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

Happy Birthday Daddy. I Ran For You.

It only seemed fitting to celebrate my father's 50th birthday with a run; the thing which gives me so much life.

Sweat and tears met like dance partners at the climax of their performance on my upper lip.

As my legs pumped, my mind took over.

For the last four years my family has wrestled with God.
There were so many days all I wanted to do was tap out.
Suffering can really mess up your idea of salvation.
I couldn't understand how my loving Heavenly Father could look upon my earthly daddy, barely able to walk to the mailbox and not bend down and save him.

A year ago I wasn't sure if my father would be celebrating another birthday.
That makes today something to celebrate; something to reflect on as my legs trudged past the weeds still damp with dawn's dew.

I ran for the pain he felt, the countless blood drawings, pokes and prodding's.
Remember that night you described in Hawaii, of you laying on the hotel room floor, body writhing with unbearable distress?
I ran for that night, too.
I ran for the patients you saw in spiritual turmoil, a human much like you.

I ran for the time I saw mom lay you gently into your chair, kissing your now bald head with such tenderness  and warmth.
I ran for the time you were really high on drugs before a biopsy, laying on a hospital bed.
You looked over at me hunched in a blue chair, a child confused of what her father was becoming.
You smiled through the drugs saying, "my daughter Britney. Isn't she so beautiful?"
I don't think you will ever remember this, but I will.
I ran for that moment.

I ran for all the times I looked across the room at my sister, both of us giving a half smile, filled with so much pain but so much hope; a smile of understanding one another in that exact moment.

I ran for all the times you felt helpless.
I ran for the times you longed to sweep my mother up in your arms and tell her it was all going to be just fine, but could only lay in bed with such a tiredness only cancer patients can know.

I ran for you, mother.
I ran for all the times you tried to act like life was normal for me and Kim.
Keeping busy and hugging me like it was all okay.
I ran for the times you just wanted to be taken care of when you were so busy taking care of your family.

I ran for the moment I saw my father hold his first grandson.
In that moment, my father looked like my father, not a tired or worn out man trying to hold it together.
A part of him was fixed that day.
I'll never know what part, but for the first time in years...I saw hope in my father's eyes.

I ran for all the doubt you've felt.
I ran for all the times you wanted to take mom all the places she wanted to go.
I ran for all the times you had to wear that blasted mask.

I ran for hope.
I ran for thankfulness.
I ran because God never let us tap out.
I ran because it was the only way my body could express what my heart was feeling.
I ran because you're here.
I ran because of your life and all the life you've given me because of it.

I ran because I love you, dad.

Happy birthday.