I could no longer see him nudging his cart forward, I thought about that man. I wonder if he ever grows weary of juggling his heaping load. Does he ever consider just leaving it behind?

I do not have to manage a grocery cart full of belongings throughout my day, but I certainly feel like I am often precariously balancing relationships, responsibilities, and expectations. I have lists to check off, friends to check in with, and phone calls to make. And that doesn't include the numerous responsibilities of work. Oh, and the future! There is always something to worry about. More and more gets piled on, to the point where I have to pull out my bungie cords and start tying things down just to keep everything together. What about you? Does your cart feel like it is going to topple over at any moment? Can you see the people in front of you, or are you hidden behind a mound of responsibilities and expectations?

Today I am sipping tea and snuggling a fussy babe. She won't be put down, and she is reminding me that sometimes it is okay to ditch the cart so you can see your people. It's okay to leave the load of laundry in the basket overnight. After all, wrinkles never killed anyone. It's okay to leave that item on your to-do list another day so that you can sit across the table from someone you love without being interrupted. It's okay to take a night off, to read your kiddo a bedtime story or rediscover a book sitting on your nightstand. You don't need an excuse to park your cart and just breathe for a couple minutes.

In fact, my weary friend, there is much to be missed hiding behind that grocery cart sculpture of responsibilities you are pushing around. Let's just agree to park our carts for a bit this week so we can pay attention to our hearts and the hearts of those around us. 

Thoughts on Wilting Plants and Friendships that Die

It had been a slow fade. There was no heated argument, no obvious transgression that separated us. We went from spending hours upon hours together every week, to talking on the phone only every once in a while. Soon our communication dwindled to nothing, and our friendship started to remind me of the potted succulent wilting on my windowsill. Admittedly, I have never been very proficient at growing plants. But it seemed like no matter how frequently I watered the little sprout or strategically positioned it to receive more sunlight, it continued to wither. Eventually it just shriveled up and died.

Friendship can be complicated. As someone who cares about people deeply, I don't easily adjust to relational change. If I had it my way, friendships would never change. I would have a window line-up of the same potted plants and they would for SURE never die. But relationships don't work that way, do they? Because people change, and I change, and sometimes what I need or desire even changes. Sometimes I need to be transplanted to a new pot because I am growing beyond the bounds of what my current environment can support. Sometimes I need more sunlight, or less water, or a different kind of soil. Sometimes change—even relational change—is not only good but necessary. 

That plant-less pot of dirt still sits on my bookshelf, a reminder that sometimes I need to just let go. Nothing will diminish the joy that little succulent brought to my space and life, though...even for just a short season. In the same way, that friendship was everything I needed for a brief time in my life. We got to sit together on the windowsill of life for a few short months, encouraging each other to grow and drink deeply of the water being offered to us. I've since been transplanted to a new pot, she to a different windowsill, but I will never forget those months we had together and the ways in which she fertilized my soul. I am a stronger and more compassionate woman because she was in my life. For that I am forever grateful, even if we never sit on the same windowsill again.

Can you and I discover the magic of childhood again this weekend?

Oaknoll: My childhood wonderland

To my young eyes and heart, my childhood home was a magical wonderland: Eleven acres of knee-high pasture grasses, a wandering creek, and majestic oak trees that seemed to reach the clouds. I did not often wander from the fenced perimeter, but it did not feel like a boundary to me as much as a gift to explore. My grandparents appropriately named this childhood haven Oaknoll, "the oak on a small hill."

When I was a little girl, my world was small...but it felt expansive and free. My siblings and I would play tag, kickball, and make-believe for hours on end. I didn't need an Instagram-worthy photo to curate the moment; my living and breathing it was enough. As I have gotten older, my world has grown more expansive but has felt progressively less free. There are bills to pay, errands to run, friends and family across the country to keep up with, and an anxiety-inducing future to consider. 

What if we learned to return to the magic of childhood every once in a while, though? 

What if we could set aside the trappings of adulthood for a weekend and explore our expansive world like that little girl inside? 

What if I set aside my phone and really lived, even if just for a day or two? 

Next to one of Oaknoll's perimeter fences, we had a wooden play fort that became my make-believe house on some days and my holdout in battle on other days. There was a slide from the second story to the ground, and I remember playing "table hockey" with walnuts on that slanted board. The creativity of childhood is unparalleled, isn't it?! When I think about the hours and hours of imagination and dreaming that took place in that corner of the world, I can think of no other time in life when my creativity has carried me so far. 

But what if we could access that depth of inventiveness and unfettered conception again, here and now?

Unfortunately, I can't run around Oaknoll this weekend. I am thousands of miles away, and the trappings of adulthood prevent me from hopping on a plane and returning without extensive prior planning. But I am surrounded by mountains, trees that are slowly starting to shift color palettes, and lakes that dazzle in the sun. My world is far more expansive these days; what if, just for the weekend, I chose to access the freedom of my childhood as well? 

What was your magical place as a child? 

What can you do this weekend to recreate that enchantment? 

Hey you! Yes you, the ordinary radical.

I used to think a person had to do something grand to change the world. You know, start an orphanage overseas in some poverty-stricken nation. Lobby for policy change on Capitol Hill. Operate a nonprofit with impressive influence. At one point during nursing school, I even considered quitting and moving to Africa. I remember thinking, "Maybe then I can really make a difference for someone." Of course there are so very many problems with that line of thinking, but do you want to know one of the primary reasons why I can't help but laugh, groan, and roll my eyes at my younger self? I myself was raised by a band of ordinary radicals. 

Can I tell you a story? Once upon a time, there was a man who poured out his life day in and day out loving people. It wasn't glamorous work, though. In fact, most days it looked like climbing in the car and driving to the local middle school. It looked like memorizing the names of squirrelly middle school students before they ever walked into his classroom just so he could call them by name on the first day. It looked like writing long letters to people he loved and people he really didn't even like all that much, just to tell them they were valuable and a gift to the world. It looked like returning home after a long day and playing kickball with his kids, even though he probably would have preferred drowning out the chaos with a blaring television. It looked like giving rides to the elderly man who had no friends or family. His love was not extravagant or flamboyant. It was simple, quiet, and revolutionary.

My dad changed my world with his love. And because of his ordinary but radical love, I hope that I am more likely to ask my waitress her name before she takes my order. I hope that I am more intentional about asking the man I meet on the corner about his story. I hope I value and accumulate moments of deep relational connection with others over money or possessions. I hope that my dad's ordinary radical love continues to change the world through me.

If I could sit across the table from you, my friend, I would grip your hands and ask you how you are changing the world today. Because you are. When you pick up that screaming babe and feed her for what feels like the thousandth time today, you are changing the world. When you climb in the car to tote your kiddos to yet another soccer practice, you are changing the world. When you ask intentional and thought-provoking questions at a work meeting you wish you could have skipped, you are changing the world. When you ask your neighbor how he is doing and wait to hear his answer, you are changing the world. When you hone the perfect poem, or arrange a beautiful bouquet, or brew the perfect cup of coffee to be sipped and enjoyed by someone else...you are changing the world. I know this because I myself was raised by a band of ordinary radicals, and my world was transformed because of their faithful, intentional, mundane acts of love. You and I? We can be ordinary radicals. All it takes is faithfulness in the mundane. Intention in a haphazard world. The gift of time when so many are wasting it.

You and I? We can be ordinary radicals. So whose world will you change today?

If Courage Leaves You Floundering in the Deep End

When I was a little girl, I was terrified of the pool. No matter how many swim lessons my mom forced me to attend, I could not find freedom from my dread of the water. By the time I had reached second grade and STILL could not let go of the wall, my mom signed me up for weekly lessons at the Y. I dreaded Tuesdays. My mom could probably tell you that, more often than not, I cried the whole way there. I'm pretty sure I even left my swimsuit at home one week thinking I could get out of the lesson. Instead, my mom got a speeding ticket...and I got a scolding AND a swim lesson.

Before long, my younger sister was swimming circles around me. I had figured out how to doggy paddle enough to not drown in the deep end, but the next hurdle was jumping falling off the diving board. The thought of willingly climbing what felt like a whole flight of stairs only to hurl my body off the end of a plank was absurd to me! But I was required to complete the feat before I could "graduate." I didn't care about "graduating" as much as I did putting the whole weekly Tuesday swim lesson thing to rest.

It took WEEKS before I would even climb the steps to peer over that dreaded plank. Finally, my teacher (probably equally exhausted by this routine of resistance we had going on) looked at me and said, "Abigail, it's okay! It's okay. I'll lower you into the water!" I probably should have rolled my eyes and immediately called her bluff, but I think I saw her offer as a way out. What if she could lower me that impossible few feet to graduation? I started trudging up the steps trepidatiously, my heart pounding in my throat. I tried not to look down, but I also didn't want to trip over my big feet. It felt like the plank was shaking as much as my hands, and I could have sworn it was getting longer and longer. I reached the end and gripped the edge with my toes, simultaneously squeezing my eyes shut as if I could float away from this place on the boat of my mind. She put her hands under my arms, and I remember her counting:

"One, two...." 

Before I had time to think or cry or scream for help, she shoved me off the edge and into the water below. So much for our agreement. I panicked, floundering in the water and trying to figure out which way was up. I still am not totally clear on how I made my way to the surface, but I eventually choked and sputtered and doggy paddled my way to the side...and to graduation.

***********

Perhaps courage would have been marching up those steps and throwing myself over the edge. But when I look back on the life I have lived thus far, I think more often than not courage has looked like a bribe and quick shove into the water below. Courage that cries and shudders and climbs those stairs anyway? Courage that leans into the arms beneath you even if you can't be totally sure they will catch you on the other end? I find that kind of bravery to be the most magnificent of all. And so today, my friend, if the best you can do is lean into the shove? Bravo.

Your courage is beautiful, and I am so thankful we can flounder in the deep end together.