just write

that’s where I’ve been

Been thinking about you. Hope everything is well.

My friend texted me this week to check-in. I’ve been quiet off and on the internet. She noticed.

I have a handful of similar messages on Instagram, I can see the preview of DMs asking if I’m okay, telling me I’m missed, hoping that I’m well.

I am well. I am tired and maybe a little depressed, but I am well.

Where have I been?

About two months ago I went radio silent in most parts of my life and the short answer is I’ve been putzing. Putzing around the house. Putzing around thrift shops. Putzing around my neighborhood on walks where I stop to inspect flowers and discarded trash on the side of the road.

My oldest daughter, after years of begging for social media, was finally allowed to get BeReal. I’m staunchly anti-social media for teenagers. There’s just too much damning evidence on how it impacts mental health and body image and a million other developing brain parts too precious to influence right now. But also, I understand the feeling of being left out. I understand what it’s like to show up to school when everyone but you has had the same cultural experiences. I grew up without cable TV when it was a thing everyone had. I wasn’t allowed to watch Friends or The Simpsons, and I had my Salt and Peppa CD taken away after my mom walked into my room while I was listening to it.

I survived, even though conservative Christianity tried it darnedest. And by survived, I mean I’ve had lots of therapy, and I left the cult of evangelical Christianity. But still.

Back to BeReal: my daughter got BeReal so I did, too. The gist of BeReal is you can only post at certain times a day, and you have to participate to see your friends’ posts who are also only posting at certain times a day. It’s similar to Instagram but without filters and set up to, hopefully, help you with some boundaries around your time.

I’m horrible at BeReal.

For years, I’ve had all notifications except text messages turned off on my phone. I don’t want the distraction or intrusion most of them bring, so the only time I know I have an email or a mention on Twitter (never calling it X) is to open an app. I like it that way. But BeReal, to work correctly, means you have to have notifications, which I miss constantly. And then when I do see them? I’m doing the same thing I was doing yesterday when I got the notification: driving my kids somewhere, making dinner, sitting in bed reading a book at an extremely early hour.

That’s it. That’s where I’ve been.

A few weeks ago, I was with my dad as he picked up some stuff he bought at an online auction. As I helped him load some shelves into the back of his truck, I had a flashback to my grandpa doing the exact same thing a few decades ago.

I come from a long line of people who love auctions. One of my favorite stories about my grandpa is how one Saturday he was at an auction and fell off a truck while loading something for someone. He got up and continued about his day, just limping slightly. The next day, he went to church—limping—and then after church, he and my grandma went out for dinner. When they pulled up to the restaurant (maybe my aunt was with them?), he casually asked if someone could run inside and see if the restaurant had a wheelchair he could borrow.

Someone said that’s probably not how restaurants work and maybe you should have your leg checked out if it hurts that bad. They ended up at the emergency room where they learned my grandpa had been walking around on a broken hip for the past 30 hours.

He was mostly upset he missed Sunday dinner.

Anyway, my family loves an auction (and food), and we will not be distracted by silly things like broken bones when it comes to a treasure.

I’ve been driving all over eastern Indiana picking up my online auction deals the past few months.

That’s where I’ve been.

In 2019, we had some drywall work done in our house: patching a light switch we’d moved, redoing the ceiling in a room that was wonky, just random things around the house you ignore until there’s enough of them to warrant calling someone to fix them.

One of the patches has sat, unpainted, in our kitchen since then. I would stare at it at least once a week and think about painting it, but I didn’t have any more of the original kitchen paint and to figure out the color and finish and buying more felt like it would kill me, so I left it.

This week I painted the kitchen, finally covering the drywall patch. I decided it was just easier to paint the whole kitchen than figuring out the original color. Then I had to paint the bench because the new wall paint made the bench color look off. Now I’ve started painting the trim because it looks dingy.

Chris recently said, “Can you just leave stuff alone?”

No, no, I cannot.

That’s where I’ve been.

Chris turned 40 a few weeks ago. I had a late-night, very loud dinner with friends last weekend. I’ve been slowly sanding a French door for my office. I took my nervous dog to the groomer, and he shit on the car seat on the way, so I got to clean the car. I’ve made gallons of tomato soup for dinner, for freezing, for sharing. We just shut the pool for the season. I sat on my porch this morning covered in a blanket and sipped hot coffee. I decided we are a family who no longer uses paper plates or napkins because it’s a waste of money and bad for the environment. I’m trying to find a pair of loose-fitting jeans that everyone is wearing right now, but it’s not going well.

I’ve watched tennis, helped my mom move, and done one million loads of laundry. I’ve been reading a lot, putting myself to bed early, and planning our next road trip. Noah Kahan has been playing non-stop in my car, and Fleetwood Mac provides the background music for anything I’m doing in the kitchen. It’s not chilly enough to turn the fireplace on yet, but I’m counting down the days until I can.

I need to order groceries, and last night I fed my family Zaxby’s because making food sounded like the hardest thing I’ve ever been asked to do. Chris is meeting with his sponsor this morning, just like he does every Saturday morning. I’ll take a walk this afternoon. Tonight, I’ll drive some kids to the homecoming dance.

That’s where I’ve been.

humble, quiet, and meek

Last week in Florida, Ellie and I were wandering around a bookstore when a man got really close to me and made a weird comment about my body.

I was immediately uncomfortable with how close he got, how familiar he acted toward me.

As I continued to browse, I watched him wander around the store talking to teenage girls.

Soon, the man went up to three girls. He said he was a photographer, did they play sports? Did they need senior pictures or anything done? Do you want to see my portfolio, he asked.

I froze in place.

I could tell the girls were uncomfortable. But they—like all girls—are taught to be polite to strangers. So they stood and listened, glancing over at one another, as he talked about how good he was at photography and where were the girls going to college and did they want to see his photos.

I stood at the next table trying to figure out how to join the conversation, how to tell the girls it was okay to leave, how to let them know they didn’t need to be meek and accommodating, especially when a grown man made them uncomfortable. And I could tell they were uncomfortable.

Soon, the guy wrapped up his conversation because the girls weren’t really engaging with him. He wasn’t getting what he wanted, so he moved on.

As we left the store, I reminded Ellie she’s not required to be nice to strange men. That she doesn’t have to stay in situations where she feels uncomfortable and just walking away, with no regard for being polite or gentle, is completely acceptable. There’s no reason for grown men to talk to teenage girls in a store with no other adults around. We raise our girls to be kind and say please and thank you, but we also need them to understand not everyone is owed their respect or time. As they say on My Favorite Murder, fuck politeness. Especially when you’re feeling unsafe or creeped out.

I was reminded of this story as I read the news about yesterday’s women’s Iowa v. LSU game. We want women, especially Black women, to be kind and gentle and polite. Society demands it and we echo the expectation in our social media posts and critiques. How dare women be competitive and challenging and not polite on the basketball court. How dare Black women be bold and proud and energetic.

Our misogynistic society has so many expectations for women, and we double those for Black women. Women will never meet the standards society expects of them, and Black women will surely not. Whatever the standard, it will be bent and stretched and changed when Black women get involved. To be accepted here, you must be what we demand. And when you meet that demand, we will change the rules.

Women must be humble and not brag and never direct. They must be meek and quiet and never boast.

Black women must be that and more.

Always more, never enough.

If people are made uncomfortable by a woman, it’s always the woman’s fault. Boldness will not be tolerated. Be good at your job, but don’t acknowledge you’re good at your job. Do not be proud you’re good at your job.

And what’s worse (if this can be worse?) is White woman are normally the first people to line up to pile on the misogyny. Misogyny continues to thrive because White woman uphold it, ensure its place so Black woman can be put in theirs.

We honestly believe if we hold others down, we’ll be lifted higher. We don’t realize that while we drown others, we’re standing in the same deep water gasping for air.

As Ellie and I walked away from that bookstore last week, I kept telling her she doesn’t have to meet society’s expectations of meek and polite while she’s out in public. If the situation warrants it, she gets to be rude and walk away. She doesn’t have to make herself small and uncomfortable for the sake of others.

And the same goes for women who play basketball on national TV.

a fresh start

I removed over 1,000 posts.

It was time.

I’ve done this before, whittling down the blog posts that live here. I’ve been writing on this blog since 2008, and we—this blog and myself—have seen some things.

In 2014 (I think?), I paid someone to redesign my blog and move it to a bigger server. While that was happening, I deleted about 100 blog posts. Just dumb stuff I had written as I tried to find my voice on the world wide web. I don’t regret taking them down, but I regret deleting them completely. Did I not know about reverting posts to drafts? Did I not understand I could take them down, but still keep them for myself?

That’s what I did this time: slowly read through over 1,400 blog posts and reverted most of them to drafts. They still exist, and I can access them anytime I want, but they’re not for public consumption anymore.

I did this for a number of reasons.

Some of the blog posts were just dumb. Why did I post that? Who cares about that? Why did I take the time to even write that nonsense?

Some of the blog posts were not who I am anymore. I took down most of the fashion/clothes posts. Remember when I tried to be a fashion blogger? I hope you don’t. I really hope you don’t. I’d taken down a ton of those a few years ago (Copycat Wednesday, anyone?), but many still existed. I left a few up for old times’ sake—to keep me humble and slightly embarrassed—but most of them are gone now. RIP fashionable Mary. You will not be missed.

Some of the blog posts were sponsored content I don’t care about anymore. Also, no one paid me enough money to keep those on my site for years. If Lenovo or Kindle or Thermos want those lame posts back up, they can send me another check. I’ll also accept PayPal or Venmo.

Some of the blog posts were things I don’t believe anymore.

As I figured out what I wanted to write about on the internet, I wrote about lots of things. Some of them don’t need to be read anymore. I’ve learned better ways, learned better truths, learned where I was wrong. I don’t want bad theology I once believed to harm people who might stumble across something I’ve read. It’s not helpful or needed. At times, I wrote things unaware of the privilege I was operating from. How my advice wasn’t as simple as I made it out to be.

I’m so glad I never wrote a book in my 20s or 30s. I’d die to know some of the things I had once believed were out there forever, and I couldn’t take them back. I know the internet is forever, but it’s a little less forever than a published book. (Right? Please say yes.)

Recently, I read a self-help book. The author is in her late twenties and full of life experiences she’s learned lessons from and feels like everyone else should know them too. I cringed a lot while I read her book. I already know she’s going to look back in a decade and wish she hadn’t written some of the things she did. Experience is a hard teacher, and we all have to do it one way or another. Hers will just be very, very public.

Reading my old blog posts through the lens of a 40-year-old woman who’s had years of therapy was uncomfortable. I could see how hard I was trying and failing, how much energy I was exerting to keep a failing marriage alive, how some of the things I was doing was enabling a really sick husband. I left a few of those posts up. Not because I loved them, but because if anyone spent the time to go back to them, they probably knew our marriage story, and it felt important to show some of the chaos and heartache in real time.

Maybe one day I’ll feel different and remove them. Maybe not. I reserve the right to change my mind about anything I post at anytime. I’m the one paying the bills to keep the lights on. [such a dad thing to say]

I’ve spend the past 3-ish years removing pictures of my daughters from the internet. I started with my Instagram account and archived all their little toddler and baby pictures. Then I removed most things they were featured in. I loved those pictures, but they’re for us and not the world. Last year, I deleted Facebook and all the images I’d posted of them there. I’d stopped posting their pictures on Facebook around 2018, but deleting my account took care of all the older ones.

The past few months, I removed most pictures of my girls from this space as well.

Some still exist, don’t get me wrong. There are a few family photos and travel posts still up. And some random other ones. But they don’t need to be on the internet because of me anymore. I don’t post their pictures on Instagram unless I have their permission and usually not in any permanent spots. I took away some of their autonomy when they were younger, and I wish I hadn’t. I’m part of the first generation of parents raising kids in a digital age, and I think most of us spent a little too much time posting pictures of our kids for people (and strangers) to see.

I’d do things differently now. I can’t change the past, but I can edit it from my WordPress dashboard. So I did.

I don’t want to disappear from the internet. I mostly like it here. But I want to show up in a new way.

Maybe you’ve noticed pictures of my children’s faces don’t really show up in blog posts much anymore. There are a lot of pictures of their backs. If they’re in pictures, they’re small and out of focus, they’re wearing masks or peeking out of water. That’s intentional. This is my blog, not theirs. Their peers are on the internet, and my kids should get to decide how they show up on it. Plus, I don’t want to give estranged family members access—in any form—to my children. They don’t deserve that. They don’t deserve even a glimpse of my magical children.

Truthfully, I didn’t think anyone would notice or care this happened. I didn’t even plan to mention it. But I forget that even though I have been very sporadic about writing here, people still read my words and pay attention to this space. I know it’s true because I see the blog stats each month when WordPress emails them to me. Every month, I’m surprised at the traffic to this dusty little place.

I had removed about 500 posts when I got a message from a loyal reader asking about a post she loved but couldn’t find. Her sister was getting married, and she wanted to send it to her. It’s gone, I said. I’m cleaning house and taking down things that might misrepresent what I believe now. I just don’t want to harm anyone with my bad theology.

She said she understood and appreciated it. Then she said, please don’t ever take down ‘My Grandmothers’ Hands.’ It’s one of my favorite posts.

I assured her it wasn’t going anywhere.

There’s still a lot of stuff here. About 300 posts, to be specific. Some of the writing is good. Some of the writing is not good. I’m glad I’ve learned and grown and gotten better at some things. I still have a lot to learn. I still have a lot of growing to do. Which means more posts might come down one day. I’m sure I’ve missed some things I should probably take down right now.

A lot of reading my old blog posts was a practice in giving myself grace.

I’ll give myself that going forward too, as I stretch my blog post muscles and find my footing here once again. I hope you’ll stick around to see how it goes.

on my porch swing

In July, the rain finally came, flooding the little pockets of bare earth under the trees lining the cornfield.

It got hot, but we opened the windows for a few days, letting in the breeze and letting out the stuffy, stale air.

I sat on my porch swing.

I drove to doctor’s appointments, therapy appointments, lunch with a friend, the grocery store, the library.

We listened to old albums from my college days, hearing the words for the first time all over again. Some of them make more sense twenty years later. We listened to Harry Styles on repeat, both for the girls and for me.

I sat on my porch swing.

My garden didn’t grow. Cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, tomatillos—everything is slow this year. The summer has been dry, the bunnies have been ruthless, and I planted late. But do you need a zucchini? I have 400.

Passed by my dead aunt’s vacant house this week; there was a black cat sitting on the sidewalk looking at the front door expectantly. Me too, cat, I thought as I drove by, me too.

Ellie has dedicated her week to making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. Harper took a full bowl of her favorite cereal and milk to bed one morning. It ended exactly how you’d think it would.

We are all learning this summer.

I sat on my porch swing.

There’s a balance beam in the yard, Harper is mapping out routines and trying to cartwheel without falling off. Ellie—if you can’t find her—will be next door at the neighbors or on top of the shed watching the world go by. We are busy. We are not busy.

I sat on my porch swing.

The last time I talked to my grandma, she asked when I was heading back to school. I haven’t been in the classroom since 2018. It’s not worth correcting her, she’ll just get confused. We went back-to-school shopping this week, and I bought myself new pens and post-its, a shirt and a notebook. Maybe I forgot I’m not in the classroom anymore, too.

Our mailbox—the third or fourth since we moved in—is on its last leg. It’s become more shocking if people don’t hit it when they leave our house now. I wonder what the mail carrier thinks. It’s currently facing the wrong way.

I sat on my porch swing.

Gave myself a paper cut in my armpit—don’t ask, it just happened—and I might not survive the trauma.

I went for long, sweaty walks during the hottest part of the day. There’s something I enjoy about the unpleasantness of it. Maybe it’s penance for my comfortable office, comfortable air conditioning, comfortable life. I search for discomfort to not become numb.

We got new neighbors and their grandkids bring squeals and laughter to a normally quiet block.

I sat on my porch swing.

I watched the ground be broken for burial. I watched the family gather around the headstone. I watched the discarded flowers wilt under the relentless sun.

I sat on my porch swing.

I read the news, made phone calls, raged. I ignored the news, hid my phone, paid attention to the grass and the wind and the hummingbirds that buzz around the flowers I can see from my front window.

We filled the pool with cool water, with bright floaties, with wriggling bodies.

The girls went to camp. I went to Ohio for work. Chris went to the top of tall buildings downtown.

I wrote and cooked, read and napped, watched and grieved.

I sat on my porch swing.

We went to the drive-in and learned we are not made for the summer drive-in. We are fall drive-in people. We are go-to-bed-early people. We are sleep-through-the-summer-movie people.

There were book club dinners, birthday dinners, and drive-thru dinners. There was trivia night and shutting down the Mexican restaurant with loud, energtic friends.

I sat on my porch swing.

We watched a baseball game in Louisville and played cornhole in Columbus.

I sat on my porch swing.

We said goodbye to summer break. I bought my second pair of overalls. I learned sometimes you can do all the right things and things still don’t work out.

I sat on my porch swing.

And then July was over.

I Deleted Facebook

No, really, it’s gone.

I’ve been dreaming about it for a while; this break up has been slowly coming for years.

It began four or five years ago when I deleted it from my phone. I wanted one less thing to waste time on so I removed the Facebook app.

It was probably around 2016. I was beginning to see stuff from people I was friends with that I didn’t like. Stuff that made my heart hurt, things that made me angry, things that made me lose respect and patience and love.

I didn’t like those feelings so I limited my Facebook access to my computer.

The two things keeping me on Facebook at the time: Facebook was good for my blog, for my writing career. And it held a lot of old pictures and videos I loved.

I began sharing less on Facebook. The past few years, I’ve probably posted something once a month? Maybe less. I stopped sharing most things about my kids online because they’re older now and it doesn’t feel like my place anymore. One day they’ll be able to see the things I’ve posted about them online. And while I don’t think there’s anything bad, they’re their own people with their own stories to tell and I want to give them the freedom to do that.

They still show up on blog posts and Instagram, but it’s very intentional and only with their permission. But mostly, I just avoid sharing about my kids now.

I choose to write about and share my life on the internet. They get that choice too.

As someone who runs a “business” on Facebook, things have changed a lot since I first created that Facebook page in 2011. So many things.

In 2021, I had 2,000+ followers, but none of them got to see the things I posted unless I paid Facebook to access their feeds. More than 2,000 followers and, on average, about 100 people would see a post organically.

I just don’t want to play those games.

Granted, I don’t rely on my blog or social media accounts for income. I blog for no other reason than I enjoy it. This is the exact same reason—maybe with just more focus and intention—I started this blog in 2008. (Shout out to Blogspot and all the dedicated people who used to read all the weird crap I wrote there! I’m slowly going through my archives and taking down lots of things I wrote a decade or more ago. There’s a lot of dumb stuff out there.)

I like writing so I write. But maintaining a website and an email list and a server and other website-related things costs me more than I make from blogging every month. I am always in the red running this space. (There was a time when I made a good income from blogging; I stopped doing that a few years ago because it’s not how I want to spend my time. Maybe that will change in the future. Who knows.)

But I pay those costs, because I like to have a place to write. A place where I don’t have to play games or figure out the latest algorithm changes. A place where I’m in charge, said the Enneagram Eight. (And, yes, I understand Google and ranking and how I’m still a part of the game in some ways, but I don’t make choices to influence those algorithms. I’m purposefully ignoring them.)

No matter the plan or goal, it’s bad business sense to build a business solely on platforms you don’t own or control. When Facebook went down this fall, I loved it. Everything was so quiet. I felt a sense of relief.

That’s when I knew it was time to get rid of Facebook for good.

Full disclosure: I have the job I love—a writing career—because of Facebook. Facebook, in its heyday, shared my blog posts widely. I gained thousands of email subscribers from Facebook. The site visits from Facebook allowed me to work with companies that paid me well to share their products. I got to collaborate with businesses that boosted my resume and byline. Facebook gave me Instagram and Twitter followers. Facebook let a former work colleague post about a contract job she had that led me to the full-time writing job I’ve had for a few years now. A job I love and feel really lucky to get to do every day. I am grateful for Facebook. For what it used to be.

But I don’t need it anymore.

Will my blog visits go down? Absolutely.
Will this move cost me money? Yes.
Will it bother me? No.

I’ll just keep writing here when I feel like it. I’ll still keep posting on Instagram when I want to and keep ignoring it when I don’t. Someone asked if I felt like I was still part of the machine since Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp (two apps I still have and use). My answer is yes, but on my terms.

I still find joy and value in Instagram. I follow who I like, unfollow who I don’t, and spend intentional time there with boundaries. Facebook was not like that for me. I constantly had to hide friends’ posts because they were racist and horrible. I lost respect for people I used to look up to. I saw too much ugly from people I was trying to love there. Plus, it seemed to be more and more a place for people who didn’t understand social norms still applied on the internet. That we don’t gossip and share misinformation and things we wouldn’t say to people’s faces. Facebook has become a place where all the ugly parts of people’s hearts were proudly displayed, commonly in the name of Jesus. Facebook became a dark, dark place. In the name of Jesus. How ironic.

Also, I’m not sure we’re supposed to know the innermost thoughts of a 1000 people we casually know. That seems more harmful than helpful. We know our brains aren’t made for that much information or that many relationships, all of it becomes surface level and fake. Facebook is a mess. Its influence on our culture and relationships and hearts is destructive and concerning.

I don’t want to be a part of that mess anymore.

It’s only been 30 days, and I already feel lighter.

I was able to request a file with all my data from Facebook, so I didn’t lose anything I was worried about. All the pictures of baby Ellie Graham and our yearly Beech Grove pub crawls are safely saved on my Google Drive. I hit delete in the early morning hours of November 1st. Facebook was worried about my choice. It asked a few times if I was serious. And they kept my account available for 30 days just in case I changed my mind. (The only things I will miss are Facebook Marketplace and keeping up with community and school news for our small town. But really, I lived without those things before, and I’ll do it again.)

In the 30 days since I deleted Facebook, I’ve noticed I mostly only used it when I was bored or trying to distract myself from the work I was supposed to be doing. It was a crutch, a really convenient crutch. I’ve only thought about Facebook when I’ve been bored or wanted to escape something. And that realization means I made the right choice for me.

Today is the last day I’ll have access to my old account, all my “friends,” business pages, photos, and comments. I know Facebook hopes I’ll come back. They made (and continue to make) a fortune off their users. A “free” website isn’t ever really free, you’re paying with your information, your time, and your dependency.

I don’t want to pay them anymore.

What does this mean for my other social media apps? Right now, nothing. The cost of using Instagram still comes out in my favor. That might change one day, though. I’m not making any promises. If I’ve learned anything from reading all those old blog posts from years ago, it’s that we learn and change and grow and do better when we know better. And the next step for me was deleting Facebook.

I guess we’ll just have to see where all this growing takes me from here.

A story about sticks

Chris and I have different opinions on sticks.

Our house sits on a few acres in the country. Our trees were planted decades ago by my grandfather, as he turned the farmland he bought in 1970 into a home for his family of seven. We moved here in 2017, a few years after my grandfather died, a few months after my grandmother moved to an assisted living community.

Our house is old and so are the trees.

When a storm comes, when a strong wind comes, or, sometimes, when absolutely nothing comes, our yard will be littered with sticks and branches. Since we moved here, I’ve stopped dreading rain. We no longer have basements in the city that will flood if the storm drains gets too full. Now I have a thirsty garden with tomatoes and peppers and squash. As my grandpa used to say, “There’s no such thing as too much rain.” And, while some people in some places might feel differently, me and my house on the hill agree.

I work from home and use any excuse I can to take breaks from writing. This might sound lazy, but I’m a better writer when I walk away from the words for a bit. Going outside, taking a walk, picking up all the sticks in my yard—that makes the words come back. Moving makes the words become unstuck.

Sticks in the yard thrill me. I wait until I’ve rewritten the same stupid sentence five times, then I head outside to gather branches.

I pick up every little stick I see: small twigs that fit into the palm of my hand, medium-sized sticks good for a dog’s mouth, and large branches I have to drag to the burn pile. I want them all picked up. I want them all gathered into our fire ring.

I leave no stick behind.

This is the opposite of my husband.

He occasionally gets to the yard full of sticks before me. Maybe it’s the weekend, maybe he’s come home from work and I’ve not yet made it outside, maybe I did my laps already yet more sticks appeared. He’ll walk around the yard talking on the phone and grabbing sticks as he strolls.

But he only gets the big ones. He only picks up the large sticks, the ones we shouldn’t run over with the lawn mower, the ones you can see easily from the road or the porch or the swings. He doesn’t bother with the small sticks.

“They’re good for the yard,” he says. “Leave the little ones alone.”

He heard this from my aunt and tries to use it to his advantage. This drives me crazy. I don’t want the little sticks in my yard any more than I want the big sticks. I want all the sticks picked up. I want a yard without sticks.

I know if you ignore enough small sticks, they eventually become big sticks. They become piles in the yard, areas of sticks not broken down enough to help the yard do anything but refuse to grow grass. I know if you make enough excuses, more and more of those little sticks you ignore become medium-sized sticks you ignore too. It’s a slippery slope of ignoring sticks. It starts small and feels inconsequential. But then you realize the next size isn’t that big of a deal either so you leave those in the yard too.

It becomes—over time—a yard full of sticks.

It becomes—over time—easier to just not care about the branches either because it’s too late and we’ve ignored too much and now all the grass is dead.

The little sticks become big sticks if you don’t pick them up.

The little sticks can kill everything if you’re not paying attention.

I’d rather pick up the little sticks. I’d rather do the extra work right now to pick up the small ones so they don’t—one day—overwhelm the yard, and we wonder why we let so many sticks get by. I’ve lived just enough life to know that what we choose to ignore always comes back. Ignoring doesn’t make it go away; ignoring makes it come back bigger next time with more consequences.

A few sticks can become more sticks very quickly.

So I pick up the little sticks and the medium-sized sticks and the big sticks. I pick up the twigs and the branches. I walk around my yard because moving my body makes the words I’m paid to write come back, but it also means less yard work the next time I go to mow.

I always pick up the sticks. I love picking up the sticks. My body doesn’t always love it though; I’m almost forty and sometimes it’s hot outside and I’ve got to dodge the dog poop. But I never regret the work. I’ve never sat down on the porch after a few laps around the yard picking up sticks and regretted my choice.

Picking up the sticks has always been worth it. My current self likes it and my future self thanks me.

So I pick up the sticks.

This is, of course, not a story about sticks.

others are in on the secret now

Across from our house is a cemetery.

My desk faces the window and sometimes, while I’m working, I watch grave diggers prepare the ground for a burial. I see families slowly work their way up the long drive. I observe people gather under a blue tent to say goodbye to someone they love.

Today I watched another funeral.

There were about fifteen people present: funeral home employees, a minister, and the family. The size of the procession leads me to believe the person who died was older.

There were only two people in attendance not wearing masks, the minister and the man who rode with him. Everyone else—family and friends saying goodbye, workers from the mortuary—was wearing masks.

I watched the minister walk around hugging people. He knelt down to get in the face of an elderly woman sitting graveside.

It reminded me of what my friend Shannon said on the internet last week: the American church is not under attack, it is being examined.

And what’s showing up under examination is ugly and fake and flimsy. What’s showing up is pride and self centeredness, superiority and ignorance.

Things of the church are falling apart, because they weren’t built well to begin with. That’s not God’s fault. That’s not the fault of someone who would rather you say “Happy Holidays” than “Merry Christmas.”

It’s our fault.

We read the Bible, said we wanted to follow Jesus, then created our own rules and work-arounds. We believed the lie that America is a Christian nation without trying to be very Christian-y. We thought the name and Sunday morning attendance and the Bible verse framed on the wall covered us.

But when the world began to notice our words and actions didn’t often line up, we got angry. We were quick to say how dare you. We made excuses and twisted scripture and said God has already numbered our days so who needs a mask?

Imagine driving drunk. We know the consequences of driving intoxicated. It could hurt us and others. It could kill people.

But instead of choosing to not drive drunk, we say God’s in control and we get behind the wheel anyway. Because—of course—God has numbered our days. Then when horrible things happen, we just call it God’s will. God’s plan. God knew, obviously. He knew before we were even born.

Knowing something and planning something are two very different things. God doesn’t plan death. He literally sent His son to conquer death. He sent His son so the grave was not the final answer.

But we can still get to death quicker by our actions. And we can take others with us if we desire. Free will is still ours for the taking.

If I decide to drive drunk, it’s not God’s fault or plan when people die. He gave us the choice. He lets us choose, always. We always, always have a choice. We have a choice of obedience or death. We have a choice of others before ourselves or me first always.

St. Teresa of Kolkata said, “When a poor person dies of hunger, it has happened not because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.”

We’re not giving our neighbors what they need right now. On so many levels.

I don’t care if you believe COVID-19 came from the Democrats to win the election. I don’t care if you think China did this on purpose. I don’t care if you think it’s only as serious as the common flu.

Putting others before ourselves is our calling as Christians. Sacrifice and kindness to others is the way of Jesus. We don’t get to call ourselves Christians and then pick and choose what parts of Jesus’ message we want to follow.

Picking up His cross acknowledged His ways are better than ours. And His ways always elevate our neighbor above ourselves.

Right now, our neighbors are watching us. Imagine the damage we’re doing to people who know we follow Jesus. That we say their health doesn’t matter. That we say they’re worth the risk for our pride.

I’d want none of that Jesus you’re selling me. Not one bit.

Can you imagine being a minister in the middle of a pandemic, showing up to serve people who have lost someone, and not caring enough about those people to wear a mask?

Words don’t matter here. It doesn’t matter what you claim, it doesn’t matter what hope you try to share as you stand behind the casket of our loved one. It doesn’t matter who you say you follow or what label you give yourself. If your words (I follow Jesus!) and your actions (Your health and safety don’t matter enough for me to be inconvenienced!) don’t match up, it’s not your actions that are lying, it’s your words.

I want none of that Jesus you’re selling me. Not one bit.

And neither do all the people watching you.

Shannon is right, the American church is being examined. And what’s being uncovered is sin and death.

And look at us: instead of repentance, instead of asking for forgiveness, instead of caring for our neighbors, we’re doubling down. We’re hiding more, screaming louder, making more excuses, demanding more from people.

God didn’t make COVID-19 happen. God didn’t create it or plan it. But He is calling us to show the world how well we show up in crisis. And I think—for a lot of us—He’s not surprised with our actions because He knew what was in our hearts the whole time. He’s just letting others in on the secret now too.

It changes the way you vote

My dad told me he regretted paying for my college. He said this because he saw my college education at a secular school as the gateway to political beliefs that no longer match up with his.

He’s never had a real conversation with me about what I believe or why. Or how much my faith–not my college degrees–has to do with how I vote the way I do.

It’s really not a conversation we can ever have, it’s not safe or respectful. It will do more damage than good so I’m not interested in having it with him.
But I would like to have it with you.

I entered undergrad and exited undergrad voting the exact same way. If I didn’t know anything about a candidate on the ticket–normally for a local election– I left it blank. I understood the importance of carefully voting after research, but I voted similar to my parents.

After college, I interviewed at a few schools for a teaching position. I interviewed at a private, Lutheran high school where the principal called me later and said he thought I was meant to work with a different type of population than his private school kids.

I agreed.

I found my way to a school district less than 15 minutes from where I grew up. It was close to my White community, but not very White. Kids came from government housing and apartments. We had a high rate of free and reduced lunches, a term I didn’t know as a student, but knew well as a teacher.

Here’s what happened when I spent ten years teaching kids who, for the most part, lived and looked very different from me:

I started to learn that many of my political views directly hurt my students and their families. I saw firsthand how lack of medical care influenced their learning. How costly childcare meant they often cared for siblings in the evenings instead of doing my homework. I witnessed kids in foster homes that hurt them more than helped them. I had more than one student miss first period, because they needed to use the locker room showers to bathe and brush their teeth. I had parents skip parent-teacher conferences because they couldn’t miss work, no matter how much they cared about their child’s education. I learned some kids don’t celebrate Christmas in December; they celebrate it when the tax return comes in February because that’s the only time they have extra money.

Teaching kids who didn’t live the same life I did made me start questioning a lot of my beliefs. It didn’t make me more confident in the way I was taught, it made me start to realize something in my thinking was wrong.

I see the need for some people, especially Christians, to want their kids to go to Christian colleges. On the surface, it sounds safe and insular. Christians are taught to fear the big bad world outside their door. They’re taught people who don’t think like them were made specifically to trip them up.

This isn’t an actual Biblical principle—the Bible doesn’t mention college or higher learning once. It also doesn’t mention sticking to the people and places we feel most comfortable with. But we’ve been able to twist His words enough to make it sound like being around people only like us can keep us the safest. We’ve disregarded the parts of the Bible that tell us to be salt and light and latched onto the lie that safe and comfortable is the reward for following Christ. A reward we should reap in the here and now.

I went to a secular college and somehow managed to not sleep with 400 people, get pregnant, do drugs, or become a prostitute. I know this might shock the church people. My husband spent a semester at a Christian college, dropped out, then came home to begin a 15 year+ drug and alcohol addiction.

Plot twist.

I’d say our responses to college have more to do with family life, trauma, support systems, and mental health than the “good” or “bad” college we went to.

That’s the same with so many of my students. Their responses to their environments weren’t based on their education or lack of, it was based on their family life, trauma, support systems, and mental health.

Because when we don’t have to worry about basic needs like food, shelter, and safety, we are able to do more things, able to make better choices, able to be more successful in relationships and careers.

So I began to vote in a way that matched with my evolving belief: if we want better citizens, maybe we should create better lives.

That means I vote for:

Healthcare for all
Affordable mental health access
Fair wages
Abolishment of the death penalty
More taxes on the wealthy
A more equal distribution of wealth
Freedom to make choices about my body
Affordable childcare
Care for immigrants
Legislation guided by science and data
An end to privatized prisons and mass incarceration

If I believe all humans are created in the image of God—imago Dei—I vote for their respect and care and benefit.

I was trying to educate kids in an environment set up to fail. We expect schools to fix all of society’s problems instead of understanding school is just a reflect of society. If we want healthier, engaged kids to show up at school every day, we have to start by fixing things outside of school.
Schools reflect their community, not the other way around.

My college degrees didn’t change my voting habits, getting to know people who were different than me did. Suffering and injustice is easy to ignore when you don’t know anyone who doesn’t have the exact same problems as you. If you’ve never been hungry, you don’t understand what someone will do for food. If you’ve never experienced housing instability, you don’t know how far someone would go to have a safe place to sleep.

These are not character flaws. They are basic human needs we all have. And we are failing large, vulnerable groups of people by the way some of us vote.

I’ve had lots of conversations with people who can’t imagine giving people something they didn’t earn. “I work for my things and so should everyone else.”

If we all started on a level playing field, that might make sense. If we all started off in safe homes with plenty of food to eat and clean clothes to wear, maybe that would work. If we all had loving, healthy parents to protect us and guide us. If we all had homes where drugs weren’t present, where addiction wasn’t lurking, where we learn healthy self-esteem instead of how to carry our parents wounds.

If only.

And until that happens, we look for the people who need help and we help them. Will there always be the people who take advantage of the help? Of course. But we help anyway. We can’t control what other people do, but we can also not actively make choices to hurt them more.

Last year, my Thursday morning Bible study girls and I read through the Gospels. We learned a lot about Jesus, obviously. Sometimes we read the same story repeatedly and that was a little annoying, but that’s just my need for efficiency getting in the way. Reading the same stories, especially from different perspectives, often taught us new things about Jesus and following him. The point was the story-—of course—but the point was also the different perspectives. We saw new or different things when we read the same event from a different author. We saw different details, different parts of the same truth.

We have to have different perspectives, different points of view, different accounts. We have to have people who live differently than us, who grew up differently, who see life differently. Because it changes us. It makes us kinder and more aware and more merciful and more generous. We have to know how others live, what they struggle with, what hurts their hearts, and what keeps them up at night.

We have to know things outside our bubbles. It’s the way Jesus lived, and it’s the way his followers have to also. When we sit with the woman at the well, dine with the tax collector, or touch the sick, it changes us. It shapes our hearts to be more like his in a way surrounding ourselves with people who only look and live like us doesn’t.

We lead sheltered lives because we believe it keeps us safe, but really it just keeps us away from the suffering of others. We tithe our ten percent and trust the church to do some charity work instead of finding people who are worth being friends with and then meeting needs when you see them. (And realizing others can help meet our needs too; we are all needy in one way or another.) We sweep into situations trying to save people instead of just being with them. And we do it while failing to acknowledge we also need saving.

I’ve spent a lot of my thirties around addicts and alcoholics. I sleep in the same bed as one; I’ve sat at tables with them during rehab visits; I meet them in the stories my husband shares; I shake hands with them at AA meetings; I welcome them into my home. This is a world very different from the one in my twenties. I got pushed out of that comfort zone kicking and screaming when I realized the issues Chris had brought to our marriage. Learning about addiction showed me programs and laws and rules and facilities set up to help some people and punish others. I got to witness firsthand how the world handles sick people we don’t deem worthy of grace, mercy, or respect because of their disease.

I got to see hurting people who have to rely on the help and support of others to survive. I got to be a hurting person who had to rely on the help and support of others to survive. That changes your heart, your understanding of what mercy is, your awareness of who God is.

And it changes the way you vote.

My college education didn’t make me more liberal, as my father has inferred. It didn’t teach me to vote for socialism or Marxism or any of the other terms people like to throw around but don’t really understand. What changed my political views was Jesus and relationships and compassion and hurting people and reading the Bible to learn better ways as opposed to find support for the ways I already believed. What changed my heart was praying “Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours” then following that pain to people.

If we are Christians, the goal of wisdom and maturity tells us we will continue to get uncomfortable with our beliefs, continually be changed and challenged to be more like Jesus, and continually see areas of our dark hearts that need Jesus. If instead, in aging, we’ve found hard hearts, a political home with no wiggle room, and easy answers to every question, we have failed our God, we have left Him behind. We have created a new god, one who closely mirrors us.

Reading about the life of Jesus can be frustrating because so often he answered peoples’ questions with other questions. JESUS, JUST TELL US THE ANSWER, I want to scream during my morning quiet time. Give me black and white so I can feel secure and doubtless in my faith.

Time and time again, I’m reminded Jesus is often found in the gray, in the questions not the answers, in the faith to continue for the next moment, not the next five years. He is found in loving people well even when it doesn’t make sense, when they don’t deserve it. He is found on the other side of fear and scarcity. He is found in generosity and open hands and trusting that He will take care of all of us, not just some of us. He is found in the places the world tells us we shouldn’t go and with people the world says aren’t important.

And if that’s where I find Jesus, that’s how I vote too.

end-of-summer yard

We’re sleeping with the windows open now, crisp air coming in through the screens and complaints from my daughters that it’s too cool in the mornings going out.

I thought the outside construction and building and staining would be most loved in the summer. I sat under the new porch and worked while the girls swam and played. I spent mornings underneath the kitchen window, checking the cushions for frogs before I sat down. In the evening, after dinner, I’d find my way back outside while Chris cleaned up dinner.

But fall is here and outside is still my favorite; maybe fall is best for porches.

The new roof we built sits under the girls’ windows. They climbed out that first day it was up, excited to sit as people added roofing paper and shingles around them. In my head, I thought this might be a bad idea in a few years.

I hope they don’t make me regret my new porch.

I’ve started dragging a blanket outside after I wake up. Hot coffee and crickets to greet the morning.

My garden has begun browning, the tomatillos slowly sinking to the ground and tomatoes trying to eek out one last hoorah. I planted a fall garden for the first time ever: snow peas and bush beans. I’m only mildly committed to their growth. My freezers are full; my friends are tired of getting deliveries from me; I could not eat another cucumber if my life depended on it.

We are mostly still staying home and staying away. Chris goes to work. The girls go to school. I go downstairs to my office to write. We haven’t stepped foot in a restaurant since early March. I miss coffee shops for writing and people watching. I miss lunch with friends and stopping for Mexican food on the way home from camping trips.

I have never been more thankful for our camper, for the easy, safe way we can go without coming in contact with others.

We’re still taking the pandemic very serious. I can’t imagine future generations asking me what we did in 2020 and answering that it didn’t really impact our daily lives much. We are mourning and grieving and angry about so many things.

We have hammocks in the backyard for Sunday afternoon naps. We ended up with a pool this summer, and it has saved us many times. I have sun-kissed girls running around the yard barefoot. They are best friends one minute, mortal enemies the next.

It’s dark when I get up now. I tiptoe downstairs each morning even though the dogs stomp down behind me and if anyone was going to wake up, it’s not going to be because of my footsteps. I still tiptoe.

Sometimes Chris has to be at work at 5 AM, but there is still coffee waiting for me when I come into the kitchen. He makes it even though I say he doesn’t have to. I think at the end of my life, if you ask me how I knew Chris Graham loved me, the answer will be: coffee when he didn’t have to.

I drained the pool last weekend. I tried to funnel the water to the line of hostas I planted along the field, begging them to stay green and full just a little bit longer.

Our apple trees–dying since we moved here–have officially given up. In the coming weeks, we’ll cut them down and have apple wood for fires. I don’t know if I need to walk across the street to the cemetery and give my grandpa a heads up that we’re cutting down his apple trees. It feels courteous.

In the spring, my husband built a bird feeder with scrap wood from the garage. He’s lovingly filled it all season, excited to see birds enjoying the condo he designed for them. This isn’t an important story except to say we have a little squirrel friend who also enjoys the bird feeder. He’s very small. I bet he could fit in the palm of my hand. Chris despises him. The squirrel and my husband are at war.

I don’t make the squirrel leave when I see him snacking. I tell him he’s welcome to eat here.

I wonder, at the end of his life, if you ask Chris how he knew I loved him, the answer will be: she didn’t, remember that squirrel?

The fields behind our house had beans this year. I always forget what it’s time for until the crop starts growing. I like corn years better, it makes our backyard feel like a cocoon. But beans are okay, too, I guess. They’re drying out, turning yellow. Soon, the field will be empty, and we’ll see deer on the hills.

Someone asked me this summer if I’m still writing.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I am writing all the time. I am writing and gathering.

This summer, in my head, I’ve written about:
what my compost bin is teaching me
why you shouldn’t watch the news
the prisms we hung in the living room windows
how to get rid of “friends” on facebook you really don’t like
a story about the bees coming to the flowers I planted for them
peoples’ houses I go by each morning on my walk
the best roasted tomatillo salsa recipe in the world
anxiety and anger
what healing feels like
why bookshelves should be filled with books and not decor
‘Somebody Feed Phil’
fallen heroes
a drama about the hummingbirds outside the kitchen door

And that was just last week.

Yes, I’m still writing.

For me, there are seasons for writing and there are seasons for preparing to write. I’ve been preparing to write for a while now.

Maybe I’ll be writing again soon.

the TV producer, part II

I didn’t need to call him. I knew the answer.

After my friend responded, I sat at my desk and sobbed. It was the first time during the stay-at-home order I had cried. It came fast and hard. I cried mostly for the TV situation, but probably a little bit about everything else happening in the world too.

I knew, I knew, I knew.

I just didn’t want it to be true. I was looking for someone to tell me it was okay even though I knew it wasn’t okay.

I let the rest of the day be about feeling sorry for myself, for the opportunity I was passing up, then I emailed the producer first thing the next morning.

My husband and I took some time to talk and pray through your kind request, but we don’t feel we’re called to share our tithing story with your network. [The scripture and principle they wanted to use to share our story] doesn’t align with our understanding of the Bible.

Thank you for the offer, and I wish you well on your search.
Mary Graham

Then I exhaled a long-held breath.

Last year around this time, I had lunch with a friend. I was sharing about a tough decision I was supposed to make and how hard I was fighting what I knew in my bones to be right.

She said, “It sounds like you have a maturity issue. You know what’s right but still want to do things your own way. Even when you know it will end up hurting you.”

I flipped the table in response to her comment.

Just kidding. I nodded thoughtfully, because I imagined that what’s a mature person would do. Then I went home and spent a lot of time thinking about how my innate need to be defiant might be affecting my spiritual life.

Flash forward almost exactly a year to an email from a producer wanting to spend the day filming me and my family for a TV segment millions of people would see.

Obedience is hard but worth it. Always. Always. Always.

Not because it offers a financial payout. Not because this obedience ensures a bigger and better opportunity later. Not for any other reason than when I decided to follow Christ I did it because I said His way is better. No matter what, His way is better.

Even when I don’t understand.
Even when something else looks fun.
Even when, for a moment, something seems shiny and easy and, on the surface, good.

I don’t want easy. I don’t want fake. I don’t want the quick return the world has to offer. Because in the end, it will all have been for naught.

That’s what the prosperity gospel promises: quick returns, easy wealth, and fake health. Why hope for heaven if God can give me everything I want right here on earth?

As I prayed and waited for God to make the TV opportunity feel okay, I thought a lot about the “ends justifies the means” argument. How many times Christians accept or allow things they know are not of God because the end result is something they believe God would want. We use this argument for politics. We use this argument for relationships. We use this argument for how we spend our time and money.

The “ends justifying the means” argument twists scripture to make God’s wants, needs, and desires line up with ours. It is a convenient reading of the Bible, a wonderful lie that God believes everything we do. It makes us feel safe and smug and full of right answers.

We use the argument to justify bad choices or behavior because the result might bring God glory. You know, because the Bible is full of stories about how God calls us into sin so He can show how great He is.

You know, all those stories and parables where we’re encouraged to sin.

I rolled that idea around in my head a lot. We’ve struggled with a lot of hard stuff in our marriage that God could use to encourage or help others, I thought. He could be glorified and honored and we could show so many people the grace and mercy God is known for!

But none of those arguments held much weight.

God doesn’t “need” me to fight for Him.
God doesn’t “need” me to ignore some parts of His commands to meet some goal He has.
God doesn’t ask me to bend some rule for his good.
God doesn’t need me to scheme and accept sin and pick the lesser of two evils to accomplish His will.

All those things make it sound like my God isn’t very powerful.

God wants my obedience.
He wants my integrity.
He wants me to say I trust His ways more than my own.
He wants me to be mature enough to admit I don’t understand, but I’ll be obedient anyway.
He wants a relationship with me and through that relationship I’ll grow to be more like him.
He wants my actions and choices to always point toward Him and not myself.

I don’t pretend to know what comes next. I don’t hold my breath for my reward, for my payback. I have no doubt my story was going to be used in dangerous ways to shame and guilt people into giving their money away in hopes of a big return from God. I know anything that involves shame or guilt isn’t of God.

I can tell you that as soon as I sent the email, I felt lighter than I had since it arrived a few weeks prior. It didn’t hurt, I didn’t regret it or wonder, I did what I believed was right based on how God is forming and changing my heart, and it felt like a deep, cleansing breath.

Actually, here’s what I got from being obedient to what God was asking: I got peace, contentment, and freedom. Nothing worth money but absolutely priceless.

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