Bodies.

For the first time ever, I was a mom for spring break. My man and I took the kids to an indoor water park for a long weekend and had an incredible time. Because I am female, I spend as much or more time as the men looking at other women’s bodies when we’re all on display in our swimsuits. My reasons differ, of course: I compare myself to them, see where I fit in the array of physical femininity, and try to decide how happy (or unhappy) my man is with my body, based not on what he tells me but on how I appraise it compared to all the others.

That’s totally sick, isn’t it?

But I spent upwards of 24 hours engaged in exactly that, and it was maddening. Usually those thoughts happen on such a subconscious level that I continue about my business barely registering them, but this time was different. I had my daughter with me, and the thought of her thinking those things broke my heart. She’s dazzlingly lovely, and I want her to know it. I want her to know that she’s perfect the way she is. She so beautifully reflects her dad’s gorgeous Italian traits set on the smooth, olive-toned Native American skin she got from her mother’s side. She can choose to treat her body kindly or not, but it’s a perfect snowflake of a body that should never be disrespected by anyone, including her. Which is precisely what I was doing to mine.

And the thing is, every body I saw was “imperfect” compared to the cinematic, airbrushed ideal. Flabbiness was everywhere. Cellulite passed me every few seconds. Moles and discolorations marked almost everyone. My body is no better or worse than the others I saw. In fact, underneath our skin we all house the same snowflake perfection I identify so easily in my daughter. Some women treat their bodies more kindly than others – I have to work on this too – but God-designed perfection is our common trait. Besides, my body does so many wonderful things: it walks, dances, swims, makes love, stretches, hugs, laughs, twirls, and bends. How could I be anything other than deeply thankful for a body like that?

I hope, down in my core, that my daughter never forgets she’s beautiful. Jealous girls and lonely boys might try to convince her otherwise, whether they use words or not. Her dad’s voice, mom’s voice, and stepmom’s voice will be drowned out on occasion. So for my own part, I’m going to be preemptive. I’m trying to remind myself that I am perfect and beautiful, and I’m trying to listen to my man and my dad tell me the same thing. Maybe if I can remember it for myself, I can role model it and help my daughter remember too. She’s worth it, and so am I.

Redemption.

My pastor says it’s pointless to judge people because 1) People have reasons—which you don’t know—for doing what they do, 2) You have plenty of your own crap to deal with, and 3) No one cares about your judgments anyway. I’ll be honest with you: judging others was something I struggled with for years because I was pretty sure I knew better than most people what they ought to be doing. It’s like Claire, the mom from Modern Family, said: “I know I can’t run [my daughter’s] life for her, but if she would let me, I’d be so good at it!” Into my early twenties, I had a judgment for everything, partly because being a Christian made me feel superior wisdom-wise, partly because I was raised to have confidence in myself, and partly because I am human.

Last Friday would’ve been my fifth wedding anniversary, which is why these thoughts are bubbling in my brain. When some people heard of my separation and divorce, they became rigidly judgmental. Some wanted me to know that divorce is a sin. Others wanted me to know that it’s fine if my heart was so hardened I had to divorce, but that I could never remarry because that would be a sin. Once I was told that divorce isn’t actually possible for a Christian. Someone else said that since we are attracted to the same type of person repeatedly, divorcing my first husband would only lead to divorcing second, third, and subsequent husbands. All I can say is thank God for my church and the grace I found in it. The leader of my Divorce Care group, a woman I deeply respect and love, was the first person to hold my hand and tell me she understood. As much as I appreciated the prayers and encouraging words of my friends and family, and I really did, the gift of being looked in the eye, understood, and shown grace was something that reached my soul.

It seems to me that to create the grand mosaic of grace, God needs those of us who have been divorced, gone bankrupt, been addicted, lost children, lost faith, lost dignity, and whatever else. He needs the women who got pregnant before they got married and the men (and women) who found someone else after they got married. He needs the drug dealers and porn stars and lawbreakers. He needs the ones who were bitter, lustful, abusive, greedy, arrogant, disrespectful, unloving. He needs the brokenhearted, mistreated, ignored, and forgotten. He needs people who can, like my Divorce Care leader, look his babies in the eye and say, “I get it. I know that story,” and comfort them in a way that mirrors his comforting of us. One of my favorite traits of my Divorce Care leader is that she is 100% shockproof. There is nothing you can say to this woman that raises her eyebrows in disgust or horror. You can tell her the worst things you’ve said and done, and she says things like, “Yeah, we tend to do that, don’t we?” The grace she has shown me, and so many others, is the very face of God. You can’t tell me God doesn’t use her story—the good, the bad, and the ugly—to reach his children.

I no longer assign blame for my divorce; it doesn’t matter. Anne Lamott says, “There are three things you can’t change: the past, the truth, and other people.” Divorce is a part of my past, and that’s that. Did I miss the will of God? Don’t know, don’t care; it's not something I can go back and change. (Although I do not at all regret my first marriage.) This is what I do know and care about: nothing I have ever done, including divorce, has caused God not to love me anymore. Nothing I have ever done has changed God’s promise of protection, healing, and grace in my life. Nothing I have ever done has made God scrap his plans for me and leave me to figure it out alone. I made mistakes in my marriage, and I live with the knowledge of having caused my ex-husband pain. But I do not have to live with guilt or shame, nor do I have to listen to other's judgments about my life. My story isn't about them or even me. It's about Jesus. I am saved. I am a part of God’s plan for humanity. And he makes all things new. New.

Mothers Day.

Chances are you think your mother is the greatest of her kind. Me too: mine is beautiful, wise, compassionate, and seriously smart. My mom has spent hours and hours of the last two years on the phone with me while I cried or complained or unloaded fear and hurt. She never turns down a hug or says she’s too busy to listen. She works to make sure everyone in the family has what he or she needs. As I write this, tears of gratitude spring to my eyes, for I am blessed with such an amazing mother. I love that a twenty-four-hour period is set aside for my family to give her an extra dose of special treatment. Mothers Day is a sweet time.

Mothers Day church services are a different story. To those of us who aren’t mothers, it can feel a little like not being tapped into a sorority. The beginning of the church service I was in last Sunday was like this. One of the pastors asked the mothers to stand as he thanked them on behalf of all of us. “Ladies, you make significant sacrifices through the years, and we rarely recognize it. You have answered the highest calling a woman can have: raising children. We want to bless you and thank you for your service to us.” He said other things—he spoke for five or ten minutes—but that’s the gist. My issue with this is not that it’s necessarily untrue: my own mother does some serious sacrificing, and she deserves appreciation for that and so much more. So do all mothers. Across the world, women spend their days cleaning up spills that no one else sees, mending tears in clothes, administering medicine, crying as they rock their children to sleep for hours on end when the little one just won’t cooperate. Mothers are strong, so strong.

But I do not believe that raising children is a woman’s “highest calling.” If that’s true, a sizeable demographic will never reach its female potential. In this subset, some have chosen not to have children for very valid reasons, and some have chosen against wifehood, as well. Some want desperately to have children, but for a reason that mystifies the doctors, it isn’t happening. Some have had surgeries rendering them infertile. Some have hormonal abnormalities, chronic illnesses, or other medical factors that bar them from motherhood. Some have watched in horror as their dreams of motherhood ended abruptly in the bathroom. For some, this holiday is a reminder of the loss of life or the inability to give it, not its celebration.

However, there is much more to the concept of “mothering” than giving birth. Some women who have not and will never bear children have left an indelible mother’s mark on the little ones in their lives. Aunts, stepmothers, grandmothers, nurses, teachers, big sisters, babysitters, family friends—these women and others like them have the same capacity for “significant sacrifice” and “service” to children* as the women whose biological offspring are involved. Mothering, I would argue, is the art of cherishing and guiding children, an art that does not require a functional reproductive system. Mothers encourage. They spend time with children. They cause smiles and laughter. They provide for children’s needs and wants. They teach. They love. Women with unused wombs are just as capable of these functions and eager to fill them as their childbearing counterparts. Many of these mothering-women have played important roles in my life, as I hope to in the lives of others.

So maybe the entrance qualifications for the Mothers-Day sorority can be modified. Rather than honoring only biological or legally adoptive mothers, perhaps we can include all mothering-women who nurture and care for the world’s younger people. While only one woman births us, many, many women along the way help us become who we are. One such woman in my life was A.M., a family friend who spent a lot of time with me during my childhood. She took me out to dinner (and as a good Southern girl, I almost always picked Cracker Barrel), she took me mini-golfing, she invited me to spend weekends with her in her apartment. Many evenings she made us hot dogs and we talked and laughed while eating in her kitchen. A.M. reached out to me: she loved me, cared for me, and looked me in the eye when we talked. I knew I was important to her. And there is no greater gift a mothering-woman can bestow than the message “You’re significant. You’re special. There’s something wonderful inside you that I love to watch and be a part of.”

For A.M. and all the other members of the mothering corps out there, whether you are biological moms or moms of the heart: thank you most sincerely for the love and guidance you so freely give, and a very happy Mothers Day to you.

*Although I use the word “children” throughout, certainly some women mother us when we are already old enough to have children and perhaps grandchildren of our own.

Mirrors.

The most frequent response I receive when I tell people that I taught high school is, “Wow. I could never do that. Teenagers these days…” This judgment comes complete with a slow headshake to emphasize the hopeless state of youngsters. I concede that teenagers can be difficult. In fact, they are in turn hilarious, pitiful, intelligent, angry, creative, challenging, and very, very needy. But I tend to come to their defense when people carelessly pass judgment on the lot of them. And actually – although this seems to go too far for most people – I rarely think it’s the student’s fault that he/she acts inappropriately.

While we were visiting Jeff’s parents in Colorado in December of 2008, we all went to see the Avalanche play the Nashville Predators. (If you think I had torn loyalties, trust me, I did.) Everyone played nice until the second period. An Avalanche player knocked a Predator off the ice into the box where his teammates sat. The Av player was sent to the penalty box for un-sportsmanlike conduct. The rest of his teammates found this call unfair, and tensions mounted on both sides. While the Av player was in the box, the Predators took advantage of the situation and made a goal. The scoreboard flashed with menacing red words silently screaming at the Avalanche: “Get mad! Get even!” Before long, a fight broke out near the Predator’s goalie, causing all of the players to flock over and get in on the action. To be honest, none of that really surprised me; it’s testosterone in action, and you can see similar scenes in bars, schools, and parking lots around the country. But what really made my blood boil was the crowd’s reaction. Predictably, they stood and began cheering on the fight. With thousands of people yelling, of course, it’s impossible to hear what all is being said; however, I heard the man behind me start screaming, “Yeah! Ground ‘em into the ice! Give ‘em hell!”

Don’t talk to me about disrespectful, violent young people when that’s what you give them to look up to. And it’s not just at hockey games – the Chattanooga Lookouts (a minor league team no less!) has bloodthirsty fans, too. In the interest of space, I won’t even begin to cover football players: consider Ray Lewis, Philip Rivers, Randy Moss, and the list goes on. Don’t talk to me about violence in high schools without considering the ramifications of violence in sports. Teenagers think, and are absolutely correct, that it’s hypocrisy to tell them, “You can’t settle disagreements with fights,” when they’re seeing these same adults acting in completely the opposite way on the sporting field! I love sports as much, and probably more, than the next girl, but if we want high schoolers who are able to control their emotions, able to handle things like “adults” (What does that even mean anymore?), then we’d better hold a mirror up while we’re at sporting events cheering on the fights, disrespect, and violence we’re preaching against.

I’m not saying we should enter the arena wearing peace signs and smiling at everyone and selling roses instead of beer, but I am saying to think about those complained-about young people. How can we expect them to act differently when this is what they see from us?

Imperfection.

Last night Armando Galarraga, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was six outs away from a perfect game when ESPN started bonus coverage. (A “perfect game” happens when a pitcher gets an out for every batter that comes up. No hits, no walks, nothing but disappointed batter after disappointed batter.) It’s the top of the eighth. A groundout, a strikeout, another groundout. Top of the ninth. Fly ball. The right fielder seems to be running at supersonic speed. Superhuman catch—everyone’s in awe that he made it, thereby keeping the game “perfect” for another out. Next batter grounds out to the shortstop. Last out. Grounder. First baseman darts over to pick it up. Galarraga runs over to cover first base. The catch is made, runner gets to the base one and a half seconds later, knows that he’s out. Runner hangs his head in defeat. First baseman and Galarraga begin cheering: it’s a perfect game! Then, all of a sudden, it’s not. The umpire calls the runner safe. Safe. Galarraga gapes for a moment and then screws his face into an unbelieving smile. He quietly goes back to the mound, having lost the Detroit Tigers their first-ever perfect game. This would have also been the first time ever in MLB history to have three perfect games in one season. The last time there were even two in one season was 1888. In short, this is unheard of. Knowing all of this, the first baseman starts yelling at the ump. The Tigers’ manager comes out and yells at the ump. Fans boo. It’s all to no avail: the call stands. Galarraga gets the 28^th out. The game mercifully ends.

It’s no secret that humans are imperfect. I think that’s why everyone gets excited about perfect games: it’s so rare to find perfection in this world that we root for the team that’s able to create it for nine innings. And I do mean “team”—Galarraga might have been on the mound, but it takes hard working fielders to keep the perfection going. The perfect game belongs to all of them, not just Galarraga. Without that amazing catch by Austin Jackson, for example, the perfect game would’ve ended a lot sooner (and, it must be said, more fairly). Together, these men comprised the perfect team for one night, and baseball fans nationwide get excited about that.

There’s something in our nature that makes us crave perfection. I daresay it is Eden. Collectively, our souls remember a time when the world was perfect: no heartbreak, no sin, no anger, no bad calls. There was a time when gallivanting around unclothed and uninhibited was allowed. No one went hungry, no one died, no one became ill. It’s this memory buried in our unconscious—the Holy Spirit living in us—that causes us to say, “That’s not fair!” We remember what fair felt like. It’s this memory that causes us to seek out the elixirs of youth: Botox, plastic surgery, hair dyes, and serums. It drives us to say, “Oh, it’s perfect!” about gifts given to us, sunsets in front of us, or meals made for us. For a brief moment, we catch a whiff of perfection, and it thrills us.

But it my own life, this perfection has a darker side. I find myself often afraid to take a step in any direction because I’m afraid I won’t be perfect. Certain lesson plans that would’ve probably been excellent learning experiences for my students were thrown in the trash because I didn’t think I could execute them perfectly. I dropped a class in college when I wasn’t able to do with assignments with perfection. This fall I will be teaching elementary French at U.Va., and I am terrified that I will get in front of the group and embarrass myself because it won’t be perfect. Even in church, I sometimes look around and think, All these people probably have excellent devotional times every day, and I can never seem to keep a Bible-reading routine going. I do a lot of comparing myself to others, and I always come up short.

Yet the Bible tells me that despite my imperfection, Jesus loves me—so much so that He allowed Himself to be murdered so that He wouldn’t have to live in heaven without me. He exchanged His perfect life for my ugly one. He doesn’t care that I’m imperfect. How that works, I will never understand. After all, unhealthy, self-imposed requirements of perfection aside, I’m still a sinner. I still think and say and do terrible things. And yet, knowing all that, Jesus loves me. That, actually, is pretty perfect.

Dad.

I break from our regularly scheduled programming—the Jeff-and-Amie love fest, if you remember—to wish a happy birthday to one of my favorite people, my dad. Here are a few of the reasons why I’m crazy about him, just the first ones that popped into my head:

· He used to lie on the foot of my bed and read to me from a comic-book-style Bible with my panda puppet on his hand.

· He sings all the time when going through the house, usually hymns—hymns which have become incredibly precious to me, due to his and my mom’s influence.

· He takes the worst for himself and offers the best to Mom, my sister, Jeff, and me.

· He started a tradition nine years ago of “family game night,” which was on Fridays until I moved out, Sundays until Jeff and I moved to Virginia, and whenever we can now that we live 7 hours apart.

· Once upon a time, he separated a plastic blue egg and put one half on each of his eyes before “reading” a book to me.

· He keeps himself healthy, eating sensibly and working out regularly.

· He taught me about football.

· He taught me about God.

· He taught me how to teach.

· He listens to me rant and rave about anything I want to rant and rave about.

· He has a lot of really funny facial expressions and will let you take pictures of them if you’re fast enough.

· He has a believable “courtesy laugh” for when your joke isn’t funny but he doesn’t want you to feel awkward. I have yet to master this talent.

· He listens when people talk.

· He opens the door for my mom anytime they go anywhere, and he walks beside or slightly behind her.

· He’s hysterically funny.

· He’s almost always right about everything.

· He understands people and things to their very core.

· He’s a role model in every sense of the word.

· He loves my mom more than he loves himself.

· He loves my husband.

· He loves my sister.

· He loves me.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD! I love you so much and hope to be a lot like you when I grow up.