🌙 Lil Treasures Thread #41: Living on the Moon and Gwen Stefani's Abs
Slightly frozen Uncrustables where the peanut butter is just a little bit hard.
I’m writing this on Thursday night. I usually build my Treasures list throughout the week, and try to decide if there’s something I want to write about as we go. Thursdays have suddenly become enormously busy after the Tunnel of No Plans that was March-August. It’s the night my eldest cheers and the night my middle has soccer practice and it’s also the night before they go to one of their two days of in-person learning. So it’s a lot of rushing home and rushing into shin guards (nowhere is my Christianity tested as mightily as putting shin guards on a sweaty seven-year-old) and rushing in between fields and rushing home to eat and rushing bodies into the shower and into bed. We missed our window tonight, so I’ve got one passed out on the couch next to me, absolutely demolished by an entire hour of soccer and person-to-person interaction.
I was having a chat with my friend Terrance this week, and he mentioned that everything we’re doing, we're doing on the moon. I’ve been turning that over in my head, how every interaction or outing carries such an unfamiliar weight to it, like picking up something that looked light, but was hiding a bowling ball inside. We’ve never done soccer or church or friendships or dry cleaning or work during a global pandemic. It’s not entirely different, but we’re bouncing around, unsure of our footing and getting used to the way we move in a place with a change in gravitational pull. It’s not all pleasant. In fact, it’s painful. It’s revealing, both in others and in ourselves (we’ll talk more about that later), and truthfully I don’t love all the revealing. There’s a part of me worried we’ll always live on the moon, but to extend the metaphor to perhaps past its breaking point, maybe Earth is sick. Maybe the moon is a place to rebuild a kinder place to live. At this point, I’ve taken a melatonin or two, so don’t read too much into that.
Y’all it’s a Q+A week, and we’ve got some good ones this week, so strap the heck in. (That feels intense, this is just a newsletter that I hope you’re enjoying during fake toilet time away from your kids for a moment, or maybe reading while you pretend to work. No straps necessary, really.)
Q: How are you keeping your ish together? / When do you have time to do all that you do? / Can you outline a week in your schedule? You do so much. How do you keep up?
A: When I was in college, I remember reading an interview with Gwen Stefani where she talked how she worked out three times a day. Which is…insane. Closing her exercise ring three times over. She said the reason she was open about this fact is that she didn’t want anyone to ever think her body was the result of living any kind of normal life, or something that she just did herself with a Jane Fonda workout tape while the kids were eating Fruit by the Foot after school. I don’t remember the exact quote, but she basically said that she has an enormous amount of help to look the way she looked. Someone to cook meals for her, someone to make sure she was getting the proper amount of nutrition, someone who understood her body and how it needed to look and what she needed to do to get there. Someone to watch her kids while she worked out. An incredible amount of money to pay all these people. Now, in no way am I comparing my life to Gwen Stefani’s abs, but that’s always stuck with me, and I think it’s an important thing to note in these “highlight reel” times. I have help. I have so much help. My husband works at home, so my older kids can stay home every once in a while and it not be a travesty (it often devolves into that, but after I’ve left). We had a bubble babysitter this summer, we have a school-at-home-days tutor, and I’m about to get some help in my personal work life. My little guy has gone back to his pre-school. We make enough to pay for all of this. This isn’t a flex, I just want to be perfectly clear that in no way am I doing so much and spinning plates (remember the spinning plates metaphor? I haven’t thought about that in a minute) like some kind of Gwen Stefani’s abs of life. Also, my kids are constantly telling me I’m never home (they forget we were literally together every moment for six months). My house is a wreck. I mean an absolute wreck. That’s not me being cute. I just found an Uncrustable on the bookshelf, shelved like a novel. Also we eat a lot of Uncrustables. We had a mattress in our dining room for four months once, you know? Also I’m very much not keeping my ish together. I’m coping with food and indulging in bad moods and I’d be drinking more if my body wasn’t suddenly like: hey anything you drink now is going to make you so incredibly miserable, you’ll wish you’d never known about alcohol welcome to your late 30s.
I could sit here and talk about waking up early (which IS helpful when I do it), or my Get to Work Book (also helpful), or timers for staying off the internet (bigly helpful when I have the self-discipline), but I need you to hear it’s that I have help. I want to normalize having help, and I want to stop the glorification of looking like I (or anyone else, all your faves) am somehow superhuman. I can literally hear my children, my husband, and everyone who knows me IRL laughing their freaking heads off. I’m not trying to belittle how hard I work in some kind of weird humblebrag. I do work hard. I am high capacity. (Sometimes. Sometimes I just want to stare at a Netflix show in bed while I force-feed myself Uncrustables, still just a tiny bit frozen.) At my mastermind retreat last week, one of our members had a physical response to my schedule. I get it. But what I want to make clear is that anyone you see on the internet or even in real life who looks like they are killing it, they either A) drop plates in ways you’ll never see because it isn’t Instagrammable for me to post my kid losing it because I needed to go back up to the office for a little bit, B) have help, C) are half-assing many, many things, or D) all of the above. In my case, it happens to be D. I hope that’s helpful in this weird game we all play (me included) where I don’t see the backstage area of life for others, and so I judge myself against a standard that deosn’t exists in their life, and certainly shouldn’t exist in mine.
Q: Why are Christians so obsessed with the Enneagram?
A: Because we took “He must increase, I must decrease” in an unhealthy direction and completely lost touch with the idea that God created us with nuance and flavor and specific giftings and sorrows and hearts. We ignored the creativity of God in how we interact with ourselves and each other, and we are afraid of inner work (says the person most afraid of inner work). So when something came along that seemed to so deeply help us define ourselves, we became like those snapping turtles that latch their jaws on to something with such intensity, you have to hang them upside down and let the gravity of the earth force release. It’s nice to be known. It’s nice to be understood. It’s nice to be seen. That’s all.
Q: Are you going to write another Bible study?
A: Spring 2021.
Q: Did I miss your review of The Book of Longings?
A: This is going to be our Bible Binge Seminary Book Club read for September, so I will share all my thoughts there. Come hang out with us!
Q: Who are you voting for?
A: Joe Biden (I’m assuming this questioner means in the presidential election). I have an email in my drafts titled “A White Protestant Votes for Joe Biden” and I can’t finish it because…well, whatever the Republican party has turned in to keeps revealing itself to be a cartoon villain, complete with twirly moustache, and I feel the need to rage into the ether every day. Biden and I don’t align on everything, but as I’ve quoted before, my vote is not a valentine, it’s a chess move. It’s not a devotional, it’s not a pledge of fealty. It’s a tool I can use to love my neighbor, but it’s not my only tool. I’ll send the email in a few weeks when I’ve bleached Mike Pence substituting “Old Glory” into scripture from my brain, but in answer to your question, I’m voting for Joe Biden.
Q: How should I soothe my heart when a childhood BFF and close family are believing racist things?
A: Do not soothe your heart. Your unsoothed heart is your most powerful weapon. I know it is awful when people you love dearly reveal themselves to hold racist views. But you are in the exact place where our BIPOC brothers and sisters have asked us to engage. You have a certain amount of influence over these people. They love you. They know you. Bryan Stevenson talks about the power of proximity, and that applies here. This has obviously been hurtful to you (the words you chose indicate to me a broken heart, one needing to be soothed), and I think that a broken heart is a marquee, pointing out what is important to us. NOW PLAYING: YOUR RACISM IS DESTRUCTIVE, TO OTHERS AND TO YOURSELF. STARRING US. DIRECTED BY US. When my kids or a friend or family member come to me with their pain, I’m immediately sensitive to it. These are my people. I have hurt them. How do we mend this? How can I put myself in their shoes to see what I’ve done? Their pain (although it grieves me to have caused it) snaps me to attention. Engage with them. Ask questions. Find out what they are afraid of. Challenge those fears. Pray for them. Pray for yourself. Ask why. Press in. Do I think you should, to use a Biblical phrase, throw your pearls before swine? No. Do I think you should engage at a level that ignores your own boundaries? I do not. And I don’t know your specifics, of course. But allow your agitated heart to be a compass. Lean all the way in and give yourself over to this quiet, consistent work of asking people to change their minds and their prejudices. Not in the spirit of being right, but in the spirit of being loving. We may not ever have the chance to organize a march on Washington or pass laws or build massive communities, but this challenge to stay with the work of being anti-racist in our own small world is tremendously important. It’s more important work than anything someone you don’t know on the internet can do. If we all pay attention in our own houses, we honor our BIPOC brothers and sisters in real and honest ways, in ways that are deeply meaningful and true to our own spheres of influence.
Okay. That’s it for this week. I have treasures to get to. I hope you do too.
⚫️ Fair warning this is shattering and moving and will just bring you right back down to the deepest level of your humanity so if that is not your Friday vibe, I get it, but save this for later because it’s exquisite and we honestly don’t deserve it.
🧬 If you’ve been seeing people talk about the 6% report that came out this week, and I found this short thread from an HIV virologist (an actual scientist!) to be helpful in understanding what it means.
🌊 Liquid IV is everything it’s cracked up to be and I tried the Passion Fruit flavor this week to great success. It triples your water intake and since I’ve started using it in my water, I pee constantly, but I also feel more hydrated.
🤫 I know at this point, you’ve heard me talk about Hamilton ENOUGH, but I’m on another podcast, talking about Hamilton. It was so fun to chat with Kevin Cloud, author of God and Hamilton, about thin places and “It’s Quiet Uptown” AS ONE DOES.
👖 Someone asked me in the Q + A this week if we can fully transition to yoga pants as real pants (the answer is yes) but it reminded me that I neglected to tell you about my new favorite pants from Target. They are technically workout pants, but they present as a wide-leg, paper bag waist pant, and they are changing me fundamentally as a person. You LOOK put together, but you are really a slob in your workout pants. Win/win.
We did an episode of The Bible Binge this week about Mary Magdalene and it got truly wild. You can listen here.
How cute is this “Give a Darn” shirt from Delighted People Co? I ordered that one, but I also have my eye on “Work Hard, Cry Hard” which is just really on the nose for me.
TWITTER HALL OF FAME
The joy here:
Honestly just why are you not following Dana Schwartz at this point?
TANNING SALONS. I’ve never felt so out of place and this absolutely pitch perfect.
Okay pals. I can’t wait to see what you’ve been saving up in your treasures stockpile this week. LEGGO.
If you like The Swipe Up, would you share The Swipe Up? If you tag me, I sometimes slide into your DMs with a little treat, but mostly you’ll have my unending gratitude. It really means a lot to me when you share with your people. ❤️
Also just a reminder that there are affiliate links in this here email, which help keep The Swipe Up free at no extra cost to you. Which is very cool of you.
Anyone else familiar with Ernie singing “I don’t want to live on the moon”? Just me with this song in my head now?
Some wild combination of conversations and thoughts about God led me to this strange but lovely feeling while I was listening to Erin’s Hamilton podcast. It was like I realized that God just wanted me to put my head on His shoulder and He wanted to hug me and it is so bizarrely hard to describe but it was a MOMENT. You hear all your life that He wants to carry your burdens but it was definitely the first time in my life that I felt Him standing there reaching out and trying to take some of them.
This thread and all of the updates has become the thing I look forward to the most all week! Thank you for this little pocket of community that feels like a breath of fresh air!
Erin- YES. The moon analogy, unsoothed heart, and uncrustables. I’m here for all of it.
Weird fact- my hometown (think Friday Night Lights meets Amish Living) is where Smucker’s Headquarters resides and where uncrustables are made. My grandmother used to pick berries on her farm in middle school and sell them to the OG Mr. Smucker when he first started making his jams in his garage. So keep eating up those uncrustables— you’re supporting my family and friends livelihood 😊👏🏼
Nothing new to report this week. No treasures or turds.. just taking one day at a time and limiting my media intake for a few weeks so I can process and heal (early miscarriage). Otherwise, I would just binge watch and ignore all the deep feelings going on. Don’t worry, I’m bookmarking a lot of things you all posted so I can watch soon 😉