The Ugly Truth About Porn.

I remember the first time I found it. 
It was hidden in someone's house I was at.
I was seven. 
He had a wife. 
He had a daughter not much older than me. 
Yet there it was, staring at me in all it's grotesque glory. 
The woman on the front was exposed and seemingly happy about it.
My face turned hot and I rushed to stuff the magazines back where I had found them.
Maybe he wouldn't notice they were most likely out of their normal order.
I didn't fully understand at the time what exactly this meant, but I knew I hurt for his wife.
I was a child, but I knew she would be pained by what I had just found. 
So I shut up and shut down.
I left the magazine in their secret place and never went back there.

Then, years later I was back at that house again, staring at those magazines.
Or so it felt. 

I was a woman myself now. I had forgotten all about the man's dirty magazines.
Until now.
My hands were shaking and my heart was trying to find a way out of my chest.

The only escape route was through my mouth with muffled sobs.
I was supposed to be in the shower.
The water was on, so I pressed my face into the bathroom towel.
I screamed.
No words in particular, just a mixture of anguish and confusion.

I was that little girl again, shoving those magazines back into the wall where I had found them; yet this time, I was the woman totally oblivious to her own shortcomings.

Shortcomings? 
I'm sure you're lost.
What does a man looking at porn have anything to do with my own worth?

If you're a man, you may be thinking that by looking at porn, that doesn't mean you love your wife any less or find her any less beautiful.

You may be thinking that it's only natural, that the only one affected by these images is yourself.

You are wrong. 

The ugly truth about porn is that it affects every woman you touch, especially your spouse.
You are mixing the poison, but she is drinking it. 

I could go into the biblical aspects of porn and beat you over the head with scriptures, but we have all heard them before.
We have heard the sermons, seen the moves and witnessed the marriages torn apart.
I have no need to go there.
You already know those things.
I'm here to let you in on the things you don't.

Not only are you destroying the hearts of the women in your life by subjecting yourself and them to these idolized images, you are paying the industry that exploits someone's wife, someone's sister, someone's mother and even someone's daughter on the front cover every month. 

Men, but enough on you. This blog isn't necessarily intended for men suffering with an addiction to porn.

This is mainly directed towards the women currently being inflicted with the pain porn brings or the women who have been in the past. 

That's the ugly truth about porn: It is a poison that doesn't just leave your system in a short time. It remains stagnant in your mind for as long as you let it, making itself comfortable in the bed of your heart.

It's cozy there.
Those images you stumbled upon are engraved in your mind and on your broken heart.

They visit you when you're getting into the shower or trying on your once favorite dress.
They visit you when he tells you how beautiful you look or in your bedroom. 

They meet you everywhere.

I wish I had a secret 5 step solution to ridding yourself of the pain that porn has caused you.
But I don't. 

Whether you were a seven year old girl rummaging through the things of a man you looked up to or a grown woman searching your spouse's search history, porn is poison and it can kill a special part of you if you let it. 

That part of you is the part that let's you love yourself again.
That part of you is the part that likes the way you look in your favorite dress again. 
That part of you is the part that doesn't argue when a man calls you beautiful.
That part of you is the part that doesn't hide in your bedroom closet when intimacy comes calling. 

A little uncomfortable?
Maybe. 

But the ugly truth about porn is that it is uncomfortable.
Poison isn't going to feel good, no matter how much you coat it in rationalizations.

I wish I could tell you that one day I woke up deciding I wasn't going to let the ramifications of someone else's choice destroy me anymore, but I can't. 

Every day you will have to remind yourself that the images you saw are not beautiful. 
Not only are they an unrealistic expectation for all women, but they are bought with an awful and ugly price. 

Porn is not beautiful.
It is a drug that destroys so many men, good men, and their families. 

How you reconcile is your own journey. 
Maybe you are picking up the broken pieces of the trust you had in a marriage.
Maybe you are starting over and struggling with falling back into the mindset that every man is going to break your heart in the same way.

I'm no self help book, but from experience, there's one thing you can not do if you want to heal: hide. 

Hiding from your spouse, whether they were the one who hurt you or simply the one getting the brunt of your hurt is the worse thing you can do.

You are only continuing the process of  poisoning those around you by sleeping in your infection. 

When you have a deep cut or burn, medics don't tell you to hide it, ignore it and just shut up about it.
They treat it with immediate care, washing the wounded area with haste and with no concern if your wound is exposed so that they might get in and fix the issue at hand before extreme infection ensues. 

Honey, expose your wounds.
Expose the things that hurt so that they might heal.
I was embarrassed for too long, so I hid my wounds and prolonged the process of ridding my blood of porn's poison.
The dark things can only be lifted from you when you let a little light in.

I'm not going to tell you some frilly, feel-good version of the truth.
Porn freaking sucks and so does the healing process-for everyone. 

You can read as many self help articles as you want, receive friendly advice from everyone on your contacts list and pray until you are blue in the face, but you have to get up and do something to start the healing process.
Not your husband, not the man who hurt you, not the man with the dirty magazines hidden in his wall.
They can't help you.
Only you can. 

Am I saying prayer and advice from Godly, experienced women won't help?
Of course not.
But sitting on your butt and expecting someone else to come in and save you is crap and only makes you a victim.
Harsh, but the truth is usually a little prickly to the touch. 

If you want to heal your marriage or your heart from a previous relationship, you have to decide to do it.
Change out of those victim panties and let's do this. 

Some practical, cut the crap insight?
Let him call you beautiful without rolling your eyes.
Stop throwing the covers over your head or jumping out your bedroom window every time he walks in.

The poison might have been mixed for you, but you don't have to keep drinking it.

If your husband is the man who hurt you, don't hide from him or make him sleep in his infection forever. 

If, like in my case, you are with a wonderful man who longs to love you through the wounds of your past, let him love you.
Don't make him pay the price that porn took on you from someone else's pocket.

Dance in the shower.
Get that dress on.
Let your hair down.
Be beautiful again and own it.
You freaking deserve it.

The ugly truth about porn is that it hurts like hell.
The beautiful truth?
You don't have to live there.

The Proverbs 31 Woman and Social Media

"She is clothed in strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue."

           -Proverbs 31:25-26

If you're a woman, you've read or heard this verse before.


It's plastered on motivational posters at women's conferences.
It's written on our prayer journals.
It's the caption of your Facebook photo.
You hang it around your neck and buy t-shirts with it drawn in a fancy feminine script on the front.


It's easy to wear.
It's simple to read.
But, is it as simple to understand and to LIVE out loud?


I know, I know, parts of the verse don't seem to apply to us anymore in 2014.
Nobody "dresses her family in scarlet" anymore.
But, I believe there is still a real, relevant message contained within this snippet of scripture that we can apply to a modern part of life.


Social media.


It's great to strive to achieve proverbs 31 status by respecting your spouse, loving your children and providing a nurturing/hard-working presence within the walls of your own home.
But, are we neglecting one of the largest influences that we have on others as Christian women?


Let's break a part the snapshot of the verse above and ask ourselves individually if we are truly living out the Proverbs 31 identity in the cyber world as well as our living rooms.
First, let me say a quick prayer for myself before digging deep into my own heart and possibly finding things I don't want to see. YIKES!


"Jesus, pry open my heart and my eyes to what breaks You. Where in my thoughts, my heart, my relationships, my interactions on the internet and in person can there be a better reflection of You and not Britney? Show me the things I don't see, even the ugly, fleshly things. Help me recognize my short-comings and instill wisdom in me. Amen."

Now, let's do this thang.


"She is clothed in strength and dignity..."


First question: What clothes are you wearing on social media?


Is it strength and dignity? Or is it negativity, self-pity, low self-esteem, bitterness, busy-ness, unforgiveness or gossip?


Strength here is not referring to an overpowering woman. To me, it can be the strength to restrain from lashing out, strength to take pain and use it for her own betterment. Strength to use wisdom and remain in silence instead of using her words as a weapon.


Are you clothed in wisdom? Or are you clothed in pettiness?


Are you clothed in dignity?
Or are you standing there on social media, totally stripped naked of all the beautiful garments a lady in Christ would wear?


When you update the world, are you clothed in all things good; grace, mercy, love, compassion, patience, wisdom & truth?


Or are you clothed in all things fleshly?
Before word vomiting all over everyone's newsfeed, I should be asking myself:

"Are you wearing what Britney would pick out to wear today? Or are you going to let Christ lay out your wardrobe for you?"

As for me, I want to hit my knees before hitting the post button.
I guarantee once praying about whatever issue I am about to blast on social media, I will no longer feel the need to post it any longer.


Honestly, airing my dirty laundry is stinky.
It stinks and nobody wants to smell it.

 "...She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue."

Second question: What is on your tongue? 

Obviously, we are all human here.
We make mistakes.
We let our tongues flap wildly more than they should.
This is why God has laid all of this onto my heart.

What is on my tongue?
Honestly, a lot of the time things that I am not proud of.

I'll tell you something, it's not always "faithful instruction".
I'll tell you something else, I'm not always speaking with wisdom!

But, I strive to do both of these.
Especially on social media, as lately this has been my focus.

Did you know your Facebook page, your Instagram or even your twitter feed could be a testimony? 
Even a witness? 
A light? 

Your thoughts are reaching hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, ladies.

You have the opportunity to say so much to someone who is hurting, lost or just seeking someone full of hope, help and positivity with the click of a button.

Unfortunately, you also have the opportunity to destroy, to hurt, to break, to wound, to slander, to gossip...also with a click of the button.

How you use social media is in your hands and though you aren't using your actual tongue, the same principal still applies.
The tongue (in this case your fingers) has the power to destroy or to build up, to degrade or to encourage. 

Proverbs 18:21 - Death and life [are] in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

So, what's on your tongue on social media?
Just because the words do not ever pass your lips, does not mean they do not have extreme power. 

Life is not always grand, but are you approaching your hurt with the Cross in mind or something else?

You do not have to pretend everything and everyone in this journey is always okay, but you do have to answer to how you reacted along the way. 

Matthew 12:36-37 

"I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

I desire to speak with wisdom on social media. 
I desire to NOT speak with wisdom on social media if need be.

I desire to have delightful things on my tongue; faithful instruction, encouragement, hope, grace.

The tongue is a double-edged sword and I choose to lay it down and to stop using it as a weapon of destruction.

I pray that Christ is the first we approach when we have something to say, not our status'; whether that be a story of success or one of pain.

I know I have a lot of heart-searching to do and personally need to ask God where I stand with Him on social media.

I long to be the Proverbs 31 woman not just to my family, but all who are touched by the consequences of my reactions.

Lastly, replace words in verses about controlling the "tongue" or your "lips" and replace it with the word "thumb," for social media.


"When there are many words, sin is unavoidable, but he who restrains his thumbs is wise."-Proverbs 10:19

Silly exercise, but a whole lotta truth.

"Jesus, help me reflect You in every form that I may take on, in the home or on the internet. Help my ears be open to Your voice and my heart open to Your guidance. Help me be more about promoting You on social media, not promoting myself or demoting others. Amen."

End of Semester: Why I Write Part Two.

We were asked to re-write an assignment we did in the first week of class to note how we have changed, titled : Why I Write.
Enjoy.

Britney Davis

Ms. Jones

November 11, 2014

           

                                                            Why I Write

Why do I write? I often write to cling to the things that I feel are slipping through my grasp. So many things leave and when they do they leave with such haste we never have the time to really taste them for what they are. Writing allows me to catch a moment, a person, a feeling of bewitching or distain and to capture it just long enough to feel it for all it can be. I like to dance in the meadow of this short life, the dusk of death hastily approaching, letting my limbs flail around in the night air just to catch one firefly of a moment. Once I catch it, I write it. I put the jar up to my face and study my captive. I memorize every morsel of it’s existence, regurgitate it and then I set it free. What a shame it would be to catch such a fleeting, beautiful thing and not allow myself the chance to understand it.

I write so that I never forget the things he said to me in that white-walled, fluorescent-lit room. I write so that I never forget that day where we stood in the rain, my hand lingering in that handshake longer than it should. I write so that I never forget the brown chair; the one she sung over me in, her blue silk nightgown rocking me into slumber. I write so that I never forget how the sunlight hit my sister’s face, forming so many different shapes and objects onto her freckles beneath our fortress of leaves many falls ago. I write so that I may never forget the lessons that I learned through the laughter of a six year old, his front right tooth crowning the gums.

I write so that I might not forget how it felt to ride on his shoulders, baseball stadium lights revealing half of his features while cloud lightning highlighted the rest. I write so that I might not forget what it is to hear your own heart break and what it is to see it quilted back together with the thread from another. I write so that I might not forget the little things, the seemingly insignificant things like eyebrow stitches and red cowgirl boots. I write so that I might not forget the feeling of dancing to Billy Joel with my grandmother or riding in my grandfather’s blue pickup truck down a flat Oklahoma road.

I write to discover the woman I am through the memories of a girl I thought I knew. Sometimes I do not know what I think about the world until I have written about it. Sometimes I think I know who I am until I write, then I discover a new nook in my soul that I had not stumbled upon before. Writing is a like a flashlight in the unknown of my own psyche. It is always guiding me, re-directing my feet and showing me new corners and crevices of my own mind that I have neglected or forgotten was there.

Writing is all about capturing the precious things that could be lost or forgotten. My heart has fallen madly in love with the beauty of memoir. What greater way to re-live every beautiful, wild, painful, shameful, regretful, magnificent, take-your-breath away moment than to learn the art of writing a memoir. The memoir is the capturing of many fireflies. It is learning lessons from their hypnotizing glow and then letting them go back to whatever magical place it is that fireflies sleep. The memoir allows you to share your treasures and all of your dark places that hurt you, yet taught you the most about living, romance and simplicity. I write because it is the ultimate mentor, the most qualified of educators and the greatest lover a mind could take.

The Stepmom Chronicles: Fill Your Own Shoes

I'm going to let you in on a small secret.
Are you ready for this?
It's probably going to change your life.

Okay, here it is:

I'm...human. 


Whew, I'm so glad that's over with. 
Are you shocked right now?


OH, me neither. 

As many of you know, I'm a fairly new step-mother, only filling this role for a year now. 
I went from 0 to 100 in 1.6 seconds! Talk about a ride!

Each day I learn something new about our three very different boys.

Caler, Mr. Daddy Jr, whose favorite color is purple, who doesn't like anyone to touch his food but him, who is always the one to hug me the most and at the most random of times even when I'm sweaty from an afternoon run. 

Corban, the Minecraft King, the blonde-haired, long-eye-lashed sweet heart who loves pizza, playing ninjas and is the first to greet me at the door. 

Cannon...oh cannon, our bouncy, smiley, witty little thing who always seems to have a tooth missing somewhere yet never misses the punch line of one of my jokes. 

Just like I learn new things about our boys each day, I learn how to walk just a little more as their step mother than I did the day before. 

I am a very young step momma, making this transition with as much grace and wisdom as humanly possible.

When you step into your role as a step parent, you're walking on fresh baby legs. 
You're wobbly, your knees shake and sometimes you trip on that insistent snag in the carpet over and over again. 

Want to know something surprising?
I have never seen a parent scold their newborn baby for tripping up while learning to walk.
When they wobble, when they take those shaky first steps to their mother's open arms and face plant, slobbering all over their new rug, the mother doesn't furrow her brow and show her child disdain.

Why?
Because the mother knows she once had to learn to walk too.
She fell too.
No child enters the world knowing how to walk like an adult. 

As a step parent, you don't waltz into your new family unit knowing how it works, knowing how to play your "role," the role only you can define.

If you do dance into your stepchildren's lives trying to play biological parent, not easing into being a parent, resentment can flare. 

You are learning, step momma. That's okay. 
You are human. That's okay too.

You do not need to fill the mother's role or the father's role, you need to fill your role.

Each unit is different, so you alone must decide what that role should be to create a healthy environment for your step children.  

Fill your own shoes. 

Because guess what?
Nobody...NOBODY can fill those shoes better than you.
You don't have to play mom, dad, disciplinarian or any role that this particular play doesn't call you to fill.

They don't need another mom or dad, they need you and all of the unique qualities and special love you have to offer. 

They need you to love their daddy.
They need you to be an open ear.
They need you to hug them when they feel afraid.
They need you to support their parents in disciplines and structure. 

You are the support beams to this house. 
You lift up when you need to and you carry weight when you need to. 

No one can be their step momma better than you can. 

No one can learn to walk for you, you must learn on your own and on your own time. 



"I have set the LORD continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken." -Psalm 16:8

The Little Blue Square

Let me start off by informing you all that I originally planned to totally deactivate my Facebook page.

Instead, I totally removed the app from my smart phone.

I have slowly been making changes in how I use social media (but first let me take a selfie), but this is the biggest.

The checking it, checking in, scrolling, constant need to see what was going on...enough was enough.

The app is removed. In order to check it, I will have to get my laptop out at home (where I rarely am) and log in.

I have hidden people from my sight due to negativity in general.

Such precious time had been wasted on useless scrolling and updating.

Why, you ask?
What's the harm?

I don't need to let the world know any time I eat a healthy salad, get a hair cut or go on a date night with my husband.

I don't need to update Facebook every time I catch up with an old friend over coffee.

I don't need to let anyone know what I wore today or how well my life is going.

I need to re-focus my intentions and re-evaluate who my true audience should be.

Instead of posting photos of my kids and talking about how much fun we are having together, I should be more present IN THAT MOMENT- without my smart phone or it's camera.

Instead of updating everyone on my romantic evening out, I should be looking more into my husband's eyes, not a screen.

The likes, the shares, the constant need for approval; it's not worth it.

It's not worth the time lost, the moments lost, the giggles missed, that look he gives you that you didn't see because you were too busy refreshing your page for a new like.

I am not absent from social media, but I am choosing to be more present in my real life-the life I should be totally focused on.

My kids do not care and never will care how many people saw a photo of us putting a puzzle together or baking cookies.
My kids DO care that when they are with their step mom, she is totally focused on them and her phone is put away.

They will look back and remember that instead of intently watching how many people liked the highlights of my relationships with them, that I was intently and intentionally focused on that relationship OFF of social media.

I have come to terms with the fact that my life can be great and I don't have to let the world know about it.

I can in fact survive day to day and not need approval or acknowledgment.

Social media is not the audience I should be trying to please.

I believe every relationship around me will improve by removing the constant pressure to inform you of my plans for the day.

I will be more apt to be in the moment, for THAT moment.

I want to capture time with my eyes, with laughs and with real hugs and real conversations instead of capturing life through a lens or a screen.

Life is going to be much more beautiful to look at when I'm really, I mean REALLY looking at it.

Who would want to see their loved ones' smile through a smudged iPhone camera when they could see it the way it was designed to be seen?

I have been cheating myself of genuine interaction and deceiving myself into thinking that just because everyone else lives through the blue square that I have to too.

Excuse me while I have things to see.

Really, really see.

Labor Pains of the Feminine Feminist

​She spreads her hands across the fresh linens, her wedding ring snagging the bedding covered in baseball bats and badly drawn helmets. The baby cries. There’s food, now unrecognizable on the floors and cheerios in her hair. She rocks the baby on her hip, warming a bottle and looks out at her suburban neighborhood. “Is this my dream? Or is this what I’m told my dream should be?”

​Every young woman knows the look; the one you get if you’re over the age of 21 and aren’t feeding a toddler with one hand and baking banana bread in your corner lot suburban dream house with the other. Time and time again women are lured into believing that they will never know true joy, true fulfillment until they hear the cries of their newborn babe and bare the labor pains of bringing a new life into the world. A woman will never truly be a woman until she wears a wedding band, is someone’s Mrs. and learns to put her family’s dreams in place of her own. She is told to stop dreaming, stop creating and to start searching for the nearest Whole Foods market to help ensure her little ones’ nutritional needs are being met.

​Young women are giving up their educations, their degrees, their chances to explore the tops of mountains or simply run their dream business for this idea of “true womanhood.” Forced to choose between motherhood and having their own identity apart from their children, many women have and continue to suffer with “Housewife Syndrome,” an epidemic mainly affecting middle-class women, also called the “feminist illness.” Housewife Syndrome symptoms included depression, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, or simply just the desire to have their own identity and the undeniable gnawing question of, “Is there more?” This question proves dangerous to any woman longing for higher education, a career, or simply a life not involving late night feedings and finger-paints.

​Experts and Freud followers alike see this stirring as silly nonsense from neurotic women. “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?” (The Yellow Wallpaper). Stay quiet, bake the bread, make the beds, iron his shirt, breastfeed your children. Instead of encouraging a woman to find herself in creativity or seeking a higher education, books on how to be the “Better Mom” and toilet train their two year old in three easy steps are forced down their already suffocated esophagus. Any woman who wants to be a surgeon, a politician or an engineer is just a sad, confused feminist, forgetting the true American dream: to be a stay at home mother, engrossed in the dreams of her children and the career of her husband.

Highlighting a statistic from Kathleen Gerson’s, “The Unfinished Revolution,” when a group of women were asked what they would do if they were no longer able to be in an equal partnership relationship, 75% of women stated they would rather divorce their partner than to remain a housewife. Not so shockingly, when a group of men were asked the same question, 70% of the men “said they hoped their wives would, ‘de-prioritize’ their career and focus on homemaking” (The Unfinished Revolution). Though told we are equals, when faced with the choice, we are told to back down from our dreams, our fulfillments, for his.Many women are convinced that putting off their own education to get a jump-start on child-rearing is the wisest, most feminine choice. The proof lies in the fact that 49%of stay at home mothers have a high school diploma or less (pewsocialtrends.org).

We are only equal when we know who we are as women without motherhood. We are only fulfilled when we know that we are not broken women when the desire to raise up children is lacking. We are told our minds must be changed; there is something wrong with us if we are not confirmed with our ultimate purpose while scrubbing urine stains from a crib or serving jellied toast to our husband as he whirls off to his career. We are applauded when we devote our lives to seeking out a husband and baring children and we are patted on the back, greeted with a shake of the head and a “Oh, honey…” when we chase our dreams and attempt to enter the work field.

We are taught to kiss our dreams and husbands good bye every morning, tuck away our self-fulfillment and sweet children every night, staring at a peeling wall of Yellow Wallpaper until we go mad. We do not want to dismantle motherhood, we simply want our rights back; our right to make bottles of milk or make cures, our right to discover ourselves outside of a hospital room, rearing a child in pain. We want to educate ourselves; create ourselves for ourselves, not our spouses or offspring.

The mother, the wanderer and the scholar are all women, all made with life to give. Sometimes, this life we bring into the world does not bare our genetics, but our dreams, our knowledge, our work made by our hands not our wombs. The feminist woman can in fact be a feminine woman, even without the cooking apron and spit-up cloths. We do not desire to trump men. We desire to be an equal to men; to fight beside them or work alongside them in a career. Women desire to choose to bare a child or to not, to stay at home to raise children or join the work force, or both. The feminine Feminist is saying, “We want to partner with you as your equal, in the home or on the battlefield and the opportunity to choose which is best for us.”

Women: Separate But Together

Let me start today's blog out with some background that might illustrate my message for you in a simple way.
When I was 14 and oozing wisdom, I had many female friendships.
We would talk about boys and hate other girls together.

They would tell me my hair was prettier straight and let me know who I should and shouldn't talk to in the cafeteria.
We all had that era in life of trying to be totally cool but in reality we were really monsters.
We got our heart broken by true love and lost best friends to 8th grade scandals.

Life hasn't changed much in the cafeteria of women.
We still hate certain women and have teams not every woman is welcome to join.

Instead of telling a girl how she should wear her hair (well, this probably still happens), we tell her how to raise her children or how to play her role as a wife.

We judge her if she puts her kids in daycare and works all day and we judge her if she stays at home until her children are of age.

We live in a Pinterest world where you should be always dressed your best, attending every kids sport game with "Billy's Mom" plastered on our shirts, baking desserts in our crafty houses that nobody should have time to bake, all the while aiming for those 6-pack abs jenny pinned last week.

Our social media feeds are filled with women who can pull a three course meal out of their perky, toned butts and still have time to be the number one mom.

Can I be real here?

Last week I barely had time to wash my hair one time, only read with my six year old once after night classes and the thought of making some crafty decorative wreath to hang on my door is nice...but who the hell has time to do all of that?

I do in fact throw chicken nuggets and fries in the oven at least once a week and sometimes I burn tomato soup while trying to watch something my boys want to show me or while typing up a paper.

I am all woman and all truth.

I can't even pretend to not be a mess because I don't even have time or energy to do that successfully.

The point here is that we are all women, doing life separately but together.

The homeschooling mother is just as real as the career woman working and attending her evening classes.

Each woman is trying to find her way in life and motherhood just as much as the next.

You might think your friend should be feeding her children more organic food and doing more yoga.
Well honey, she might think you should go out and "work" more.

The truth? You both need to embrace one another as individual women by empowering each other not degrading and dismantling.

Surround yourself with women who don't expect you to be a walking Pinterest board or those that disregard other women for their own pursuits.

How boring would life be if women all pursued the same dreams?

We are beautiful as a whole because we are beautiful on our own.

I don't know what you desire, but I want to surround myself with women who see me in my sweats and curly mess, my busyness, my crazy dreams and say "Go for it!"

I want to be engulfed in the encouragement of strong women and to be that strong woman myself.

I want to cheer on my friends who are raising babies at home and my friends who are traveling the world.

Neither is lesser in significance than the other.

We are all changing the world in our own wonderful way.

We can all be on the same team.

We can all sit at the same lunch table in this cafeteria.

Let us embrace our differences and celebrate them.

For you moms who can walk in heels and make crafts (make crafts? Do crafts? I don't know y'all) out of wood chips, I salute you.
You freaking go.

I'll balance the world out by living in converses and burning my soup and writing your stories.

The Truth is: He's not done with you.

My hands dropped and my heart sank as I read the awful lies written by a once dear friend.
I see now that friendship was always toxic, but at the time I was absolutely heart broken.

My heart literally hurt that someone could believe such a dangerous thing about the Jesus I had come to know; it hurt more that it was someone that had also seen sin and then tasted redemption.

"God is not going to bless you. He will not bless your marriage. He will not bless your future."

The enemy is real, friends.
He wants you to believe that you are useless, damaged goods.
He wants you to believe that you have crossed the line of damnation.
He wants you to believe that your Creator stops pursuing you after betraying Him with a soft kiss.
He wants you to hear the words of anyone but Jesus, because he knows if you stop for just one moment to listen to another voice, he can distract you from the Truth.

The Truth is that Jesus overcame; He has overcome everything about who you were and who you are.
The Truth is that Jesus can use anyone he pleases to; He can even use you.
A prostitute, a drug addict, an adulterer, a drunkard, an atheist.
He can use them.

The Truth is that Jesus will never stop chasing after your heart, even when you curse Him and spit at Him.

Even when you hate Him.
Even when you disobey Him.
Even when you run from Him as hard and as fast as you can, He will already be waiting for you when you are too weary to run anymore.

The Truth is that you are so screwed up that you even think you can save yourself.
The Truth is that you are so filthy you can't even see how any massive amount of grace can wash you clean.

The Truth is: God isn't done with you.

I could have listened to the words of my old friend that day.
I could have lived in constant shame and lived life declining God's callings because some lady told me I could never be blessed again.

That's funny to me, anyway.
Blessed? You think that's what this is all about?
Just blessings?

That is not the aim of this race we run, friend.
If anyone tries to tell you living for Christ is to live a "blessed" life, they do not know what it is to truly pick up their cross and follow.

Secondly, no man can say when God removes His blessing and who deserves restoration.

When thick crimson danced on the Savior's brow, there were no paragraphs of fine print.

When Mercy's bodily fluids splashed against splintered logs, there were no prenuptial agreements.

He gave it all.
To you.
To me.
To everyone.

He's not leaving you and He doesn't begin packing up His belongings when you are unfaithful to Him time and time again.

He's here to stay.
You've got the ring.
Even if you throw it into the depths of unbelief, He will find it again and vow His love to you all over again.

Friends, He's not finished with you.

You can have a life spent learning, stumbling to follow Him.

He can use you.
He can put you back into full time ministry again!
He can give you a beautiful, Godly marriage despite your mess!
He can heal your broken relationships.
He can pluck you from a prostitutes arms and put you into a pulpit.
He can snag you from that bridge's edge and set you on His lap and fill you with true joy.
You will never be damaged enough that the Renewer of all things can not use you.
He can.
He can.
He can.

I give my sheep eternal life. They will never die, and no one can take them out of my hand. My Father is the one who gave them to me, and he is greater than all. No one can steal my sheep out of his hand. (‭John‬ ‭10‬:‭28-29‬ ERV)

Subway Wrappers and Wood Chips (CW semester one draft)

I brushed the once perfectly formed curls; now white girl Afro status, from my hazel eyes. I was six, skin as white as the bathroom walls, with bony knees that liked to knock together when I ran down stairs. My mother wasn’t home. She was waiting tables at an all you can eat buffet only found in southern towns called Western Sizzlin. At the time she was waiting on old men chomping on buttered rolls by day and attending local college classes by night. That left my father to entertain us on the weekends. My outfits rarely matched and he had no clue what to do with my wild locks. He just brushed his back and out, letting the hair add height to his already 6’3 stature.

I fumbled around under my bed, a space no man should ever travel. It was like a vacuum, sucking up every thing in its wake. Shoes, candy wrappers, bobby pins, missing socks, half-dressed Barbies. I was searching for my white Keds, the ultimate 90’s accessory. I ran my fingers around the laces for a bit and decided to give up. I left the white, tattered strings in some impossible knot. I didn’t want to ask my father to help tie my shoes. I was embarrassed. My mother always did that weird rabbit hole and the tree little number in the mornings before school to help me learn how to tie them on my own. Now, I couldn’t remember which part came first, last or where my fingers were supposed to loop or tie. So I gave up, letting the shoes slide up and down my heel the remainder of the day leaving blisters.

I threw my curls into a messy ponytail, the only thing I knew to do with it. My mother always had a matching bow for every outfit in my closet. Not today. She was escorting rib eyes twenty minutes down the pothole-infested freeway and I was going to the park. My older sister called down the hallway at me. I didn’t make out what she was yelling, but I guessed we were about to throw ourselves in the red car and leave.

Kim was older, taller, a tom-boy and louder than me. She could do things like dribble a basketball and build things with her hands with my father. They bonded like that. They would sit and just put things together, shoot hoops and be rough. I don’t think dad knew what to do with me early on. I liked pom-poms, hair bows and wanted nothing to do with things like dirt or mud pies. Kim could fly her dinosaur kite with ease, my father smiling up into the June sun with pride. Then there was me. My Barbie kite flapping on the thirsty Arkansan soil like a fish out of water. That’s how I felt most of the time.

We hopped in the cramped back seat, Kim reminding me to buckle the seat belt I was conveniently squashing with my 60-pound rear. It was 1996 and the windows in the red car were still manual, making my father pump his freckled, sun-kissed arms hard and fast to get any air flow to our flushed faces.  As we hit freeway, the wind was thrashing our hair around so hard that it was slapping us in the face. I looked over at Kim and smiled. We both began to laugh because we couldn’t hear a word each other was trying to  say. So we began to just pretend like we were having a conversation. It was as if we were in the bottom of our neighbor’s pool again, pretending to have an underwater tea party. Our mouths were moving in an exaggerated way, making us look like those apes dad took us to see last Saturday afternoon at the local zoo.

My head was now resting on the back window as I peeked through one eyelid to see our destination. The tires hit some gravel pieces as we pulled up to park benches and faded seesaws. The park. Our park. Kim ran ahead onto the grass, hopping onto the swings. She kicked her head back and forth violently, propelling her board straight bangs to the sky. I staggered behind, head down and in search for roly-poly’s.

“Go play, kid.” My slender father slumped on a bench to watch us through his biking sunglasses. Kim ran around in her grass-stained cut off shorts and Winnie the pooh t-shirt, hollering for me to come on, come on, come on. I didn’t want to swing or run across that wobbly wooden bridge that scared the crap out of me. I wanted to search for roly-poly’s and sit in the grass. I followed her for a while, eventually plopping myself down to empty my shoes. Wood chips. I hated those wood chips. How did they always manage to get in there anyway?

I peered over through my furrowed brow to see dad hunched over in the red car grabbing our sandwiches. The lunch of all lunches. Subway sandwiches and Capri sun pouches. My mother would have packed a full- blown picnic, probably involving heart shaped jelly sandwiches and napkins with sweet notes scribbled on the back. I half-smiled picturing my father preparing that sort of lunch.  My father was quick and efficient like subway sandwiches. No time for nonsense or ignorance. He was a computer programmer, focused on solutions and data. I didn’t understand him yet and all he knew to do at the time was to ruffle my hair and call me kiddo.

We sat in the grass, unwrapping our deli deliciousness and watching moms in high-waisted jeans push their snotty children on the swings. Kim was of course inhaling her lunch like the space under my bed does Barbie shoes. She wanted to be done already to go run around some more in those stupid wood chips. I looked to my father and let out a quiet enough giggle so he wouldn’t hear me. The bread crumbs from his sandwich were having a party in his curly strawberry blonde beard hairs. He didn’t seem to care or notice. Things were always getting in his beard, especially vanilla ice cream. My mother would always look over at him, chin dripping with melted vanilla and gasp, ”Joseph Todd! Look at the mess you’re making!” He would just laugh, making the mess worse.

It was windy already, the wind getting worse even though the sun was getting higher and brighter in the summer sky. We kept having to hold our napkins and wrappers down with random parts of our body, still trying to stuff our faces. Our attempts of restraining them with our elbows eventually failed. All napkins and wrappers went up in the sky further and higher than that stupid Barbie kite I had ever did.

I crawled on my knees at first, grasping at the air in vein. Kim was running full throttle towards the plastic bag then veering off to the playground forgetting about it. It was just my father and I. Chasing subway wrappers. His legs were long like the tree trunks in our backyard and lean from biking miles and miles of pavement every morning before the earth woke up. His arms reached up and snatched his Bull’s ball cap from his scalp. He was now swiping at the wrappers, like somehow the red angry Bull glaring on the front of his hat would help his cause.

My Keds took me up and down, up and down. I was wailing my arms and maneuvering my scrawny legs around toddlers picking their noses and eating rocks while their mothers flapped their tongues to other mothers about K-mart sales and Huggies. My index finger grazed the corner of a wrapper just enough for me to cup my hand together around it like I was holding grains of sand, trying not to let even one grain slip away. I don’t know why I didn’t just let the wrapper go and hop onto one of those rusted park toys and move on. I ran back to where my father was still chasing flying napkins with his hat. I held the Subway wrapper high over my head like an Olympic athlete on their Country’s victory lap.

“Daddy! Daddy! Look! I caught the wrapper!” I hollered, still flapping towards him like a wild goose. He turned around and looked at me through his dark glasses. I couldn’t see whether his eyes were smiling or even possibly looking straight past me to somewhere else. Then he smiled through his facial hair, took the wrapper from my tight grip and took it to the nearest park trashcan.

We walked to find Kim, probably swinging like a wild ape on the monkey bars somewhere. As we walked in silence my father ruffled my curly knob head and I knew what he meant. On the way back to our blue-gray house I looked to my father’s rear view mirror, catching him watching his youngest daughter. He smiled with his eyes, letting them wrinkle in the corners like they did when Kim flew her dinosaur kite, looking into the sunlight. I smiled back and he knew what I meant. I wasn’t chasing Subway wrappers that day and neither was he. We both knew that.

Why I Write. (Creative Nonfiction semester one)

                                                            Why I Write

Why do I write? I write for many things and sometimes many people. Mostly, I write to take everything built up in my heart and to purge it. Joy, sorrow, revenge, peace, every single raw emotion that is simply taking up too much space. Sometimes it isn’t merely a feeling; I purge people too. I write their stories or the pain I felt for them or because of them and then I let it go. I let them go and everything they ever made me feel about life, love or my worth.

I remember being a kid, knees shoved all the way up to my chest in my father’s jet-black mustang. The engine was loud but the melodies of Billy Joel were louder. As the music moved through my curls and pumped into my veins, I began to write on the windows fogged by the warm rain. I wrote my name, maybe also something about a boy in my 5^th grade class. I think his name was Bobby. What a boring name for a boy to like. When I wrote, I could see the world more clearly and people could see just a quick glimpse of the tiny girl in the black mustang. I realized I liked that.

I write to see the world and the world to see just enough of me to make them wonder. I write for myself and the occasional passer-by who decides to look over just at the right moment at a stop-light. I write for moments. Moments of pain or persecution. Moments of happiness. Moments of birth. I write because tearing shreds of my carpet would in no way make my father, hooked up to some poison disguised as medicine, hurt less. I write because my mother is far away, sometimes sad and I can’t hug her neck. I write because of the new life my sister brought through child baring pain, demonstrating the painful but beautiful suffering of my family. I write because of the love forbidden and the love I took a bite of anyway.  I write because a cup of joe can’t fix everything, even though on a Monday morning it sometimes feels that it does.

I write because speaking makes my face red and my hands shake. The keyboard could care less if I’m socially impaired. The ink in my pen doesn’t seem to mind that I would rather fill the lines of paper than the air with small talk. I write because sometimes a twenty-mile run still isn’t enough to let it all seep out. I write because at times my entire mind is a battlefield and the only weapon worth my time is a pencil.

I don’t remember the exact moment when I decided I wanted to be a writer. Was it in the jet black mustang with my full-bearded father, or the moment I saw him, facial hair falling out all over his pillow from disease? Was it in sixth grade when I was forced to write some “book” and use “imagination” and got in trouble for making all of my characters die in the end out of spite? Or was it the moment I experienced true pain and jotted down scribblings on my bedroom mirror, frizzy-haired and fourteen years of age? I think it was a compilation of all of it. I needed an outlet. A place to put all of those moments I didn’t want to recall anymore; a place to put all the moments I wanted to keep forever.

I believe it is impossible for any writer to pinpoint an exact moment in time they decided to write and why. As writers we do not discover writing; it discovers us. It finds us in our own mess and in our successes. It finds us in bed when we’re screaming into our pillows. It finds us when we’re driving down a flat highway, windows down and hand moving with the wind. Why do I write? I write because sometimes experiencing life once isn’t enough for me. I want to feel it, hear it and taste it all again. For me, writing does that.  I write to die and sometimes live again.

The Stepmom Chronicles: Cross The Line.

    The rain began to make it's home in my frizzy locks as I hurried to fill as many balloons with water from the hose as possible before the downpour. My hands were soaked from popped balloons as my fingers fumbled around in the 9 o'clock darkness, trying to work just enough to tie those blasted dime-sized balloons shut.
     I threw the most recent water-filled balloon into the bucket and ran onto the porch.
     Snagging a limp bag of Popsicles, I walked through the bedroom door to three rambunctious boys, jumping and bright eyed to the contents I carried.
      "Britney, I have a scratch," I hear.
      I bent over, hands still cold from carrying the treats that now dripped down the boys' mouths to their fresh pajamas.
      Kissing the scratch that you could barely see, even squinting and two centimeters away, my six year old's smile jumped from his soft porcelain face to mine.

In that moment, still soaked with rain, my knees on the lego-infested carpet, I realized; I am a mother.

As a step parent, you are always trying to stay on the balance beam, keeping your weight equal on both sides of your limbs.

"Am I leaning too much to the left? No wait, to the right?"
You're wobbling so much from thinking too hard, you don't even know which side to lean into.

Stop.

Dear step mom, stop caring about "the line."
The only line between you and your step children, is the one you make.

Every family is different, as is every step-parent to child relationship.
You may not want to kiss boo-boos.
You may not want to teach them to tie their shoes or wipe their noses.
You may want to kiss every single scrape, cut, owie your step child gets from crashing their bike on your steep driveway.
You may want to hold their hand and kiss their chocolate-covered faces.

The relationship you have with your step child is yours and yours alone.

You will be told you are over stepping your boundaries.
You will be told you are too involved or not involved enough.
You will never make everyone happy, just like a biological parent- you have to figure out how you want to be a parent.

Yes, you are a parent.
Yes, you are a mother.
Yes, you are a father.

DNA has never been what defines someone as a parent.
Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

When you're kissing microscopic boo boos, folding sheets, cooking dinner, filling up 300 water balloons for just 5 minutes of giggles...remember, you are just as much of a parent if they had come straight from your blood line.

Screw "the line."
Cross it.
Hopscotch all over that line.

Do not be afraid to love your step children fiercely.
Do not be afraid to cross boundaries to show them you're not just an extra.
Do not be afraid to bounce them in your lap, to call them your own.
Do not be afraid to be a parent and a good one.

Put the step in step parent by being the stepping stones for your children to greater, lovelier, greater things.

Take Ownership.
Cross. The. Line.

Oh Be Careful Little Eyes What You See

O Be careful little eyes what you see, 

O Be careful little eyes what you see, 

There's a Father up above Who is looking down with love,

So Be careful little eyes what you see.

I remember the Wednesday evenings I would sing this tune in my mother's "Rainbow" class.

The room was filled with spry 4 year olds and a rust-colored carpet that smelled of both spit and syrup. 

I swung my white Keds and sang the words, well mumbled half of them, totally unaware of anything but the catchy tune and little Johnny sticking his gum underneath his blue seat.

As we grow, we are taught to "not watch those movies" with "that one rating."

Don't look at dirty magazines.

Don't watch Cartoon Network after 11 p.m.

You know, all the basic conservative home rules.

I followed those.

Yet, I noticed that sometimes my little eyes can't help but see things totally out of my control.

I noticed my husband's eyes will sometimes see things they can't block out.

I noticed my boys' eyes will constantly be exposed to images that they can not simply "blink" away.

Commercials with women moaning over a...cheeseburger?

Cartoons with full chested females on Nickelodeon? 

The ballpark.

School.

Church. 

The gym.

The bus.

The street.

Chuck-e-cheese.

My four men are exposed to sex everywhere.

What do I do when their eyes cannot be shielded?

Sure, I would love to walk around with my husband and three step-sons, covering their eyes and spraying every half-dressed female I see with pepper spray, yelling, "MODEST IS HOTTEST HONEY!" only soon to find myself in the county jail.

Rewind. 

A few weeks back, a woman old enough to know better, struts by me and all of my guys in a tube top and shorts that would make an old dog turn it's head.

Initial reaction: Smoke out of my nostrils and to grab the first baseball bat from a random 8 year old that I can snag and whop some sense into her.

Reaction in reality: Smile and calmly give the bulging eyes to my husband saying, "Are you kidding me? I'm here in jeans and a baseball tee and this lady is dressed like the sun is about to make it's debut."

The reality is that we as mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, whatever- simply can NOT control what our little eyes and what the little eyes that we want to guard so dearly, see.

What can we do in this seemingly hopeless, booty short-wearing world?

We wear jeans at a summer baseball game.

We wear those shorts over our bikini bottoms.

We throw that t-shirt back over our sports bra after our run before walking through the door to our little eyes glancing up from their video game.

We consistently and purposely demonstrate how a virtuous woman dresses in our home.

Am I saying you should go to bed and make your husband stare at those nauseatingly hideous flannel pants with 15 holes in them?

No.

Am I saying you should wear a robe over your swimsuit when you take your kids to the beach?

No.

I'm saying when you wake, after brushing the rats out of your hair and stepping into your closet, think, "What outfit would I not be embarrassed for little eyes to see me wearing?"

"Would I be okay with my children's future spouse to wear this?"

"Would I be okay with another woman to walk by my husband wearing this?"

If you do not yet have a husband or children, please dress with purpose.

You will one day have a husband and kids too.

Dress your body for the kind of man that will have only eyes for you.

Do not dress to be hott, dress to be valued. 

We can only guard the hearts we love so much.

We can only live and dress as a virtuous woman consistently and pray they see that.

We can only live by faith that they will get it.

"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion."

-Proverbs 11:22