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.

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.

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.

Dear Seventh Grader, (Epistolary Wednesday, September 3)

© 2011 Enokson, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

It's a bit overwhelming, all of the flyers we are handed at Back-To-School-Night for parents, as we race through a two-hour version of your day--no time to introduce ourselves to your teachers, just enough for them to get halfway through their presentation on Expectations and Rules and Late Work. It seems, at times (maybe because of the lengthy lists of homework assignments sorted by date on their slide shows) that they are expecting us to do this work, to keep track and get things handed in. You'll want to make sure. You'll want to check. These are phrases I hear over and over throughout these first two weeks of junior high when teachers and administrators talk to us parents and I think, I don't have time to manage the full-time job of a seventh grader who is also in cross country practice for an hour and a half after school. Who has time for that? Also, I'm not sure I want to sign up for the texting service that will remind me of Global Studies projects and science assignments. 

I know that some of your classmates' parents have to, in order to help their kids succeed. That's a hard, hard job. So I'm thankful that, in so many ways, you are prepared for all of this responsibility. You know how to keep track, make lists. Your upbringing has cultivated in you just the right amount of anxiety by which you're driven to fill out worksheets on time, hand in two-paragraph "essays" (Although, newsflash: two paragraphs does not a real essay make!).

Still, this Junior High is a New World where it doesn't necessarily matter how diligent you are or how responsible. What matters is your score. What matters is the "work." No more points for just doing homework. Points are for getting homework right. The difference between an A and a B on math homework might be that when you carried the "one" you forgot to add it into the other numbers in the column. Boom. B.

While grade school was so full of mercy, this New World is not. And I sometimes wish you'd been a bit better prepared in other areas--in sentence mechanics, for example: run-on sentences and missing periods never cost you so much as a point or a missed recess in sixth grade. Now you get As for periods in the right places and you get points taken away in their absence. (Finally, finally, someone is going to convince you to take the sentence seriously even though I've been trying since you were eight. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.)

While it's a all bit overwhelming for you, I must confess I find myself swimming in a small pool of relief  All those skills I've been watching you develop and waiting for you to master--to be motivated to master--are within mastery's reach. Think: typing! Think: practicing the trombone with more regularity. Think: taking the long way when deconstructing a book plot rather than short-cutting through worksheets. So much is on the horizon. All because of Seventh Grade. The whole world has opened up to you, taking you quite seriously for the first time: hard practices, hard drills, missing points, consequences. I've always taken you seriously, of course, but like grade school, I've been brimming with mercy, shielding you when I could from Discomfort and Unpleasantness and, as parents are sometimes guilty of doing, shielding myself from the Unpleasantness of your displeasure.

Now you have all these other adults in your life who will work with me to expose you to rigor and discipline, which will result in your broadening your horizons and your scope for critical thought. I could have wept with gratitude--your Language Arts teacher talking about the greatly detailed feedback you will get on your writing ability this fall, your Literacy teacher saying she is going to push you to "prove" your interpretations now with textual evidence. This is so good. It's the stuff I live for. I'm a little bit of a language arts nerd, as you know, and I'm so glad we can share this now.  And I'm secretly as delighted as you are that you got an A+ on that "essay" I helped you with.

That's my daughter-of-an-English-major girl. 

Dear Summering Girls, (Epistolary Wednesday, August 13)

Dear Summering Girls,

Recently, my blog feed exploded with posts from various mom-bloggers about "How To Stay Sane During the Summer When Your Kids Are Home" and "How to Set Up a Routine When You’re a Work-At-Home-Mom." I know these songs by heart, I've sung them so much.

If it was just me and you at home for the summer, it would be delightful. Pure magic. But it’s not. I’ve got this thing called "Work" and these things called "Expectations" (that you’ll know not to interrupt me at certain times; that you’ll really clean your room when you say you will) that mingle with us like houseguests that just won't leave, spoiling all our fun. And these last few weeks of summer, Work and Expectations have been at each other's throats. Some mornings it's just chaos and anarchy and I have to tell Work to hush up because Expectations are just being ignored like a cast-off friend.  I mean, how can you get worse at following your Morning Routine (i.e. brush teeth, dress, empty dishwasher, eat, do math facts, read for 20) now that you’ve had the whole summer to practice? And those pink shoes on the bathroom floor--the ones that have been sitting there for over a week, the ones I’ve asked you three times to pick up--are still sitting there.

The "after" picture.

Here's a typical conversation about Expectations:

Did you clean your room?

Yes.  

Let me check it.  [Gasp] Your laundry EXPLODED in here! What happened? How could you say you cleaned your room when it looks like this?

But I did! I did clean it!

But don’t you see the dirty underwear on the floor? What about the Kleenexes wadded up next to the garbage can? I want you to Clean This Room.

I have this naïve belief that come August 19, the first day of school, you will magically and suddenly become innately disciplined human beings once again; you will pull Expectations out from under that heap of clothing and wet towels on your bedroom floor, dust her off, and allow her to accompany you through your day: you will get up on time;you will eat more than a smattering of Cheerios for breakfast; you will put on fresh clothes and change your underwear and empty the dishwasher all without me mentioning these things to you. A mom can hope, can’t she?

Until then, I don’t even work in the home office most of the time because if I were to do that, you'd be leaving wrappers and tissues all over the living room and I wouldn't be able to catch you in the act. Best to have you deal with it immediately, before the candy wrappers and tissues become the next pink-shoes-on-the-bathroom floor and a month goes by before I see the carpet again. I wish I was that mom who didn’t lose brain cells at the sight of garbage on the floor, wish I could just sit right among the muck and play tickle fights and video games in the evenings when I'm done working, but you didn't win that lotto, girls. You are not those children and I am not that mom and someday, when you live in your own house and you’re all grown up, if you want to never flush the toilet and let it back up and let fruit flies reproduce over your left-out glass of orange juice, if you want to sit in a dark room all day and play video games, never seeing the sun, so be it. I will love you then as I do now. But I won’t live with you.

This is just to say that I really love you and I'm really looking forward to school next week, despite the fact that junior high and fourth grade are on the horizon, whole new worlds of Work and Expectations that I don't have to manage on your behalf. Instead, I will just be Mom with Milk and Cookies at the end of the day. I'll be a Good Listener and Your Biggest Fan and I will leave lunch clean up to the lunch ladies.

Dear Tiny Road Trippers (Epistolary Wednesday)

On Wednesdays, I write letters.

Dear Tiny Road Trippers,

Preschool closed down last week. It’s you and me and some vacation days and I want to take you away—from all the rat race of hide-and-go-seek in the evening backyards and Laundry Day and Morning Chores. Let’s go up to western Minnesota, you and me.  I think the drive is only 7 hours, but it’s really 8. With all our stopping and getting mixed up, the entire trip is 9. And for the first three hours, when one of you has to pee so desperately, twice, I think about turning around, think I don’t really have to do this. We could spend a happy few days at home, emptying the dishwasher and doing laundry and summer math facts and driving to the lake. But when we’re home, it’s so hard to break each of us from what pulls us most powerfully. My email account. Your smart phones. Your singular love for the 3-year-old neighbor boy.

Auntie Nay and Tiny piggy-backing

So here we are in a small town of 1,900, and when we drove in I felt myself relax. Felt we could just hunker down with the Boy's* family, now our adopted family, and walk the barely trafficked streets, run on the empty high school track, wave at neighbors, play at the playground, swim, beach. Of course, two of you can’t get through the day without a Minecraft marathon (curses on Minecraft!), but that’s okay; it gives me time with Tiny who, after a good nap, has turned so charming and sweet again and in love with her cousins and their dogs and her auntie.

Tiny, Cash, and Ruby

Life seems so simple here, if expensive. Auntie Nay says the groceries cost way more than what they cost us back home. There’s a Walmart and a Hy-Vee about an hour away, and that’s it. People here are farmers or teachers or doctors and some of them are out of work, and it’s calm and quiet except for when the St. John church bells ring at 5 p.m. for Saturday evening mass.

And now, I’m sitting on the bed at dusk next to Tiny as she whispers the words to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and fingers the movements in the warm, sticky air above her head until she pauses and leans over, still whispering, “Mom, my arm is tired. My arm is tired.”

“Okay. Well. Let it sleep.” I whisper back, and she receives this without comment and moves her fingers to tickling her belly. 

Dinner by sunlight.

In some ways, all our arms have gotten tired from holding up the routine. So then, we should let them sleep these few days before we face school registration and work and the Daily Grind.

Also, I just love you more and better when we pause all that other stuff so we can just be. Let’s always remember to do that. You’re getting so old and, I fear, drawing away each in your own little ways. This is normal, but sometimes we get so far apart that when I look at you this week I see both desire and uncertainty in one of your little faces; you’re wanting to get close like you were when you held my hand voluntarily everywhere we walked, but you don’t know how to get there without doing that.

After our visit, we stop in Minneapolis to see more cousins and that giant mall "of America." While driving through one of the many tiny country towns, I exclaim, “Look, here’s a town that’s ten seconds long! If you blink, you might miss it.” And you older ones unwrap the earbuds from around your ears and stare. “Whooa.”

Oldest, Middle, and cousins

There was a time when I had so much time that I walked hours daily to fill it. Around and across neighborhoods in all seasons of the year, I noticed things like rusty cars, children whining on the sidewalk, a dog sniffing near a ravine in the park. With all my modern-day efficiency strategies, all the smarts of smartphones, I’ve thought I’ve done myself a favor by filling up the time. I've been Getting More Stuff Done, so much that I’ve forgotten to be and notice as much as I've wanted to. And I haven’t helped you practice those things as much either.

“Mama,” Tiny says from her carseat as we exit the town. “I blinked but I didn’t miss it!”

I think, then, that there is still hope for us, despite all the blinking we do--for connecting, for paying attention, for being. And we can start now with this road and with this trip--with the shanty towns, the speckled cows, the chilled blue water of the community pool, and the street lined with toads that jump frantically out of our path. Let's do our best not to miss too much.

*The story about the Boy and how I adopted his family can be found here. 

Dear Desert Dweller, (Epistolary Wednesday), July 30

On Wednesdays, I write letters.

Dear Desert Dweller,

It’s dusty and hot here, I know. And sometimes we wonder, in the desert, if we’ll die before the next rain, the next bottle of water, the next splash in a puddle. It seems though, that there is, eventually, a next rain, a next water. But sometimes, like the Israelite’s manna it’s just enough to barely get us by.

In the meantime, so much beauty flourishes where it's so dry. Like the work of the L.A. Dream Center—in the middle of poverty and homelessness, there’re a million pounds of food (that’s 16 semi trucks) going out to in-need neighborhoods where young mothers and trembling old men fill their carts-with-wheels full of cherries, avocados, whole wheat pasta, and organic apples. Every week to the same neighborhoods all over the city.

Here, in the desert, women go every Thursday afternoon to a park in the projects (and on other afternoons to other parks) for Kidz Club. They sit in the baking sun, throw water balloons, hug children and tell them there are no limits on their lives or to their names. They are there every Thursday and the kids come to expect them. These women remember their names. This is the water.

In the yards in the projects, where the many mamas tend actual green in the heat of their children’s neediness, there are so many signs of life.

There are always signs of life in the desert. Promise comes in hues of orange and gold. And, wouldn’t you know it, some of the most glorious things grow when the sky is blue-bare and cloudless.

Most of us don’t pick the desert. Instead, it chooses us, claiming us for seasons and, sometimes, for what feels like forever. But, there are streams to be found, there are flash floods to fall. Watch and see what grows out of loneliness and loss. Watch and see what flourishes where there is no abundance, where you strain toward heaven with questions unanswered, wondering, waiting and thirsty. Something will spring up. It has to.

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy...Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

Isaiah 35:1-2, 5-7

When Mothers "Happen"

I stumbled into this article by Shauna Niequest last night through Rachel Held Evans' blog. Shauna is the daughter of Lynne and Bill Hybels, founders of the mega-church Willow Creek. Shauna writes about her mother Lynne as a role model of healthy and whole womanhood--and about how, when Shauna was a teenager, Lynne began giving herself permission to pursue her passions, passions and gifts that weren't limited just to her role as a mother.

This journey she was on began when I was fourteen. I was just learning what it meant to be a woman. And the woman I was watching most closely was just beginning to reshape her definition, and in turn, mine.

Watching my mother while I was a young teenager gave me a front row seat to a hard, messy, important, beautiful transformation. I watched my mother become herself. I watched her come alive. I watched her discover her gifts. I watched her eyes sparkle when she returned from a meeting or a trip. I listened to her bubbling over with passion about what she was reading or learning.

And as I watched her, I promised myself that I would follow this new example she was leaving for me, to pay attention to my gifts and passions. The life I was seeing in her for the first time was so inspiring to me. I loved it in her, and I wanted it for myself.

I couldn't help but think of my own three daughters as I read these lines, about how, over the last 6 or so years, they've had a front-row view of their mother redefining and embracing who and what she could be. The two oldest have seen me labor through hours of graduate study, reading and writing furiously and excitedly and passionately (sometimes while crying, sometimes while laughing); they've watched me conduct science experiments in the kitchen, excitement bubbling over as foods fermented on the counter; they've watched me sit with a guitar or at the keyboard for hours, learning parts to songs because it gave me pleasure, because of a driving hunger to hear the sounds, to make melodies out of single notes; I've danced into the house after a prayer time with someone struggling, excited that the person was encouraged, that they encountered God in some significant way; they watched me pastor, teach classes, take difficult phone calls, solve problems, rejoice in making peace with others; they watched me labor nightly, for months, on a book and then listen to triumphant reports of "it's done!" They've watched me refinish furniture, paint endless walls, learn to crochet, use power tools, write book reviews, write sermons; they've listened to me read, through winter months with a quavering voice, literature and stories with which I long to fill their imaginations. They've watched me pack suitcases destined for far- off places, raise money for mission trips, take cookies to the neighbors just because.

Danny Silk talks about how important it is for women to "happen"--for life to surge through them, for their gifts to bubble forth, for the community to bless and encourage their pursuit of all God has called them to be. My own life has been happening these last six years or so, mostly because I've cooperated in ways I never thought about cooperating a decade ago as a new mother, or even as a teenager, when watching my own mother make her way through the world. I was a young woman afraid to open my mouth to sing or speak, afraid to stand up in a room of people sitting because they might see me; I was a woman afraid of being in my own skin, of happening.

There are other mothers happening around me, too. One friend has started a business around her phenomenal ability to create, re-design, and refinish anything she gets her hands on. Another friend decided to address some personal health needs that she'd been long putting off. Another is engaged in study, pouring over historical texts, researching ancient and holistic medicine practices. Others are standing at the foot of the path; they've said yes and they're about to step out on the journey.

I don't care what my daughters decide to "be" when they grow up, but I could weep with gratitude that somehow allowing ourselves to happen in front of their eyes might just inspire a confidence that some of us didn't have for decades, might just banish the protestations of self-doubt that haunted some of us for years, might just pave the way for them to happen, too.

What We Were Going to Become

I was unpacking my office tonight and found report cards from elementary school. (Quick aside: I love the sound of "my office."  It's a bedroom on the main floor near to the kitchen and near the toys and near the baby, easy to slip in and slip out and it's mine all mine.  I feel so lucky and simultaneously sorry for the husband who received a man cave in the unfinished part of the basement with no finished walls, no windows.  But I kinda sorta think he doesn't care about things like finished walls and windows, so it works out all right.)
Anyhoo, here's my question for today after reading my report cards: Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were growing up?  And do you remember what people said you were good at at age nine?  Are you doing those things still? Are you good at them?

I have a distinct memory of knowing I wanted to write a book when I grew up.  I was seven years old or younger. How do I know? Because we hadn't yet moved from our home in San Jose (which we did when I was seven), and I was standing in our wide, sky-light lit family room thinking that there were two things I wanted most in the whole wide world:

(1) A Pretty-in-Pink Barbie doll

(2) I wanted to write a book. 

And not just a kid's picture book. No, when I was seven-or-younger, I knew I wanted to write a real, honest-to-God gritty story with words for details instead of pictures. It would be longer I knew, than your average novel. Maybe an inch thick. With small words and lots and lots of pages.

How do such things drop into our psyches at such young ages? Is it God who makes these deposits? If not, what natural forces conspire to make a seven year old know she wants to move people with words, lots of words, someday when she's so old, so old, like maybe thirty-three?

3rd grade: Heather is an excellent writer. She is very original, includes conversation, and is highly motivated. I'm looking forward to Heather's stories next year, too! (Please come and share!)

Let me pause for just a moment and consider what my MFA cohorts and I might have given for praise such as this, for a bar set so low that including conversation and being highly motivated were benchmarks of high achievement.  Our soul to the devil, I do believe.

4th: Well, I was sick this year. For months. And didn't go to school.  No prophecies here.

5th: Heather has very creative ideas. Shared and published this year. Applies all skills for written work. Enjoyed writing to Pen Pals in Bakersfield, CA.

Vaguely, yes vaguely, I remember the pen pals in Bakersfield. I felt sorry for them. Had they just suffered an earthquake? Or a fire?  Google isn't helping me out on this one.  But, lucky pen pals, I applied all my skills for written work. Those pupils got a freaking glorious composition, they did.

6th grade, spring: Heather has recently finished her story "Gum on the Gym Teacher's Shoe." She has applied spelling, capitalization and punctuation skills to her writing. (Halleluyer.)

6th grade, end-of-year: A voluminous reader who not only understands the pleasure of reading fiction, but sees it also as an avenue for self-understanding and enriching the spirit.  She has progressed so far in our writing program she is now confident to compose lengthy stories at the keyboard in the computer lab where she spends a great deal of time. She has discovered an intrinsic pleasure in herself to write.

My sixth grade teacher was part-prophet, part thorn in my side. He had too-high expectations of me, he did. Called me a "quitter" when I dropped out of the Program for Smart Kids just because I felt like it. His face got red. He shouted, sort of, at me and my friends Jenny and Brodie and told us we were a bunch of drop outs. I think I may have quit my editorial position on the school paper just to thumb my nose at him.  And one day, he got mad at me for writing such long stories that I used up more than my share of paper from the dot matrix printer. I was the only kid writing 25-page typewritten stories. I remember the scene of his indignation: It was after gym class, and he'd found a draft in the recycle bin and held it up in front of the entire gym-class line of students, his face flushing.  He was the greenest hippie guy I knew in 1989 in Iowa: long stories were admirable, sure, but saving trees was dire.  On the other hand, he was smart as a whip and wouldn't take crap from any kid, especially one who sold herself short.

Sometimes I dream about this teacher--I mean, I literally dream about him. I want to go back and ask him how--how he peered into my soul and knew what he knew when it took me another fifteen years after that to see the same thing. That I'm a writer.

I don't think it matters exactly what was named in us by someone else as long as it was true and productive; it is no less a blessing.  If you had the same gift of an adult naming your passion, of another person looking into you so deeply and calling out the very thing you most wanted in the world, do you share the same sense of gratitude?

It's as if a message in a tiny bottle was cast upon the seas of our youth and later washed up upon the beaches of middle adulthood where we find ourselves unrolling the scroll with the delight of recognition:

Dear [Heather], You are in your right place at your right time. And you always have been.

Such comfort, no?