Dear Faith-Shifter (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Faith-Shifter,

You hold such a tender place in my heart, you who once felt that everything was sure, you who once felt certain of God and religion, of church and ritual and the blackness and whiteness of rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness. I shifted many years ago and continue to shift—not away from God—but away from some of the certainties of my youth, away from the coded language of a larger religious identity that was shared by a group of people I love to this day. I shifted because too many things felt wrong about our Way of Being. And so much of that Way hung on me like an ill-fitting garment; and, there was too much jargon that those outside our tribe could not understand.

I will always love the Church (of course I love it—I’m one of its pastors); I will always love the way the Spirit has of speaking and moving and wooing us. I will love the Bible, its complexity and mysteriousness and truths-held-in-tension-ness.  But when we love so deeply, Faith Shifter, and are simultaneously so at odds with pieces of the tradition of our forefathers, or at odds with the ways the timeless has been trapped in the temporal, with the distorted expressions of the Love of God, and when we’re in search of some fresh way to express faith, questions, and mystery--it can lead us to loneliness. We belong and we don’t belong. We believe and we don’t believe (certain things). We wonder when no one else wonders. And we wonder if we are the only ones observing as if through a window the party we've long been invited to attend.

I was reminded in my reading this week of how, when we shift, the increased distance we feel from those who were once (or still are) our tribe often extends to a loneliness toward God. When we shift, it may seem that God shifts too. I have felt a distance, yes, over many years and winters and questions, that perhaps stemmed from the belief that Once We Lose Our Faith in God or God’s Church or God's Church's Answers, then so has God in us. But, if I could, I would spare you the necessity of this Distance, dear one. To assert that God has lost his love or faith in us is to assert that God is as splintered and confused and fragmented as my own (in seasons) battered heart. I have come to find out, after and even in the shifting, that God wasn’t far, not even as far as the snowflakes drifting three inches from my December window. No, he was on the inside of the pane, in my breath blown upon it, in the lungs that exhaled all my questions.




***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

On Epistles and Sea Change (Epistolary Wednesday),

As much as I’ve loved our themed epistles on Wednesdays, I’m starting to think that every blog post is an epistle. And every novel, every essay, every poem for that matter. After all, if it’s not written in a diary, then it’s written for an audience, from one person to many others, meaning, maybe I won't identify a fictionalized recipient every week. But sometimes I will. So: here’s me giving notice that Wednesdays are epistolary by nature, whether or not I’m writing to you, my husband, daughters, Jesus, Obama, or the Duggar family. Yes?

But about sea changes. I’m not really a water girl, and probably shouldn’t talk like water words come easily to me, but sea change makes me think of sailors and wet rope and a stern watch on the ocean. It’s the phrase that ran through my mind a few months ago in the middle of weeks of restlessness. Have you ever felt change coming like you feel a storm rolling in? Maybe we don’t know how loud or wild the storm will be, but we know it’s coming nonetheless. And we sit on our perches with cold anticipation and a thrill in our stomachs because we know things are about to Get Interesting.

Well that’s where I’m at, and I’ve been here before, watching for sea change. Sometimes the waters rise up and roil so slowly you can’t tell exactly when it begins. Other times, it’s a flash of lightening and a darkening sky in an instant. I’m not a boater, like I said, but what I hear is that we can get farther if we cooperate with the wind and hike our sails to catch it when it blows.

Sunday night, a small group of friends and I met and we asked each other the question about what was next in each other’s lives. Where did we feel God calling us, where did we think we were going? Funny to find out, most of us in the room were feeling a sea change too—facing decisions about babies and moves and jobs and settling or not settling down. And then we prayed that we’d catch the wind of the Spirit wherever it was leading, that we’d have our sails up at the right moment so we could move along with it.

And then we each went out into a wet and icy November night, to chilly cars, and slick streets, to the next morning's alarm clocks and waking children and meetings and phone calls and family chaos and drama. Keeping our sails up takes some diligence in the midst of the everydayness of our jam-packed lives. It means readying ourselves when we're not really ready for change, when we don't know what change looks like, and when we don't know if we really want it. And then, despite our diligence to hoist the sails, there may be the impossible absence of wind. At least for a time. And there we live: ready but not ready, ready but mystified, ready and going nowhere--all while we try to live like responsible, loving human beings--taking out the trash, greeting our neighbors across the snow-covered yards, praying, giving, blending hemp seed and fruit smoothies for our children's breakfast, and, every once in a while, checking on that cold and unmoving winter sky as it's framed by the window.

Dear Husband, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Husband,

We made a deal, you and me, seventeen-and-a-half years ago that we were in it for better and for worse, and oh, there’s been a lot of worse-that-we-hoped-would-get-better. And after seventeen years and three children and two houses and four neighborhoods and too many deaths and too-many-arguments-to-count and a million peaceful moments that we wish we could sink into for the rest of our lives, we learn that sometimes worse doesn’t get better and sometimes it does just enough.

However, I don’t remember signing up specifically for this Surgery Thing you had to have last week.  A perforated eardrum, you told me they told you. Which maybe explains the partial hearing loss (-what?!) and the constant ringing in your ears (-really? Constantly?). You can fall apart and have, like I have over the years, in a million ways, but this physical falling apart sends me to some far distant place from our bodies in the recovery room—me helping you dress--and then while I push your wheelchair through the hospital skywalk while your ear’s packed tight with cotton stuffing and your jaw aches like you’ve been to the dentist for drilling. It’s some place in the future that I go, wondering if this is what it’s gonna be like—one or both of us hardly able to pull our socks on--not because of narcotics but because of age.

And old age reminds me of our mortality, of how close we are, of how this stage we’re set upon could collapse so suddenly. It’s also why I can’t look at the wounds of friends or strangers without wincing and my stomach turning, because wounds speak of such vulnerability and loss--and I’m not ready to lose. This whole list of post-op prohibitions doesn’t help, either—no lifting more than ten pounds, no sneezing or straining or getting excited about anything. All of it, along with the cotton in your ear and the scab where they stole some skin to patch up your eardrum is making me nervous in a rickety-rackety sort of way. I want to shoo that ringing-in-the-ears away and have you wake up the next morning all brand new, but they tell me this is not the way of surgery. With surgery, they rip us into pieces and rearrange. And then we heal. And healing takes time and rest. And sometimes drugs. But drugs and pain make us foggy and disconnected and generally Not Right in the world while our cells are regenerating and our nerves recalibrating. Come to think of it, maybe this is just the way of all recovery, how all of the Worse turns Better--painful, discombobulating, slow, but healing nonetheless.




***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

For the Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For You Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias,

I’m addressing you metaphorically, of course, as Austen’s characters are merely that. But, I find no better way to warn you, Girl, of the downside to obsessively fixating on potential matches and romance all around you in the seventh grade. You remember, don’t you, how Lydia’s obsession with “the officers” and her mother’s relentless matchmaking led to shame and embarrassment for her whole family, how she threw caution to the wind and put undeserved faith in Wickham, who was interested in sex and money and very little in Lydia? In Austen’s days, of course, Lydia was old enough to marry, but hitched and pregnant is not where I want you or any of your friends at sixteen. Need a contemporary warning? Lorelei Gilmore (albeit with the worst parents on earth). Pregnant at 16. Yes, it all turned out all right after she lived in a garden shed with her daughter and was estranged from her family for many years. It’s good now, but might I remind you of the years her romance cost her?

All this is to say, it concerns me that you take so much pleasure in matchmaking your friends at the junior high school dance, that you are “so happy for” the “couple” who has just placed tentative hands on one another’s shoulders and hips for the first time in their lives after only glancing at each other fearfully in the hallway for the first two months of school. You’re happy and squeally for them--as if they’ve just announced an engagement, a wedding, a baby. And this leaves me unsettled and wondering what on earth you think this means—two children swaying together for three minutes in a gymnasium. I hope you know this is not the end of their story. That they will (99.99999% likely) “break up” in the next two weeks, that their hearts will get broken over and over again in the context of this not-quite-real world of global studies tests, bus rides, field trips, hall passes, AP exams, choir concerts and track meets. They might do things they wished they hadn’t.

Sweetheart, some of these kids will take this "romance" in the serious way that you seem to be taking it--up to the next level. You should know: there will be pregnancies you will not see evidence of. There will be diseases you hear nothing about. Some of your friends, too, will end up used and abused by other children who haven't learned anything about real love. There will be appointments and counseling and parents tearing their hair out and crying because these poor parents are strapped with the job of helping these not-quite-or-even-close-to adults navigate adult-like decisions and adult-like hormones and adult-like bodies.

Please accept my kind but urgent rebuke. How about we celebrate romance later? Let’s pull out our dancing shoes when these children understand that romance is as temporary as the cold, solid ice pop you get handed at the Fourth of July parade. What seems so solid and dependable in romance can liquefy in the wrong climates. Let’s laugh and smile when these creatures learn how to own their choices and take responsibility for their lives. Let’s do the Macarena when they learn selflessness, because that's what helps love last; it's what gives romance a fighting chance at re-forming once it's become a puddly mess. Let’s do the Cha Cha Slide and the Chicken when they’ve learned how to suffer long for someone else, when they know how true love hopes and waits and defers and hangs in there and doesn’t give up. Okay, sweetheart? Okay? Okay??

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (November 10)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

It's Monday and--after surviving a sleepover with 6 10-year-olds this weeken-- I sleepily present to you a few good reads I stumbled into this week:

On pregnancy and the secrecy we keep to deal with potential loss: I'm Pregnant. So Why Can't I Tell You?

A fresh look: School Prayer Doesn't Need a Comeback.

On what God is like: If You Can't Say it about Jesus, then Don't Say it about God.

As usual, a little edgy, but to the point: Jamie the Very Worst Missionary criticizes the use of the word "blessed" in her post #Blessed.

Parenting through our anger: Why Yelling Doesn't Help.

For laughs, if you're a Jane Austen fan: If the characters of Pride and Prejudice Could Text.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Distracted Girl, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Distracted Girl,

When you were little, I thought only your age was to blame on your restlessness and forgetfulness. I’ve been waiting all these years for you to grow out of “it”—an “it” I’ve had a hard time defining up until now. It’s that thing that happens when I talk to you and you don’t seem to hear me and I repeat myself and you don’t seem to hear me, again, as if you’re lost in your head and daydreaming about video games or beading or the clay sculptures you want to create as soon as you can get through your breakfast. Being inside your head is a good thing. I like to live in mine as well. It’s where I start the beginnings of essays and emails. It’s where I problem-solve financial and relational challenges. So, I wasn’t truly worried back then because you were pretty focused at school; you stayed on task; you told the disruptive kids where they could go be disruptive if they got in your space. Your second-grade teacher told me he wished he could discover the secret to your focus-in-the-classroom combined with your wildness-on-the-playground, put it in a book, and sell it. Imagine my relief.

But then third grade came around and those stupid test scores caught me by surprise. Oh, I know, it was your first year taking standardized tests and third graders shouldn’t be expected to have the hang of those straightaway. But it was other little things too—like your rushing through words without sounding them out and substituting something nonsensical just so you could say you read them. And now, added to language, it is the math—the mere mention or sight of a division sign and you lose yourself, as if fractions and decimals and negative numbers and operational signs are whirring inside the blender that is your head, just to torment you. And we sit at the kitchen table for a good ten minutes some days, before I can even convince you to calm down--before the tears are gone-for-the-moment--and lead you through a path of reasoning that you, inevitably, find crooked and laden with stumbling stones. It’s a big victory when you’re able to surmount those stones and climb the path after me.

I spent so much time feeling frustrated, like maybe you just didn’t want to do your homework or clean your room, like maybe you were just prioritizing fun and friends and creativity over the “first things first” that I’ve taught you since you were three. But I’m realizing now that it’s not mostly laziness or disobedience, but that you likely don’t notice the mess, Sweet Thing. You think, in all honesty, that you did clean your room, that you did empty your lunchbox—at least, it’s what you remember, or think you remember.

I don’t know how long this will go on, but I’m changing how I parent you. No more series of requests presented all at once—because you will remember the last one and forget the first two. On school mornings, I get your breakfast ready for you now so it’s at your place at the table—because it would take you half an hour to collect bread, jam, a knife and plate if you were instructed to do so. And we’re going to see someone in a few weeks—someone who might shed light for us on what’s happening inside that sparkling, thought-full mind of yours.

But let me just say, for the record, that I love your mind. I love your enthusiasm and your quick-to-burn excitement that does, inevitably cause you to focus on what’s-most-important-to-you even when the things-that-are-important-to-me fall by the wayside. Look at how you gather all the kid-piano books in the house and tap out songs you used to play in your lessons. Look how you’re teaching yourself "Ode to Joy" on the recorder, shuffling through the house like a marching-band-of-one. And last night, on your tenth birthday, I watched you in the audience at a choral concert, your eyes almost weepy over the sweetness of the girls’ voices, your phone poised in mid-air so you could record this little bit of auditory heaven for keeps. I could see you up there someday. I know you’ll be up there someday, singing like there’s nothing better than entering that kind of beauty. All in is what you are, Girl, to the things you care about the most. 

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir, on sale now through Thursday for $.99 cents (Kindle Version.)

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (November 3, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy Monday. This weekend had me pulling out the down winter coat--the one that looks like a sleeping bag it's so long. But that's okay. I was warm and if I could go back in time I would tell my seventh grader self Who Cares if Coats Make You Look Fat!? Warmth matters more.  Also, other than the sleeping bag-coat, we celebrated Middle's birthday with family tonight. She'll be ten in two days. Double digits. That's something pretty special. Anyhoo, here are a few reads I wanted to share with you this week.

For the introverts. My people. In case you weren't sure: 12 signs you are an introvert.

Girl who escaped Boko Haram talks about captivity...

Just browse Target? Is it even possible to shop ethically on a tight budget without looking like a smelly hippy? from Jamie the Very Worst Missionary.

What I want you to know about having a child with Down Syndrome from Rage Against the Minivan.

For those of us trying to hard: How I do it all (not).

Oh! I almost forgot! The Kindle edition of Dear Boy, is on sale through November 6. Only $.99 on Amazon. Don't forget to snatch one up if you haven't already!

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Fundraising Company, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Fundraising Company,

I know, I know, it’s for the school. For the children and the after-school sports and the library.  But let’s be honest: it’s for the companies, too, that make a fortune on “silver” pendants ordered through glossy catalogs full of caramel corn, soup mixes and phone charging stations. Normally, my scrooge levels crank up to full power about now. I could buy better quality stuff at Target, yet you’ve somehow gotten my children so excited about the Crap They Can Win if they sell your product to me and to their grandparents and to the neighbors. Invisible ink? By golly, it’s all worth it. Canvas the neighborhood! Call the aunts and uncles! Let them know that for 19.99 they can buy a set of melamine nesting bowls in Tex-mex colors. And why wouldn’t they?

But, I'm telling you, you shocked me with the magazine sales that Oldest was asked to participate in now that she’s a seventh grader. There’s a streak of altruism running through this set-up that’s different than any other. Oldest told me that she didn’t want the "dumb prizes” you were offering kids for bringing in post cards addressed to all the members of their extended family. Instead she was given the choice to donate a live chicken to an individual in a third-world nation. Come again? A chicken in lieu of a fake mustache? And apparently, she can do this again if she sells five more subscriptions.  Who are you—the Heifer International of school fundraisers? I love you. Wait--I’m conflicted. I mean, I want South American farmers to get chickens if they need them, but does that only happen if I order Rachael Ray Everyday! and Martha Stewart Living?

I'm not sure how to live with the irony that basic food and sustenance for an under-resourced family in the third world is supplied by way of our purchasing tomes that document photoshopped first-world lives and homes and celebrities. But it seems to be a theme here in America--we implore givers to give by giving them something, albeit less valuable, in exchange. And as disturbing as it is to me that we cannot seem to request from people the same level of generosity without returns, it seems to be "working."

Maybe you've got a CEO who's keen on providing livestock to third-world families even though she's in charge of a school magazine sales fundraising company. If that's the case, I guess she's winning. And, I'll thank you for giving my daughter the option--for keeping my living room clear of one more piece of plastic-headed-for-the-trashcan, and for sending a bird to a family in South America.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (October 27)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy Monday! It's cloudy and warmish (!) in Iowa--probably one of our last mild fall days before we break out the midwestern winter wear. Whatever your climate, I hope you enjoy some of these reads from the week:

For any woman who's been pregnant after miscarriage. Sarah Bessey's Flutters and Faith.

Good advice to mothers, fathers, husbands, or wives: On Not "Firepitting" our Marriage (or our Children).

On generosity: Dear World, Let's Stop Giving Our Crap to the Poor.  This was controversial. Do you agree? Disagree? Discuss.

And, (a theme this week?) if we haven't walked in these shoes: What I Want You to Know about Being Poor.

Dear Pastor's Kid, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Pastor’s Kid,

You’ve heard the stories about Jesus and Abraham since you were in diapers. You know that God is Good and Jesus Loves You because The Bible Tells You So. You’ve sung the Sunday school songs, performed in the Christmas programs, and just because you’re you, have corrected the theology of the younger ones who wanted to know if angels and Santa were in cahoots, if the Easter Bunny was as real as Jesus. Also, you take science seriously; you wrestled with creation theory, held intelligent conversations about how the theories of evolution and God-as-Orignator might somehow fit together like a puzzle, and not be at odds as so many people seem to think they are.

And you know so much about the Bible—names, spouses, plot twists, dates—that I’m surprised to hear you casually recounting the stories. You don’t know it all (how could you; how could anyone?), but I’m sort of impressed. You’re invested, in other words, in figuring this whole God-and-the-Bible thing out.

But, you’re also worn out on God Stuff.

When I suggest reading the Bible out loud to you and your sister, or when there’s some new thing for kids at church who are your age, you'll sigh and say, “Do we have to? I already know everything there is to know about this stuff.” And sometimes, when you come home from youth group, or you hear about a church event other kids are going to, you sigh and say, “I’m just gonna feel guilty because they’ll tell me I should be telling people about Jesus. And I just don’t want to.” And not wanting to makes you feel like a very bad person.

I will commiserate with you because--listen--the last thing I want for you (or anyone who loves Jesus) is to feel like you have to perform for Him. It's not what anyone has meant to convey to you, but somehow the message has gotten scrambled over all these years.

Here's the problem I've started to clarify: So much knowledge about God, so much immersion in “church” and the Bible to the exclusion of knowing God with your heart just as much, is counterintuitive if not downright damaging. All of those facts and figures and names and verses could trick one into thinking that they have this God-thing all figured out, that this mass of information is all there is to gain. 

That kind of knowledge is dangerous, love, because like a vaccine, it so easily inoculates us against the most important things--it works against our Searching, against our Hunger and Finding Out With Our Hearts and our Souls who God really is. Those things, dear one, are what I most want you to inherit--not the satisfaction of memorizing verses and references, not a sense that you have "arrived" in church-land culture.

If taking back some of the Vacation Bible Schools, some of the forced Sunday school attendance when you were just not "into it" meant opening up your curiosity and encouraging your questions, I might do it. And even though it's not my first choice, that is why I'm letting you go to the junior high dance and giggle in a corner with your two girlfriends rather than make you go to the church youth conference. Maybe--and this is my prayer--your spiritual hunger will grow best in an echo-y gymnasium full of shy seventh graders. Maybe you will search for God right alongside bowls of Chex mix, cups of fruit punch, and Pharrell Williams through the sound system.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (October 20, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy Monday--there were lots of provocative reads that I bumped into this past week. And I'm sharing them. Much love and happy reading.

Shauna Niequist on pregnancy loss: The Pain Recedes and We Carry it Together

For those who want to don't want to lose time to Facebook: Why I'm Crazy Enough to Go for a Year Without the Internet

Because judging other people sucks: Why I don't breastfeed, if you must know...

For those who spend way too much money on Amazon: The Latte Factor: 8 Ways We Overspend

A lesson for leaders: What Mark Driscoll Teaches Us about Grace and Accountability

Enough said: women, men, & church; church: what hurts, what helps

If you suffer or you have little ones who do, here's another approach: Connecting ADHD and Nutrition

Dear Kate Hudson, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Kate,

It used to be that we exercisers put on our grubbiest clothes, our holey-est shirts and the dirty sneakers we wouldn't ever wear if we were dressing for "regular" daily activities. But these days it's not enough that we are actually doing the work of exercising, that we are sweating and galloping on a treadmill or a cold wet sidewalk for forty minutes. No. Now we are supposed to look cute when we do it. But that's not news anymore. It's the reason Old Navy devotes a third of their women's clothing section to "activewear." And apparently the same reason why your new Fabletics line is showing up in my Facebook news feed twelve times a day. Like the next girl, I'm hooked by the promise of a good deal on running pants and sports bras, and Fabletics offers a first outfit for only $25. Better yet, join their VIP program and get an outfit at a reduced price, each and every month, for as low as $49. While I'm sure your husband, closet and budget can accommodate a new activewear outfit every month at $49 a pop, I'm not so sure about mine. Also, I'm finding on the message boards that "VIPs" get charged $49 whether they purchase an outfit or not. And most of them don't know this ahead of time. Should they want their money back because they neither need nor can afford a new outfit every month? Well, Fabletics will give them store credit to be used on a future purchase. (Ladies: beware.)

Kate Hudson, you're a genius or an opportunist depending on where one stands.  But your marketing bit is about "every woman": Every Woman Deserves to Look Cute in Affordable Activewear or some such spin. And this whole we'll-charge-you-for-nothing-and-not-give-your-money-back seems a bit disloyal of you, a bit antagonistic to the wellbeing of Every Woman, who as you ought to know, is for the most part working simply on making ends meet, acquiring winter coats for her children, paying dentist bills, or saving for retirement. You oughta know that Every Woman, by definition and common denominator, won't be purchasing that many pairs of yoga pants.

And I'm not sure how to even wrap my head around this statement, KH: "With Fabletics, we want to create a community...a movement, to help you live fit and achieve your passions in life." First off, joining the ranks of women duped by these monthly charges does not a community make. And second, working for clean drinking water in Africa is a movement. Civil rights for minorities is a movement. Feminism, the march on Wall Street, and breast cancer awareness are movements.

Wanna keep motivating women to exercise and purchase your products? Do it. But be straight up about it and treat us like we have some smarts and truly worthy causes to spend our money on. Because we do.

For Tiny at Bedtime, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For Tiny at Bedtime,

It’s the ritual that I think will stay with you through all the years that lie ahead. I don’t know when we’ll stop, but for now I can’t help but believe, as I sit in your dusky bedroom at twilight, that the repetition of these requested songs every night is somehow building a solid core in you. You never sing along, and you only like the songs sung quietly while I rub your back, but I trust that their rhythms are somehow becoming the primal stuff of childhood memories--that and your mother sitting next to your bed, singing.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.

I don’t say prayers with you regularly like all of the good church-going parents I know. I struggle enough with helping you understand my own hold on this unseen God, an invisible being who doesn’t quite “live” in any one place that I can point you to—a person you can feel but not hear or see or smell. How can I explain God to a four-year-old, to whom "going to heaven"--where God also "lives"--sounds about as appealing as visiting the dentist where she'll get to pick out a "prize" when the drilling is all over?

Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.

Other parents say their toddlers talk to Jesus like he’s sitting across the table at supper time. Not you--this family is full of doubters, literalists, skeptics, question-askers. Which is fine by me--because whatever faith we eventually do claim as our own becomes--against all odds--something textured and made sturdy by that doubt, those questions.

Thou my best thought, by day or by night.

I wonder if, when you are grown, these words will remind you of your mama, of the way she surrendered to an unseen God as her best Thought and Vision? 

Waking or sleeping, They presence my light.

I don't always hold the vision before me, though. My awareness of God ebbs and flows like the Pacific current against the west-coast shore, and sometimes my sense of God's presence is all tangled with distraction like seaweed around my feet. But my vision is there and my vision returns and subsides and visits me again. And somehow I'm changed in that process, by the many returns, by all the reminders of God-with-us. I can't explain how this works, Tiny. I can't explain God to you. I can only live before you while I try to know God--in the best way I know how.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Fighting Girl, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Fighting Girl,

You are so small and glowing and full of spunk and you know your own mind so well that my before-school promptings to empty the dishwasher and eat breakfast are intrusive and offensive. You can do it yourself. You can do it in the order you want to do it in. And sometimes I let you try this. Inevitably, though, I find you out-the-window gazing or fort-building with your littlest sister, your pajama bottoms still on and your teeth half brushed. Or: sitting on your bed, writing in your journal. This does not bode well for getting out the door on time. Doing It Yourself is not working for me or for school administrators. So every morning it’s the same: your obliviousness to time, my intrusions and your subsequent anger. You yell or stare at me in frosty silence, refusing to acknowledge or grant my requests.

It’s desperate enough—my desire that you learn how to cohabit with the inconvenience of Parents and People Who Care and that you learn how to make your way in the world without being forty-five minutes late everywhere you need to be—that I invoke Consequences for the disrespect and the arguing that comes in response to my requests. Screen-time privileges get revoked in thirty-minute increments until you are mute, distrusting the voice that got you into trouble in the first place. Other times, blame pours out of your mouth like a faucet. It was my fault that you lost screen time. It was my fault for starting the conversation with you that led to your displeasure, which led to your yelling and sass. You’re Never Talking to Me Again. You’re Not Going to Listen.

Sometimes I lose focus and I argue back—a losing, pointless conversation that makes me feel as old as you. I should know better than to argue, even with my calm, quiet Grown-Up Voice.

There are mornings you march off into the garage, grabbing your scooter and refusing to look me in the face or say goodbye. I swipe at you in an attempted hug; I say something like I Love You Even Though it Might Feel Like I Don’t and I Hope You Have a Good Day. You shake me off, won’t give me a backward glance as you scooter down the driveway. And I feel sad and heartbroken that you are starting your day this way, that I am starting my day this way.

I watch and wait for the weather you will bring in after school. It’s usually breezy and warm after picking acorns or leaves on the way home.  You sing hellos and you regale me with stories of bee chases on the play ground, of dogs that were visiting the class. Cautiously, I bring up the morning: Do you want to say anything about what happened this morning? I’m genuinely curious. 

And then, so quickly contrite, you soften your voice in the way you do with your littlest sister when you're getting along and say, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For yelling.” You let me rub your head and your back and shoulders and draw you close and I say I Forgive You like it’s no big deal.

“Can I earn screen time back?” you always ask with such hope.

“I don’t know. Maybe, but probably not. You have to get through something difficult with a good attitude in order to have screen-time again.”  I say this every time, thinking about Homework, After-Dinner Chores, and the Morning Routine the next day.

After this process gets repeated for several days in a row, after the starvation for Minecraft has gone on unbearably long, you wake up a different girl, all ready to cooperate, all ready to Do First Things First and all ready to Yes, Mom your way through breakfast and flossing and vitamins. And it’s like the sweetest relief because, from all appearances, I don’t seem to have wrecked you or destroyed our connection, despite your comments from the day before.

Some day, we will get to the other side of this canyon we are crossing; we will have taken our last shaky step on an unsteady bridge. That other side is where, I think, I will sigh in relief that we made it. We won't have lost our footing too terribly much. And I'll be calmer--because there won't be any more fear of us falling.