Category: women

Giving it Away

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

If you walked into my house right this minute, saw a coffee cup you liked, and asked me where I got it, I might send it home with you. I might do the same with a sweater, a plant, or a book on my shelf. I am the same way at school. If a student or colleague needs something — Motrin, a snack, a notebook, a pair of socks, lotion, or $5 — if I have it, I am likely to insist that they take it.

I wasn’t born this way. I learned this behavior from my mom.

She, of course, made sure that my siblings and I had everything we needed in our childhood — food (even if it was French toast for dinner), clothing (even if it was on clearance or we had to put it on layaway), a house to live in (even if it was an unglamorous two bedroom apartment that one summer), and medical attention (including all the pairs of glasses I abused while growing up). I don’t know how she did it, to be honest, not on her pay from working as a unit clerk at a small community hospital. She did have monthly child support checks from my dad, but those probably covered groceries — there were four of us!

Nevertheless, she was a master of giving — birthday gifts, Christmas presents, and virtually anything she had that she thought you might want or need.

My first memory of this was when I was 18 (although I am sure it wouldn’t take much effort to conjure up earlier examples). It was my high school graduation night and what with senior banquet and prom and such, I hadn’t planned anything to wear under my cap and gown. I didn’t find anything in my closet, so I moved on to my mom’s. This was not an obvious choice because my mom was barely 5’2″ and shall we say a little rounded at the edges. I was a 5’6″ teenager! But, I found a simple dress in her closet, tried it on, and — Bingo!

“Mom, can I wear this dress tonight?”

“Sure! You can just have it!”

She was never possessive of her things — she held them loosely, even when she didn’t have much. Whenever, as adults, we left her house, we took with us storage containers full of food in cloth totes. She was always finding us things that might be useful around our homes – cleaners, decor, tools, or foods we might like to try.

She sent us care packages of socks and candles and candy and gift cards. In fact, she coordinated her church’s initiative to send care packages to college students. Every Christmas she mixed, cut out, and hand decorated dozens of cookies so that everyone she loved could get their own supply. She never missed a birthday, anniversary, or any kind of holiday without at least sending a card. Actually, the night before she died, she signed a sympathy card for her neighbor whose sister had just died. Giving was her joy.

So, last week, as I worked through her house, it wasn’t difficult to imagine people having her things — a granddaughter having a ring, a daughter taking some cherished photos, and her son taking the wooden bench that sat inside the front door. This all seemed right.

One granddaughter agreed to take bedroom furniture that has been handed down now five generations. Another took the Fiestaware that mom had collected piece by piece over the years. One by one, folks spoke up and took knick knacks, dish ware, and other items that Mom had treasured over the years.

I posted some items for free or for a little cash on Facebook Marketplace. One gentleman came for TV trays and left with those plus a shower chair plus a few random tools from the garage.

One young woman passed me some cash for a television and its stand, and I helped her carry it out the door.

My favorite give would’ve delighted mom. A woman reached out on Facebook to claim two free chairs. She was moving in with a parent in the wake of the other parent’s passing and needed them for their new-ish kitchen. I asked if she needed anything else as she and her partner and their young daughter came into the house. We discovered that one of our twin beds would be great for the girl. My brother and I marched the family downstairs to take a look, and when we entered the completely purple room, the little girl gasped! “Purple! My favorite color! Could I have this blanket?”

My reflexive yes is what my mother would’ve said.

The girl’s mother timidly asked about the purple curtains, and I started taking them down.

“What about the sheets?”

We loaded her up, and the girl hugged her squishy new blanket all the way to their truck.

They were thrilled with their chairs, their bed, and all the purple things we could find, and we were thrilled to have them take it. That whole exchange would’ve made mom’s week.

That’s just how she was — our mom who worked her whole life for any hourly wage had no greater joy than giving it all away. How lucky am I that I’ve got the opportunity to carry on that tradition?

Sometimes (ok, often!) in this space, I ask you for things that my students or my colleagues might need — and every time I ask, you all come through. Maybe you, like my mom, hold onto your things loosely. How lucky am I to be the conduit of your generosity — the carrier of your gifts — the witness to so much joy!

…they shared everything they had… Acts 4:32

Good Grief

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

It’s the mundane everyday moments that catch me unaware. I hop into my car at the end of a work day, reach for my phone to call my mom — and it hits me. Mom won’t be receiving phone calls any more.

Source

The obvious moments are emotional, of course, but you can see those coming — the moment she stopped breathing, when the funeral home employees loaded her onto a gurney and gave me a minute to say goodbye, when I wrote a note to her only sister telling her how special she was to mom — each of these moments made me sob, of course, but they were not surprising.

It’s when I’m standing at communion and the pastor touches my am and says something about the “communion of the saints” or when my high school buddy who once ensured that I was voted “moodiest” in my high school class, showed up at the church right before the service just to ask how I was doing — these moments catch me off guard and I am immediately overcome.

And it’s not just the weeping; it’s also unbridled annoyance. I think because the loss of my mother is so fresh, because I’m still spending a lot of emotional and cognitive energy trying to believe that it’s real, I get annoyed at things that normally wouldn’t phase me. This is not a passing irritation, it’s a funk that settles on my face that leaks out of my mouth in the form of tone— the kind of tone you wouldn’t dare take with your mother.

This funk settled on me a week or so ago after a pretty run-of-the-mill series of events. First my supervisor sent me an email outlining my failure to update a document according to her specifications, then I received a delivery of a shirt that was supposed to be 100% cotton that certainly was not, then I proceeded to spend too much time weeding the garden when the day was well over 90 degrees. I came into the house in an overheated body, perseverating over the email and trying to initiate a return of the shirt when my husband cheerily arrived home and asked me a benign question. I unknowingly snarled my response (thank you, funk). A few minutes later, he asked an unrelated benign question and I, again unintentionally, snapped an answer. By this time, he had a valid response, which I didn’t know how to process — not with all the grief encased in irritation. No. At this point, I was on overload.

And what did I do? Did I talk through the situation with maturity? take ownership of my feelings? apologize?

No.

I retreated, withdrew, isolated.

For 36 hours.

And then, because we had a road trip on the calendar, I forced myself, sitting in my co-pilot seat, to open the vault, messily let go of irritation, and find, once again, the tears, the grief, the loss, the reality.

These emotional expressions, I’ll call them that, are not new to me. I have not seen them in a long while, but they feel very familiar. They take me right back to my childhood and adolescence when my parents divorced and my dad was living in another state. That was my first time experiencing deep grief — the practical loss of my dad. He’s still living, at almost 88, but since the time that I was about 8, he’s been removed, at a distance, no longer accessible in the ways that a girl needs and wants her dad to be, so it makes sense to me now — now that I’m an adult experiencing the loss of a parent — that those feelings I felt in my childhood were real, and though valid, outside of my control.

However, at that time, I was the only one of my siblings that I remember emoting in such a way. My two brothers and my sister seemed fine. They were getting on with life, while I was throwing myself on my bed sobbing, lashing out in anger and sarcasm, and generally feeling volatile.

Others apparently thought me volatile, too, because the feedback I remember getting was to quiet down, stop crying, and get a hold of myself.

I, at 8 or 10 or 14, didn’t have the self-awareness or the language to say, “I feel betrayed by my parents, devastated by their divorce, and totally unmoored,” and even if had, in 1976 or 1981, what would those around me have said? “Oh, well, didn’t that happen a while ago? Your parents didn’t die did they?” In other words, get over it.

The people around me didn’t have the awareness or the language for what to do with me, what to say to me, so they did what they knew how to do and tried to shush me.

And, feeling unmoored and ashamed of all the feelings I was having, I tried to shush. I really did, but all that did was push all the hurt down where I buttoned it up and tried not to be so moody. Over time, I learned to be a soldier, to power through, to kick butts and take names.

And, if you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time, you know that that strategy — the butt kicking and name taking — worked for a while, but it took a toll, and eventually that soldier had to put her rucksack down, but even if she hadn’t, even if she was still out in these streets large and in charge, even she might have some genuine and surprising feelings upon losing her mother.

But I am no longer a soldier — I have to remind myself of this when the irritation builds past funk into anger and I try to take out an unsuspecting customer service agent — I am no longer a soldier. I am a woman who has done years of therapy, who has spent the last twelve (12!) years bringing her vulnerability to the pages of this blog, who has learned that the best way to manage emotions is — shockingly! — to feel them, to talk about them, to write about them, to allow myself to have them.

And as I’m having all of these emotions, I am realizing that though my mom was not perfect (none of us are), she always — ALWAYS! — had my back. She flew to me when I needed her, she cheered me when I won and consoled me when I lost. She laughed with me almost every time we talked but she never — not once — cried with me.

She, too, had been shushed into silence too many times. She didn’t feel safe letting her hurt show. Vulnerability was too scary, so she soldiered through emotional and physical pain the likes of which some of us may never see. And she never once allowed herself to shed a tear — not in the 60 years that I knew her.

What a burden to carry. No wonder she was exhausted and made her exit as soon as she felt she had permission.

Let me learn from that. Let me feel each of these emotions. Let me talk about them. Let me write about them. Let me cry.

I think I’ll do a little bit of that now.

There is a time for everything…a time to weep…a time to mourn… Ecclesiastes 3:4

Unlearning

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

Much of the work of my adult life has been unlearning the internalized messages I have picked up inadvertently. Messages about my identity, about how the world works, about the value of others, and even about my faith are regularly being viewed under a microscope to see if they hold up to scrutiny.

The first time I remember doing this was in the counselor’s office in the mid 80s where I was being treated for an eating disorder. Regularly in my sessions, my therapist would ask me questions that would confuse me. Why did I need to lose weight? Why did I believe I would be more attractive if I was thinner?

Why would he ask me such questions when the answers seemed obvious. Throughout my whole twenty year life, I had learned to believe that thin was better than fat, that I’d better watch my weight, that “those fat people over there” were disgusting, probably lazy, and not worth as much as “we” thinner people. I was ever anxious that I, in my body, which was just a tad larger than those of my friends and my sister, was ounces away from losing my status as one of “us” and becoming one of “them”.

In fact, in my freshman year of college, like many overwhelmed, depressed, and floundering college students, I did put on ten or fifteen pounds, and people I barely new — dorm mates and classmates — repeated the refrain I’d heard at home, I’d better be careful. I should get my weight under control. Did I really want to eat that dessert?

I believed their messages, and in fear and trembling, I overcorrected. I began a regimented way of life that escalated into anorexia nervosa. I lost all the weight I’d gained my freshmen year plus another 20 or so pounds over the summer before transferring to a much smaller school in the fall.

There, my excessively thin body soon gained its reward. That very fall, I was selected for the Homecoming court. I’m guessing I was selected solely based on my appearance because no one could have known the real me. When I wasn’t studying in the library, I was secretly writing down every food I ate, calculating calories, and sneaking to step on the industrial scale in cafeteria where I worked to make sure the number continued to go down — the only way I knew to measure my value.

I felt so out of place on the stage being crowned in one of the most ironic moments of my life. My cohort was apparently applauding my external worth, while I was trembling on the inside — afraid of being revealed as an imposter, knowing that what they saw was artificial, a fragile facade concealing a very broken interior.

That was close to 40 years ago, so you might think I have completely unlearned that lie. That might be true if everyone in the culture I live in had learned it, too. Alas, they have not. Messaging about the connection between thinness and beauty persists today. It has lost some of its power what with the greater diversity of representation of women in the media, the elevation of body positive messaging (if you are willing to look for it), and the shift in the fashion industry toward inclusivity, but the message remains among us — thin is better than fat, especially for women who live under continuous pressure to present themselves in flawless well-toned bodies despite genetics, health, or circumstance.

So, my unlearning continues. When I hear my mind say, You’ve put on a couple of pounds; you’d better be careful. I ask myself questions that I started hearing from my therapist years ago: Why are those pounds bad? What will change about you if you decide to keep them rather than lose them? Why are you connecting those pounds to your value as a person?

Why indeed.

What is true about my body is that it is strong — it has carried my children, it has finished half marathons, it has communicated with me when I have overworked, it has kept going when my mind has refused to rest. It is strong and beautiful and resilient. It has value at any size. Period.

Do you see how it works? It takes awareness, diligence, and intentionality to unlearn the messages we carry with us all the time, often unknowingly.

My students and I just started reading Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, a memoir of the comedian’s life growing up in South Africa during Apartheid. Before we read the book, we start with learning about unconscious bias — the beliefs that we have that shape the way we view the world. We talk about bias against people of other races of course, but we also talk about gender bias, religious bias, disability bias, and even weight bias.

The very nature of unconscious bias is that we don’t know that we have it. That’s why I was confused when my therapist asked me questions that challenged my unconscious bias– my beliefs were so ingrained, I accepted them as fact — didn’t everyone feel this way? didn’t everyone know that being overweight was bad?

So as my students and I learn about unconscious bias, I have them take the Harvard Implicit Associations Test. This is an ongoing study that gathers data from participants regarding their bias around a variety of topics. It takes about 10 minutes per topic such as race, age, weapons, or weight. The participant clicks on images in response to the directions, and the speed of the response reveals the participants’ unconscious associations. It’s fascinating.

Now, I will admit that this is uncomfortable work. In all my years of teaching students of color, I have been working to unlearn the racist beliefs that permeate our culture — the not always subtle implication that Black people are poor and dangerous and not as smart as white people. I know that these statements are untrue. I have countless examples of students, coworkers, and friends of color who are wealthy and brilliant and successful and generous and kind, and yet my unconscious bias still sometimes reveals itself. I don’t like when this happens.

Let me give you an example. I was venting to my instructional coach one day. She is a brilliant educator who, like me, is committed to educational equity. She has taught in Detroit Schools for thirteen years and has risen through the ranks because of her commitment to excellence and her undeniable ability to support other educators in instructional design and implementation. Also, she is Black. It had been a difficult school day and the halls were loud and unruly, and I said, “Man, it is zoo-y in here today.”

She replied, “Well, I wouldn’t use the word zoo-y.” She was matter of fact, not accusatory, not incriminating. She just said it, and gave me a beat to process.

“Oh, wow,” I said out loud. “I never considered that using that word implies that our students are animals. Yikes. I won’t say that again. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

Even typing the words right now, I have an ache in my chest. How could I have used such language when I work so hard to push against racist ideas?

My coach happened to be in my classroom a few weeks ago when I shared this example with my students. I said, “If we really want to uncover our unconscious bias, we have to give the people around us permission to point it out to us. It was brave of my colleague to say something to me. She did not know how I would react.”

“Wait, why is zoo-y a bad word,” one of my students asked.

My colleague stepped in, “For many generations, white people used language that made Black people seem like animals so that they could justify the way they treated them — with slavery, with separate bathrooms and water fountains, with unequal schooling, you name it. To say that the school feels zoo-y implies that you are animals. And, you are not.”

All eyes on her. Silence. Reprogramming in process. A moment of unlearning. Priceless.

I continued, “Maybe you have heard me say something that revealed my unconscious bias in this class. I am giving you permission right now to let me know when that happens. It is the only way I can bring these beliefs to my consciousness, put them under a microscope, and reveal them for what they are. That’s the only way I can hope to change.”

A few days later, one student, my boldest, most confident rising star, interrupted me when I was explaining the term “white privilege” and how I have benefitted from it. I’m not sure what I said, to be honest, but she challenged my delivery and said, “I wouldn’t say it like that again.” It takes a lot of courage for an 18 year old girl to challenge her teacher in the middle of a lesson, so I stopped, heard what she had to say, thanked her for her courage, and practiced rephrasing my thoughts.

It was an uncomfortable moment for me, to be sure, but I am hopeful that it was a moment of agency for her. Perhaps she, too, will start on a lifelong journey of unlearning the things she has picked up about herself, her world, and the ways that she can operate within it.

The alternative is staying where we are, holding fast to every lie we have ever believed, which for me has felt like a trap. The unlearning, although at times uncomfortable, is liberating. In fact, it’s a transformation.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind

Romans 12:2

Gem of the Week: Kia*

~ Kristin ~ 3 Comments

This is the second in a sporadic series.

I met Kia last September. She had done poorly on last year’s NWEA MAP testing and had been identified, along with seven others from among our incoming freshman class, as being most in need of the Adolescent Accelerated Reading Intervention, the program I had been trained in last summer. (I described what our classroom’s version of AARI looks like in this post.)

I started pulling these eight into my classroom, one by one, to evaluate them by way of the QRI — The Qualitative Reading Inventory. This assessment requires students to first read lists of words sorted by grade level to determine their basic skills of decoding and identifying sight words — the ability to get words off the page. Some of my students read these lists fairly independently up to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade level; a few could barely make it through a second grade list. Once I got a glimpse at their ability to read, I had them read grade-level passages and answer comprehension questions — some that were easy to identify from the text, others that required inference. The majority of the eight freshmen I tested demonstrated the ability to read and comprehend at levels between the third and fifth grade; three were frustrated at first grade level or below.

How do students get to their freshmen year reading only at the first through fifth grade level? I suspect two reasons.

First, my students have grown up in Detroit Public Schools (and the charter schools, like mine, within that district) where they have received inconsistent instruction for a variety of reasons such as low attendance of both students and staff, insufficient funding and resources, and multiple out-of-school factors that impact learning such as housing and food insecurity, domestic disruption, trauma, and other realities that have grown out of centuries of systemic racism.

Second, even in the best of schools in the wealthiest of communities, the data shows COVID’s impact on learning over the last two years. Even students who had mostly face-to-face instruction over the two years of the pandemic have scored lower on standardized tests than expected. Students like mine, who had little to no schooling in the Spring of 2020 due to lack of technology and Internet connectivity, followed by one year of virtual instruction where they had to attempt to log in and focus despite many barriers including poor Internet, other siblings in the home (maybe even in the same room), family responsibilities, and the like, followed by another year of continuous transition between in-person and virtual instruction due to insufficient staffing, high COVID rates, and building issues, have been impacted much more dramatically. And, in addition to not being in school, most of my students report that they read very little or not at all between March 2020 and September 2022. That’s thirty months away from reading

It’s no wonder that when it was Kia’s turn to come into my room, she was a little nervous. She giggled a lot and apologized for missing words but did her best. I found her to be comfortable reading at the third grade level; the fourth grade passage was frustrating.

She has been in my room since September. I should say, she has sometimes been in my room since September. She’s been absent thirty-three times. And, on about a half-dozen occasions when she’s been in my class, she has fallen asleep to the degree that I have been unable to wake her. When she is present and awake, she is either fully engaged and a star participant or is having an emotional meltdown in response to a teasing comment from one of the boys in the class. She has demonstrated very little consistency, staying power, or resiliency.

So, when I pulled her out of class to retest her this past Tuesday, the first day back in the building after a two-week break, I did not have high expectations. I had already tested most of the others who had improved their reading scores by 1-3 grade levels in just one semester! I was hopeful, despite her poor attendance, that she would demonstrate the same growth.

We found a quiet corner of the building, and I asked, “Are you ready for this?”

“I’m nervous,” she replied.

“You’re going to do fine,” I said. “In fact, you’ve been telling me all semester that you don’t need this class. Here is your chance to prove it to me!”

I started her with a fifth grade passage, assuming two years’ worth of growth, and she aced it. We moved to the sixth grade passage. She missed a couple comprehension questions, but still fell in the ‘instructional’ range, so we moved on to the next passage which is labelled “upper middle school”. Again, she missed only a couple questions on a dense passage about the life cycle of stars, so we moved to a high school level passage. The text was two single-spaced pages with illustrations describing the functions of DNA and RNA. It took her a while to respond to the questions, as she had permission, according to QRI instructions, to go back to the text and find the answers, but she found them — enough to fall in the “instructional” range once again.

As I watched her read and then search for answers — her determination to prove that she could do this — I was getting choked up. The others had tried hard, too, but she was clearly on a different level.

When she finished, I said, “Kia, how do you feel?”

“I feel good!”

“Do you know what level you started at in September?”

“No.”

“You were comfortable at third grade level. Fourth grade level was frustrating.”

“Oh my God!” she said, covering her face in embarrassment.

“Be kind to yourself!” I explained. “We were just coming back after COVID! It was a very difficult time! How much did you read during COVID?”

“Nothing,” she said with a sheepish grin on her face.

“Right! Do you know you just read a complex biology text at the high school level?” I could barely get the words out because my throat was tightening.

“I did?”

“You understood all that stuff about cells and DNA and replication! Everybody can’t do that!”

She looked at me, locking eyes.

“Kia, you could be a nurse!”

“That’s what I want to be!” she smiled broadly.

“You can! You are very bright!”

She started crying, too. We hugged. I passed her a tissue, then I pulled myself together.

“Listen, Kia, I’m gonna be real with you. You have the stuff it takes to be a nurse, but you aren’t going to get there unless something changes. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I gotta come to school.”

“Yes, you’ve got to come to school. If you want to get into a nursing program, you need As and Bs from now on, and you have the ability to do that.”

We talked a little bit longer about how I was going to be after her, checking in on her, even after she has left my class when the semester ends in two weeks. Then we walked through the halls telling administrators and teachers about what she had accomplished — we needed to celebrate.

Everyone applauded her, hugged her, congratulated her — she was beaming.

The next day Kia showed up in my room before school asking to borrow a laptop. She’d lost her charger and hers was dead — had been dead for weeks. I loaned her my laptop, and said, “Here’s a charger. You can keep it.”

“Thank you! Now I can get caught up at home!”

She came to my class later that day, sat up straight, answered questions, and smiled broadly.

She dropped by my room the next day to say, “I’m making up all my missing work, Mrs. Rathje, and I’m staying awake in all my classes.”

“Amazing, Kia! Keep going!”

Do I think that Kia’s ability to read improved nine — 9! — grade levels in one semester? No. However, I think that some basic skills that had gone dormant during COVID were re-engaged. I believe Kia’s brain, like many others I see every day, had learned to “sleep” during the trauma and disruption of COVID, and needed to be woken up.

AARI for an hour a day five days a week, despite her absences, was enough to wake her up, and realizing her potential was the cup of coffee that put her in motion.

I tested Kia on Tuesday, and she was still going strong on Friday. I suspect her momentum will fluctuate. She’ll have hard days, she’ll get discouraged, and she’ll be tempted to go back to sleep, if just to get some relief.

She’s gonna need all kinds of encouragement to build the stamina she’ll need to make it all the way to a nursing degree, because all of the obstacles didn’t magically go away. She’s still going to have to get herself up every morning. She’s still going to have to show up. She’s going to have to learn to tune out the voices of adolescent boys who like to get a reaction out of her. She’s going to have to overcome a lot more than what I see on the surface — whatever is going on at home that allowed her to miss thirty-three days of school, whatever reason there is for the fact that she needs glasses and hasn’t had them for the entire first semester, whatever has happened in her life that makes her so tender to break down so easily from everyday jabs of a few adolescent boys.

She’ll leave my class at the end of this semester, but our school is small, and I will make an effort to see her most days — to engage with her and to wave the cup of coffee under her nose, to remind her of the future that is possible for her.

But mostly it’s going to be up to her to do the next hard thing day after day after day. It’s gonna get tiring. And lonely. And the odds are against her.

But with some determination and a few miracles, she just might make it.

May God make her path straight and may He raise up a great cloud of witnesses to cheer her on her way.

I’m happy to be one among the crowd shouting “Keep going! You’re almost there!”

*Name changed for confidentiality.

The Comfort of Connection

~ Kristin ~ 4 Comments
Click the arrow to listen

I think we can all agree that 2020 was a rough year what with the pandemic, quarantine, isolation, cancelled plans, loss of loved ones, and all. To be honest, 2021 was not a huge improvement. Sure, we got our vaccines and many of us went back to the office and started socializing again, but really, it was an extension of 2020, with more mask wearing, continued social distancing, the Delta variant, etc. So, when 2022 started with Omicron and further shut downs, many of us shrugged and said, “yeah, it is what is, I guess this is life now.” We’ve grown accustomed to one disappointment, one cancellation, one blow after another.

So, we took it in stride when our 13 year old golden retriever started sharply declining in January and continued on that trend through the end of February when we tearfully said goodbye. It was one more loss, one more sadness, in a season of continuous disappointment.

We grieved as though we’d been training for it. We sat in our tears for an entire weekend — luxuriating in loss.

The grieving was healing, I must say, weird as that sounds. Our collective tears were an acknowledgement of the heartache of losing a well-loved pet, but they were perhaps also a deep exhale after holding so much accumulated loss.

And that wasn’t the end of it. We had a couple days to catch our breath, and then, our stove, too, up and died. It had served its owners well for almost 30 years, and it was done. So, we went from grief to responsibility — the hunt for a new appliance that would be economical and reliable. We did our due diligence in the midst of a supply chain backup never mind that we were still slogging through grief and transition 

[Aren’t we all right now slogging through grief and transition?]

So, stove shopping we were doing when a family member reached out asking for the kind of support that requires a quickly purchased flight, an acquisition of pets, and a cross-country drive in a snowstorm. Being so asked, when once we might not have been asked, we did what love empowers us to do: the one became two — one showing up in the flesh, the other managing logistics at home and completing the stove purchase solo.

It’s rich, this life. When you show up, you share tears. You see, you hold, you carry, and something changes.

And so began March, another season of adapting, adjusting, and accommodating cats in a house that had grown familiar with one very special dog.

They were growing on us — the cats — when another family member called needing the kind of support that facilitates a cross-country move with a quick landing at the nest to manage some old business and catch a breath.

And, again, as we made space, there was more seeing, more holding, more carrying, more changing..

All this, of course, in the first three months of 2022 after the “unprecedented” experience of 2020 and 2021. And we find ourselves both filled and depleted. We are buoyed, and we are sunk low.

So, I wasn’t planning on going to the retreat that I have enjoyed most every year since I returned to Michigan — a gathering of more than 100 wives of pastors who have become sisters and friends. I didn’t have the gas in the tank to register, to pack, to coordinate, to plan. But, two days before it was scheduled to begin, I saw something on social media, and I realized what I would be missing if I did not go.

I made a few calls, clicked a few buttons, rearranged some details, packed, and drove North. I wasn’t in the door one minute when two friends called out, “we saved you a seat!” From one to the next I received hugs of welcome, of love, of acceptance, of belonging. I settled in as the singing began and then realized what the topic for the conference was — Very Ordinary Grace — Life in Relationship. For the next few hours, I sat in a room full of women, sharing our experiences of ordinary life. We shed tears of heartache. We confessed our mistakes. We celebrated God’s grace that continuously finds us in our mess and offers forgiveness, healing, and restoration.

I reconnected with friends who I hadn’t seen in months or years, and we offered one another our hugs, our attention, and our care. After two years of isolation, social distancing, and cancelled plans, we were leaning in, embracing, listening, connecting.

Isn’t that what we have been longing for — connection? Aren’t our relationships the richest parts of our lives? Standing with my husband and two daughters around our beloved dog as he goes to his last sleep, weeping tears of love, gratitude, and loss? Answering a FaceTime call from a tearful, fearful family member and assuring them that we will indeed meet their need. Sitting across a table from a loved one, acknowledging their deep hurt, challenging an old pattern, and watching, miraculously as something shifts.

On the heels of two years of isolation and disappointment, three months of losing and gaining [new hope in relationships, two cats, and the stove that was installed just last week], I gathered with a group of women to pause and acknowledge the miraculous God who has sustained us through the unprecedented, empowered us to do the ordinary, and miraculously blessed us in our relationships.

On Sunday morning, I sat in my hotel bed with Brene’ Brown’s Atlas of the Heart and opened to where I had left off –chapter 9, “Places We Go When We Search for Connection.” I had just spent the previous day in the book of Ephesians, examining the messy ways that we connect with those around us and the grace of God to show up in the midst of that mess. I could barely take in Brene’s words because I was stunned by the realization of how God had once again divinely stepped into the circumstances of my life — my messy, messy life — and had provided the grace for us to show up for others when we ourselves were depleted, how He had worked miraculous healing in the midst of our brokenness, and how He had then provided a place among women I trust so that I could pause and realize that He has surrounded me with love, acceptance, and grace. He has shown me once again that I belong.

And it was just the balm I needed, just the peek of sunlight that was able to brighten up a gloomy April weekend after two difficult years. Maybe it’s what we all need in the wake of this long hard season– some connection, some acceptance, some belonging, some grace.

Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another.”

Ephesians 4:32

Giving less than 100%

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

The first day of school is tomorrow! I’m excited — so excited! — but I am also grounding myself with intention. For the first time in my life, I am planning to give less than 100%.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve written lesson plans and have had them reviewed. I’ve organized my classroom — putting up posters and alphabetizing my classroom library. I’ve prepared Google slides and have read through them aloud. I’ve planned my scope and sequence for the first quarter and have already analyzed the interim assessment. However, when it comes to the day to day interaction with students — my output is going to look much different this year. I’ll be giving less than 100%.

The last time I was a classroom teacher, I gave so much of myself to my classroom and my students, that I forgot to take care of myself and I failed to fully take care of my family. My classroom got the best hours of my day, and my family got the scraps that were left.

It’s got to look different this time.

In my previous chapter, I launched out of bed at 5:30, hit the shower, dressed, and was in the kitchen prepping dinner and nudging teens to breakfast by 6:00. I’m sure my eyes scanned what my kids were wearing and what they were carrying as they piled into my car so that I could drop one at another school and drag the other two with me. I’m sure we talked through check-lists and after school activities in the car as I simultaneously scanned my mind for any lingering tasks I needed to complete before my students started trickling into my room.

Once I pulled into my parking space, my mind, fueled by the first cup of coffee I had sipped greedily on the drive, was fully engaged in the day’s instruction. What did I need to pull up on my screen? Did anything need to be printed? Was there a student I needed to speak to? Was a parent already waiting to meet with me?

I launched out of the car, grabbing bags full of papers, lunch, and a change of clothes, climbed two flights of stairs, unlocked my classroom door, and began the perpetual motion of the day — straightening desks, erasing and writing messages on the white board, wiping down surfaces, checking displays, and moving stacks of paper — so many stacks of paper.

In my classroom, students entered knowing that I would expect their engagement, their participation, and at least feigned interest in whatever essay we were writing, poem we were analyzing, or story we were reading. I loved the content I was teaching — composition, poetry, literature — and I operated under the assumption that if I threw all my passion into my teaching, that love I have for the content would spill over onto my students.

However, along with all my passion, I threw all my energy, all my resources, all my emotions, all of my self into the hours of the school day, and then when the bell rang at the end of the day, I didn’t sit down and take a rest. No — I found another gear and kept going. In the early days, I accompanied two of my children to cross country practice, ran their drills with them — all of their drills — and then drove them home. I finished preparing dinner for the family, washed dishes, showered, did laundry, responded to needs and demands, and sometimes even did more school work.

I don’t think there was ever a day that I didn’t make sure everyone had their physical needs met for the next day, but I am quite sure that I routinely missed checking in with their emotional needs — seeing the hurts they experienced throughout the day, stopping in my tracks to give them a hug, or taking the time to just sit in their presence and be. I know I missed doing all of that.

Sure, I got up early on Saturdays, went for run, drove to the outdoor market to buy fresh produce, picked up enough groceries to feed a small army of teenagers, and made sure the house was picked up, vacuumed, and wiped down, but did I, on those packed Saturdays, parent my children? come beside them in their own personal struggles? help them access their emotions? or did I merely model how to power through?

I’ve had to come to terms with the harsh reality that what my children ultimately saw from watching their mom power through for 10 years in a high school classroom was that she couldn’t sustain it. She was a tough old bird, and she kept that pace going strong for about 9 of those years, but that last year? Whew! That last year’s performance was strictly mediocre. Very average. Just so-so.

The body can only take so much powering through. And when it has had enough, it will shut right down on you. My most important students, the ones who lived in my house with me, learned that lesson right along with me. They learned that when you power through and fail to attend to your emotional and spiritual health, when you try by the force of your own will to do all the things for all the people, you miss some of the most precious parts of life — the face to face, nose-to-nose, cheek-to-cheek moments that give life meaning.

For the past six years, I have been sitting with that reality and tending to my body and to my emotions — intentional every day tending in the form of yoga, writing, therapy, massage, walking, talking, and sitting with all of the joy, hurt, pain, love, anger, sadness, and happiness that life has brought because of and in spite of my actions.

I have experienced so. much. healing.

And so, though my children all now live in their own homes and I have lost my in-person chance to model a better way for them, I am going into the classroom this time with re-set expectations for myself and for my students. I will be doing things differently.

I’ve been practicing a phrase that describes my new approach: giving my best without giving my all. I’m not sure exactly what it will look like, because this mindset is new to me, but I am picturing a me that is more present, that walks a little more slowly, who leaves her stack of papers on her desk when she walks away at the end of a long day, who decides in the moment that we aren’t going to finish the lesson as planned.

Will my students still know that I am passionate about writing, about reading, about poetry, about literature? I hope so, but more importantly, I hope that they see me demonstrate compassion, balance, flexibility, integrity, and kindness. I hope that I am able, in the moment, to say, “It seems we are all a little overwhelmed right now, how about we just pause for a minute and breathe?”

I never allowed myself that space in the last chapter. I never gave myself a moment to recognize that I was overwhelmed. I never took the opportunity to take a long calming breath. I kept on pushing, giving my best and giving my all.

And it showed — maybe not always to my coworkers or the students in my classroom, but it was definitely evident to my family. I was overtaxed and in denial, so I was often detached, preoccupied, reactive, and short-tempered with the people I care about most.

I’m planning to do it differently this time. Even in the season of Covid-19 where all of my students will be online, where I have to create a Google slide show for every class I teach, where I will be training my students to move from Zoom to Google classroom, to a short story, to Khan Academy, to a physical book right in front of them. Now, more than ever, it’s important that we take a breath, check in with one another, and allow ourselves to be mediocre, average, and downright so-so — even on our journey to excellence.

Because true excellence is recognizing your strengths AND your weaknesses; it’s knowing when to work hard AND when to walk away; it’s knowing when to push through AND when to sit down.

It’s knowing that it’s probably best to give less than 100%.

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

2 Cor 12:9

A Mother’s Day Revisit: A letter to my (our) mother(s)

~ Kristin ~ 6 Comments

Many, many years ago, you carried me in your womb, labored me into the world, and cradled me in your arms. You took me home to the nest you had prepared and began a daily practice of making sure that I was clean, well-fed, and protected.

You bathed me, diapered me, rocked me, fed me, and made sure that my older siblings were gentle with me. I was safe and secure in your nest.

My earliest memories have you shampooing my hair in the kitchen sink, combing out my tangles every. single. day., providing me with Sunday dresses and patent leather shoes, bringing home my favorite dot-to-dot books, and baking hand-cut Valentine cookies. I was loved and nurtured in our nest.

As I grew older and discovered my full-range of emotions, you laughed too loudly with me, listened compassionately as I railed about the injustices in my middle school life, stood on the other side of my slammed bedroom door, and felt my hurts.

In those early years, we often drove an hour to visit your mom, my grandma, in the space where you had grown up. She always greeted us with hugs and delicious meals. Although she was seemingly invincible–keeping an impeccable house and creating gourmet dishes for masses — I saw you quietly stepping in to help her — going up or down stairs to save her steps, lifting heavy loads, and helping her care for her mother, your grandma.

And when we visited your grandmother’s house, where laughter was abundant, the cookie jar was always full, fresh cut flowers were set out with intention and care, and my great grandma was queen, her daughter (your mother) stepped in with ease to fill a cup, lend a hand, or wipe a dish.

I grew up watching all of you, three generations of women, quietly care for your people — providing meal after meal, buying gift after gift, tending one sick or frail creature after another.

Eventually, I left home, but as I struggled to build my own life, I often came back to familiarity. On every return, I found a refrigerator stocked with my favorite foods, a bed made up with freshly-laundered sheets, and a heart full of love ready to receive and see me in whatever state I was in. You were one of the first to notice that I’d lost too much weight, that I’d found the wrong –and eventually the right — man, and that I was overwhelmed with parenting.

And, when you saw a need, you came to my nest — swooping in, as moms and grandmas do — bringing treats for the kids and a breath of reinforcing fresh air (and coffee) for me. Time after time you showed up and saw me where I was — in the midst of my less-than-perfect nest-building years — and you brought judgment-free support, some gadget or tool I needed, and candy. Always candy.

You also continued, during this time, to fly frequently back to your mother’s nest to care for her and your dad. As they grew older, you stepped in to accompany them to the doctor, to take them for lunch at Wendy’s, to arrange for care in their home, and finally, to help them leave their nest for good.

I believe it was the hardest work of your life.

Nevertheless, you carried on, not only helping me at my nest, but helping your other children with the nests they had, too, created. You flew from one to the other, providing support, offering food, and sharing joys and sorrows.

In time, you helped me launch my own into the world. We threw parties and wrapped gifts, and washed dishes — so many dishes. You’ve cheered them as they’ve found their way and consoled them when they’ve wandered off. When they’ve been absent, you’ve prayed them through, in groans sometimes too difficult for words.

And after so many decades of showing up, delivering supplies, and coming through in times of need, you find yourself at home, limited by illness and injury, and unable to do all the things that you’ve always done and still, in your heart and mind, would like to do. You feel frustrated and sad and so tired.

I see you, so I get in my car and drive to you. I don’t bring much other than companionship, an offer to drive you to the store, and a compelling need to eat all the candy in your candy dish.

I want to help — to decrease your pain, to take you places, and to support your desire to see your people — but mostly we sit and watch football, Animal Planet, or Call the Midwife. We look through pictures, we eat meals that you still insist on preparing for me, even though I’ve been preparing my own meals for over thirty years, and we go to bed early.

You make sure I have plenty of blankets, something to read, and snacks that I can eat, when I am the one who is trying to help you. And finally, you allow me to iron a few pair of pants and a couple of blouses, to wash a load of towels, and to drive you to the doctor.

Thank you.

Thank you for showing me how to show up, how to pay attention, how to lend a hand. Thank you for letting me show up, pay attention, and lend a hand to you.

I am, after all, the next generation of women who care for their people.

And you are, after all, my people.

Her children rise up and call her blessed.

Proverbs 31:28

Of passing laws and changing behavior, a Re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 3 Comments

In Monday’s post, I shared my journey away from being a one-issue voter. In this post, which I wrote in May of 2019, I explore how effective laws are at changing behavior.

This year eight states have passed laws limiting access to abortion; Alabama passed a law this week directly prohibiting abortion except when the mother’s life is at risk or the baby has no chance to survive.

As the news is reported, the reactions can be heard across the nation. One camp is celebrating, believing these battles are signs they’ve won the war. Another is rallying its troops, preparing for the fight of their lives.

And I’m sitting here asking if we’re doing it all wrong.

Will passing these laws eliminate abortion in our country?

Do laws change behavior?

Does the law prohibiting alcohol consumption under the age of 21 stop underage drinking? Did it stop you? Or did it merely force you to find ways to conceal the fact that you were drinking?

I had one of my first drinks around age 15 in a friend’s basement an hour before a school dance. A dozen of us drank too much, piled ourselves into cars driven by those who shouldn’t have been driving, and, by the grace of God, made it to the dance. Things could’ve gone much differently.

Actions pressed into hiding don’t often turn out well.

Prior to Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion up to the age of viability, women got abortions illegally. No official records were kept, obviously, but researchers now estimate that approximately 800,000 illegal abortions were performed annually prior to 1973 (The Guttmacher Institute). Women snuck around corners into dark alleys, paid people who may or may not have had medical expertise, and took risks that often ended their lives or left them permanently unable to bear children. They sought out secret abortions regardless of a law that prohibited them.

Let me stop right here and say that I am not pro-abortion. Actually, I imagine very few people would say that they like abortion — even among the most liberal pro-choice advocates. However, I am questioning whether restrictive legislation will decrease the number of abortions performed in our country.

I am wondering if the answer to decreasing the number of abortions and changing the hearts and behaviors of those who would choose abortion lies instead in changing the culture in which women are pressed into desperate situations — a culture where sexual impropriety is the norm and where the words of women are often not believed.

What if we could change the culture that recently elected a president who has bragged about his sexual exploitation of women? a culture that leaves thousands of rape kits in warehouses — untested for years — while perpetrators make more women into victims? What if we could change a culture that shames women who rely on public assistance into one that provides all women (and men) with resources — for contraceptives, mental health, medical costs, and child care?

We need to look at such a cultural shift because creating bills and laws that outlaw behavior do not, in and of themselves, eliminate that behavior.

In a country where it is illegal to buy, sell, or use illicit drugs, we have one of the biggest opioid epidemics in history. In 2017, 47,600 people died from an opioid overdose in the United States alone — where heroin is illegal and prescription opioids are supposedly regulated (Centers for Disease Control). In 2017, 2.2 million Americans admitted to using cocaine monthly; 473,000 admitted to using crack monthly (Delphi Health Group). The last time I checked, both cocaine and crack were prohibited in the U.S.

Laws do not eliminate behavior, they merely push it behind closed doors.

Not only that, laws often position us one against another. They put us in camps, as though we are at war with one another. Haven’t we sorted ourselves as either pro-life or pro-choice, as if this complex issue could be boiled down to either/or?

The problems we face are more complicated than that — abortion is but a symptom of a much larger problem. One that is quite complex. In this country, which was founded on the principle that all [men] were created equal, we have not historically extended liberty to people who were not [white] men. Women (and people of color, and most especially, women of color) in our country have long felt unheard, disrespected, and undervalued. They have long been dismissed, abused, underpaid, and neglected.

Women who have found themselves in desperate situations, have sometimes chosen abortion when the alternative has been shame, condemnation, parental or spousal punishment, physical harm, an inability to provide, or having to raise a child born of assault. Deprived of other forms of agency, women have chosen the most desperate of actions.

The solution to the problem is not merely prohibiting abortion. No, if you want to value life, you have to value all life, and that starts with valuing the lives of women. Seeing women, listening to women, paying women equally, promoting women, electing women, and most important of all — caring for women.

In this country of wealth, education, and privilege, certainly we can handle complex problems such as this. Surely we have the wherewithal to consider a solution that is multi-faceted and takes into account the welfare of all — the unborn and those who are already living.

So, instead of pouring time and money into overturning Roe v. Wade, a law that has been affirmed as constitutional, what if we tried a different approach? What if we tried to change our culture by coming together, listening to one another, hearing each other’s stories, and working together to find unique and complex solutions? Right now, we are staying in our own lanes, each convinced that he is going the right way, refusing to cross paths, take detours, or share the ride. When we refuse to communicate, when we resist difficult dialogue, we lock ourselves in opposition; we prohibit change.

And don’t we want change? Don’t we all want what is best for our country and the people who live within it? Don’t we want all women, men, and children (born and unborn) to be safe and valued?

I don’t have the answers, but I do have plenty of questions.

If you stand against abortion, do you also stand with and for women and children? Do you befriend them? even if they don’t look like you? Do you encourage them? how? Do you provide for them? In what way?

If you are pro-choice, what actions are you taking to support and sustain the lives around you? to offer a variety of choices that may or may not include abortion? Are you willing to interact with those who say they are pro-life? Are you willing to sit down over a cup of coffee and have a real conversation? Are you willing to listen openly, without formulating rebuttal in your mind?

I recently had the opportunity to share the room with some recovering alcoholics. I listened carefully to their stories and their conversations, and I learned from them. Do you know what got them to stop drinking? Was it a law? Not typically. Sure some addicts dry up when they are arrested or thrown in jail, but more stop drinking and stay sober when they have, in finding the bottom, looked up to see a support system gathering around them — a bunch of fellow wanderers who are stumbling together toward a better life. They aren’t shaking their fists and pointing fingers at each other. No, they are lending a hand or sharing a ride; they are reaching out, listening, and showing up.

Wouldn’t it be great if the mere passage of laws remedied the ills of a society?

It doesn’t work that way.

We’re much more broken than that, my friends. Pointing fingers, passing judgement, heaping on shame, and throwing people in jail do not fix brokenness.

Brokenness can only be healed in community — in partnership — through love.

Rather than passing more punitive laws, I wonder if we might try a different way — a coming together, a collective sharing of lives, a genuine care for the people around us. A gathering, lifting up, supportive kind of sharing that is willing to walk with people through complex situations and even, dare I say, pass laws and policies that provide alternate paths, financial support, and an entrance ramp to a different way of life.

Are you willing to give it a try? Where do we start?

Show me your ways,  O Lord, teach me your paths.

Psalm 25:4

Whatever you do…Re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 2 Comments

I wrote this post in my very early blogging days, when I was just starting to recognize others after my long period of mission-only focused soldiering. Now, as I finish just my second full week of staying home, sheltering in place to flatten the coronavirus curve, I’m doing it again — noticing what others are doing. Some of you are wishing you could help, others are drowning in the flood of responsibilities and activity you find yourselves surrounded with, and some of you are just plain lonely. Whether you are a medical professional, a displaced worker, or a parent of young children, whatever you are doing right now has value — so hang in there and reach out for some support. We’re in this together.

Many of the conversations I have had with women lately have been about how we spend our time. It is probably no surprise that most of the women I have time to have lunch with or walk with are not working at the moment either, but let me tell you what some of these women do when they are ‘not working’.

One is homeschooling two children, aged 10 and 11, coordinating and leading worship at her church, and working as administrative support to its two pastors, one of which is her husband.

Another is teaching Pilates, leading Bible study, coordinating a MOPS group, working part-time at her daughter’s new business, maintaining two residences, and supporting her husband who is a physician.

Then there is the gal who is on a board that is trying to open a preschool for hearing impaired children, planning for a state-wide women’s conference, traveling with her husband, and maintaining several other projects.

And another woman who is helping her daughter and son-in-law relocate with their infant child, coordinating a state-wide event, cheering on three other adult children, and partnering with her executive pastor husband as he travels all over the country.

And guys, they all had time for me. 

Each of these women shared a heart to do the work of God and to do it well.

Each of them have set their own needs aside for significant periods of time to care for others: one had a parent with cancer, another had a father-in-law with a degenerative disease who lived in her house for seven years (!), another had a child and husband with cancer — at the same time (!), and another had two children with hearing impairments. Yet none of them complained about the burden that they had carried, but rather, I am not kidding, rejoiced at the blessings that God had provided in their circumstances. They smiled as they shared their stories.

Pretty humbling, right?

Yet, just as humbling is the mother I was to meet with today. She has been raising three daughters for the last umpteen years, just started a part-time job, and is home today with the youngest who is sick.  She is setting aside our time to walk and talk together, so that she can attend to her first calling — loving that little girl.

It’s not glamorous most of the time, is it?  We clean up messes, kiss away hurts, wipe tears and noses. We shop for the exact see-through divided folder that every student has to have. We scurry to soccer practice in the rain and then wash the muddy uniform after.  We hold a ponytail while a little girl throws up in the toilet. We bake a batch of cupcakes at 11 pm then clean up the kitchen afterward.

This is God’s work.

God’s work is also getting up early to go to work before your children are even out of bed. It’s caring for the children of others — in the classroom or the NICU. It’s tending to the sick, the elderly, the dying, and the lonely. It’s punching a clock, mopping a floor, preparing a meal, and balancing a column.

Whatever you have to do right now — stay at home, travel far away, go to school, or look for work — is God’s work. It’s His work in you, through you, and for you.

As we show up and do our best (or even our semi-best), He sees us and He supports us. He offers us His love and patience when ours is all but gone. When we blow it — lose our temper or say the wrong thing — He offers grace. He shows us the power of forgiveness, and we get to see first hand how God changes hearts. Maybe even our own.

Today my day is not likely to be glamorous. It’s another day of making a meal, folding a load, making some calls, and finishing some tasks. It’ll be nothing to write home about. Nevertheless, I’ll be doing God’s work, so I’ll give it my best shot.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for God not for a human master.

Colossians 3:23