We get asked a lot of questions about Campbell’s name. Where did it come from? Is it a family name? What does it mean? And the answer is… nowhere. no. nothing.

OK, that’s not entirely true. Aaron watches a show called Damages that has an actor named Campbell Scott on it. He saw it on screen one day and it stuck with him. He was pretty sold on it right away, actually. I took longer to convince. We wanted something that sounded like it could be anything – a writer, a doctor, a stay-at-home mom, a bum on the street. You know, whatever she wanted to be.

(The part where it doesn’t mean anything isn’t entirely true, either. According to the baby sites, Campbell means ‘crooked mouth.’)

I have a bit of a hang up about names. See, I’ve never liked mine. (Sorry, mom.) I don’t feel like it suits me. It sounds cheerleader-y, ditzy, stripper-y. Seriously. Anytime there are a bunch of women on TV trying to, like, win the love of Bret Michaels, I guarantee three of them will be named Brandi. Brandy. Brandie. Brandee. (That one’s the worst.)

So naming our little girl was a daunting task for me. I didn’t want to saddle her with something she hated. I wanted her to have options. But mostly, I didn’t want people to have an idea of who she was before they actually met her.

The longer we talked about Campbell, the more it grew on me. It sounds solid to me, grounded. There aren’t any famous and also trashy people named Campbell. It’s unique, but not crazy. It’s a word people know and know how to spell. I was starting to feel it. Then Aaron brought in the big guns – the middle name. Louise. After my grandmother.

This is my grandmother, Louise. (And my mom, Nelda.) (And me.)

I loved the idea of using a family name, and Campbell Louise flows so well. I was excited to honor my Mawmaw, the lady who took care of her giant family and raised my mom and introduced us to chocolate pie. Plus, she’d had a great nickname – Tootsie. Toots. Totally cute for a baby girl.

Then my Mawmaw got sick. She had a stroke, and then another one. She lost use of the right side of her body. She started forgetting who people were. A blood clot. A broken hip. She started talking to people who had died years ago. She got a little better, then a little worse. She couldn’t swallow food. When asked, she would say her name was “Number 29″. It was rough on my family, especially my mom. It was hard for me to be so far away from them.

Mawmaw passed away on November first. Her body had just had enough. The service was scheduled for the following Saturday. My mom was freaking out that Campbell would come sometime that week. I spent a lot of time talking to my stomach, asking her to please just hold out. Stay in there until after the funeral. The service was at 11am on Saturday. I started having contractions at noon.

The original Toots and Toots the Second missed each other on earth by just a few days. But I like to think they’ve got a connection.

Like the rest of America, I made a resolution of sorts at the beginning of the year to lose weight. The fall was hard on me, and I spent a lot of time stressing and eating whatever I wanted because I was tired and it made me feel better. Then Christmas came and it was awesome and also full of my mom’s chocolate dipped peanut butter crackers and Whataburger and Taco Cabana and La Madeleine. Something had to be done.

There’s a church a couple of streets over that has a Christian Recreation Center. I don’t know what makes it Christian, exactly, but if a treadmill and a few free weights are capable of a relationship with Jesus, then those are the machines and weights I want to be using. Surely they make your workout extra blessed, right? Your crunches are super holy?

Either way, we joined. Mostly for the spiritual rewards, of course, because it is where Jesus would work out (WWJWW bracelets, anyone?), but also because it only costs NINE DOLLARS A MONTH. We can walk to it and it costs nine dollars a month. Clearly it is anointed.

Also, it is awesome. As our neighborhood (and I’m sure the population of the church) is 99% retired, we are the youngest people in the place by about sixty years. Add to that the fact that our schedules allow us to go in the middle of the day and going to the gym is about the most fun there is to be had in our part of town. It is full of the most awesome people and it is such a blast to go that I almost forget how much the glute burn mode on the elliptical hurts. Almost.

My two favorites are Sue and Tommy. I think Sue is about 90, in both years and pounds, and she rocks that place like there is no tomorrow. The big draw for most of the patrons is the indoor walking track, and Sue is the queen of the walkers. After she does her laps she comes bursting into the workout room like a crazy person and does everything available in the room for about thirty seconds at a time. Ten crunches on the ab rocker thing. Five each of all the weight machine options. A couple of spins on the bike. Four bicep curls. And the whole time, she is talking to you like you’re hard of hearing and dumb as a bag of hammers. I want her to be my best friend.

Tommy is younger, maybe in his 70s, and if you put four of Sue together you might be close to Tommy’s size. He pulls an oxygen tank around and talks to me about the same four things every day: the weather (so cold! so warm! so rainy!), where my husband is (we have to take turns coming in because there’s only one elliptical), why I’m late (apparently we have a schedule to keep) and how I better hurry before he gets on the machine first (he can barely walk). He is the nicest guy in the world.

It is so, so hard to get motivated to work out. I’d like to think I’d be able to keep this up on my own. I’ve been tracking my calories with an awesome app on my phone, so I know exactly how my workouts affect what I can eat, and I like to eat, so I work out to free up some calories. Maybe that would be enough motivation. But I am so thankful for Sue and Tommy and everyone else at our little gym. They notice when I don’t show, and they ask why. They are old and loud and nosy and crazy and they bring me so much joy. Regardless of weight loss, having that place and those people is definitely making me healthier and happier.

Merry Christmas! Did you guys survive? It was close for us, I’m not gonna lie. We spent two weeks away from Nashville and we are worn plum out.

We drove down to Dallas after a Christmas party on the 17th, getting into town around 9:00am. I have to say, we are getting pretty awesome at the overnight drive. Aaron does most of the driving at night, and I usually take over when the sun’s coming up. I pack us a killer snack bag and cooler (so you can have apples and cheese at 3am if you want), load us up with trivia and pop culture podcasts and we are good to go.

We had an awesome week in Dallas, the best in a long time. We spent lots of time with my parents, eating and playing games and wrapping gifts and eating some more. It was restful and fun and just what we needed. We got to spend time with home friends, shop at the good mall and eat at all the places we don’t have in Nashville. (By the way, Nashville, let’s look into some Taco Cabana action up here.)

On Christmas Eve I drove out with my mom to visit my grandma, who served me excessively sweet tea in a Schlitz Malt Liquor glass and was convinced I’ve lived in Nashville for 30 years. Christmas morning we had cinnamon rolls and opened gifts from my way-to-generous family, including a handmade wahoo board from my dad with the biggest marbles I’ve ever seen, matching East Dillon Lions t-shirts and a stocking lottery ticket we scratched off to reveal a $500 prize. SO MUCH AWESOME. We spent the afternoon with my dad’s family, where we watched my relatives fight over bedazzled baseball caps and frozen burgers before hitting the dirty Santa jackpot: Tim McGraw cologne AND body wash. Try to contain your jealousy.

The day after Christmas we drove down to Waco to see Aaron’s family. It was completely uneventful, so we are labeling it a success. After Waco we hit Austin for a couple of days to celebrate Aaron’s brother’s engagement and birthday. It was nice to get to just hang out with his siblings doing normal stuff. And we got good time in with our niece, who would like to be called Oliver and thinks we live in a marshmallow.

We (finally) packed up and headed home yesterday. We love Texas and love our families, but 13 days is way too long. Especially when we get about four hours away from Nashville and the battery in the jeep starts to die. We drove two miles with no headlights before coasting to a stop in a Love’s truckstop parking lot. We got our hopes up when we found a mechanic right across the highway, but they fell right back down when he told us the part wouldn’t be available until noon today. So we marched across the street to the beautiful Rest Inn in Palestine, AR, and spent the night watching movies trying not to think about how much it was all costing.

In the end, though, it didn’t cost too much and we were on the road by 1:00. We made it home this afternoon, canceled our New Year’s plans and rang in the new year eating pizza and catching up on the DVR. Because we are old and classy and so, so tired.

Overall, though, it was a really great trip. We are so lucky to have parents who are so generous and fun and easy to be around. We ate well, got a ton of rest and had a blast. 2010 was a pretty hard year for us but it ended on a high note for sure. Bring it on, 2011.

Sweet tea. Gilmore Girls reruns. Sparkly pipe cleaners. Angry Birds on Aaron’s phone. Avett Brothers live albums. Boots. Our Nashville people. Messenger bags. Our newly rearranged bedroom. Sisters who mail you slippers. Our neighbor who grows crops in his front yard. The funniest youth group on the planet. Being 30.

Grey nail polish. Stacks of magazines. Mawmaw’s chocolate pie. TOMS. Elton John on vinyl. Playing Scabble online with my dad. Burt’s Bees lip gloss. Memories of Miles. Naps. Purple ink pens. Friday Night Lights. Friends across the street. Twitter. A church where you can ask questions and be unsure and fit in anyway. Rolos.

Harry Potter. Car dancing. Clementines. Adults who love teenagers. Hot pink watches. Gel eyeliner. Work friends. Mexican street tacos. Orange tank tops. Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Friends you’ve had for 25 years. Procrastination. Shopping on the phone with my mom.

Family in all its forms. Taking risks. Choosing to take care of yourself. The unknown. Safe places. The best husband I ever had.

I was super excited when I got my Blackberry. It had email, it had a camera, it had a game called brickbreaker that for some reason I found excessively entertaining. It was awesome.

And it has served me well the past couple of years. I love being able to tweet pictures. I love that I get all my email and facebook stuff in one place from anywhere. I love that I appear to be able to drop it on a variety of surfaces without causing permanent damage.

Now, two years later, the shine has worn off. The quality of the pictures I take is pretty bad. The roller ball has decided not to scroll to the right anymore. Turns out brickbreaker is pretty boring. The good news is that my contract is almost up. I could get a new Blackberry! They are cheap! They have better cameras! They have touchpads instead of roller balls! I just have to make it a few more weeks and all my phone problems will be solved.

But then. You guys. Aaron got a new phone. It’s some kind of fancy droid hoverboard 4G high speed microwave laser beam touch screen thing, and it is amazing. AND I WANT IT. Bad. Like, I may just take it from him and hit the road. I hear New York is lovely in the fall.

It is MADE OF MAGIC. The camera does all kinds of cool things (and will let me take pictures of the crazy church signs near our house without having to park and get out and walk up to them, which I totally do when the message is awesome enough, don’t judge). The internet is super fast. You can talk to it and it will convert what you’re saying to text. I could connect all my youth group and personal facebook and twitter stuff to one thing that will let me update them all together.

But the real reason I want it? SCRABBLE.

Technically it’s called Wordfued, but the essence is the same. I need access to portable Scrabble games at all times. It’s totally fine, y’all, I promise not to get addicted. I mean it.

I play Scrabble online with my family all the time, especially my dad. And he smokes me pretty much all the time. In the game we’re playing right now he is winning 431 to 325. That’s pretty typical. He is super good – he’s always talking about playing defensively and setting yourself up and he gets bingos (when you play all your letters at once, but I’m sure you already knew that since most people are totally up on their Scrabble lingo) regularly.

What does this have to do with my need for Wordfued, you ask? Well, while I may get totally killed at Scrabble by my dad on a weekly basis, playing him has made me pretty darn good. Which means that if I have access to phone Scrabble, I can play with my friends who are not currently going through intense Scrabble training. AND BEAT THEM. BADLY.

It makes sense to pay hundreds of dollars for what you will essentially be using as a portable Scrabble machine, right?

Have I told you guys that my sister is getting married? This is VERY EXCITING NEWS. Because of all the meaningful family experience lifelong happiness preparing for the future business, of course, but also… planning. I love weddings. I love planning. If I had it my way Chelsea would just get the heck out of the way and let me make this thing happen. Turns out she has some ideas and plans of her own, sadly. But a girl can dream.

First of all, she needs a tea-length dress. Preferably with tulle sticking out the bottom.

Then we’re gonna need some mismatched bridesmaids dresses with brightly colored tights and shoes. Obviously.

Location is key when it comes to weddings. I’m pretty convinced that this wedding needs to take place in a barn. Nothing says true love like weathered wood, twinkle lights and hay bales, right? RIGHT?

Cake is important. At a wedding, and also in life. Especially fabulously graphic ones.

Guests cannot party on cake alone. You need food. Delicious food on beautiful tables.

But it’s the personal touches that really make a wedding memorable. The little creative details. Like giant neon letters.

And personal photo polaroid placecards.

And pretty initials made of flowers. (It’s a C! For Chelsea! So meant to be.)

Most importantly, you need activities. Games. Like, just as an example, a game that your entire family has played for centuries and loves so much your dad actually makes his own portable sets. Nothing would make this wedding cooler than a party-wide washers tournament.

Greatest wedding in history? I THINK SO.

You guys. YOU GUYS.

I’ve been thinking for two days about how to start this post. And the only thing I keep thinking is “YOU GUYS”. Because, seriously? You guys? My 30th birthday was one of the greatest days of my life.

First let me give you the highlights of the morning and afternoon: candy for breakfast, birthday cake in staff meeting, delicious avocado BLT and prosecco sangria at lunch with Becka, shoe shopping, magazine reading, mani-pedi. Already a pretty amazing day, right?

The plans for the evening had been a closely guarded secret for the past several weeks. I knew there was a party, and I knew I needed to dress up a bit, but that was it. I didn’t know where it was, or what was happening, or who would be there. Nothing.

So I’m getting dressed, stressing out about what shoes to wear and will I regret the heels and does this dress need a necklace and why am I 30 but I don’t know how to do my hair, when Becka comes over to pick me up. We are heading out the door when she gets a text, stops, and says, “Hey! What’s that big box on the counter?” Clearly whatever we were on our way to do was not ready for us to do it, so she was stalling. We then spent a very fun half hour opening my birthday box from my mom.

(Sidenote: have I ever fully explained the birthday box to y’all? Oh, man. You are so gonna wish my mom was your mom. Every year on my birthday I get a big box wrapped in brown paper. The paper comes off to reveal a big cardboard box covered in magazine clippings… pictures, quotes, drawings, all kinds of things. This year mine had about a thousand “30″s on it, along with pictures of New Kids On the Block. So great. You open the box to find a ton of birthday presents – some big, some small, several funny – all individually wrapped in coordinating wrapping paper. My mom rules at gift giving. Next time I see you I’ll show you my freaking awesome hot pink watch and my budding collection of Penguin Classics.)

So! We finally get in the car and head downtown. We park in a lot near a bunch of buildings I have never been to. I am totally confused. We come around a corner and walk past a random storefront, and I look in the window and see, you know, EVERYONE I KNOW. So fun. We walk in to this amazing building, someone puts a hot pink boa around my neck and a glass of wine in my hand and I start hugging and squealing and laughing and all the things you do when all your favorite people are in one place.

And then. THEN. I walk into the next room, expecting the people in there to be more of my people, and stop dead in my tracks. Because Don and Lori Chaffer are there. WATERDEEP IS AT MY PARTY. I, of course, start crying immediately and further embarrass myself in front of them. They hug me and we talk for a minute and then I think I should just go right ahead and die.

But I don’t, and it’s a good thing. Because after everyone got their food (Baja Burrito!) and sat down, they got on stage. And played an acoustic set. Of all my favorite songs. For me and my friends.

WHAT.

Let me make sure I am setting this scene correctly for you. I am sitting at a table in an amazing old building in downtown Nashville. On that table I have wine and pineapple salsa. I am surrounded my my favorite people in the world. And ten feet in front of me, my favorite band of all time is playing a private show with a set list comprised of only my favorite songs of theirs. Are you with me?

One of the greatest moments of my entire life. Ever. EVER.

(The set list, for those of you who care about this kind of thing, and if you don’t, well, I don’t know if we should be friends anymore: Heart Attack Time Machine, Oh, Close the Door, Good Good End, Both of Us Will Feel the Blast (this is where I started crying, you know, AGAIN), Sweet River Roll, Everybody’s Guilty, Sink or Swim, He Will Come, Everyone’s Beautiful. Oh, and Happy Birthday.)

The rest of the party was pretty freaking great, too. The birthday cake was adorable and delicious and apparently made by “a stout old lady named Joyce who will be making all our cakes from now on”. The music playing overhead was a playlist of songs I love, which I knew in my head but still said “I LOVE THIS SONG” every time a new one started playing. We laughed and danced and talked and ate and it was so so good.

And then there was a photo booth.

My awesome friend Becka put together a collection of props and everyone took pictures with a little polaroid camera and attached them to notes for me. I am working on getting those scanned in, but in the meantime, here are some of my favorites from my digital camera. I think I should carry around a foam handlebar mustache all the time.

It was an incredible, incredible night. Aaron went way above and way beyond anything I could have imagined or deserved. I have pictures to prove it and I still don’t fully believe that it even happened. I married good.

]]> http://rmfo-blogs.com/brandi/2010/08/12/if-you-could-die-from-happy-baby-id-be-a-goner/feed/ 6 http://rmfo-blogs.com/brandi/2010/07/08/a-strange-thing-is-memory-and-hope-one-looks-backward-the-other-forward/ http://rmfo-blogs.com/brandi/2010/07/08/a-strange-thing-is-memory-and-hope-one-looks-backward-the-other-forward/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:24:31 +0000 brandi http://rmfo-blogs.com/brandi/?p=1295

As I may have mentioned, there is a lot going on in my life right now. A lot. Like fourteen other life-changing kinds of things on top of the work stuff I posted about the other day.

Which means I spend a lot of time procrastinating on facebook.

Yesterday, sitting among registration forms and food money and postcard proofs and a stack of 40 straw cowboy hats and receipts and pink flamingos, I happened to click on the ‘photos’ link on my facebook sidebar. The first album that came up had ‘Richard Smith’ tagged underneath it. Richard Smith is better known as Pawpaw, my dad’s dad. While Pawpaw is technically on facebook, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t spend a lot of time uploading and tagging pictures. So I clicked it to see what it was.

And what it was? Was an album full of old pictures of my family. My grandparents when they were first married, my dad and his siblings as children. Pictures I have never seen before. Pictures that were uploaded by a woman I have never heard of. (Mom? Call me? Who is this woman who has a bunch of pictures of our family?)

I immediately started saving them to my computer. Because they are awesome. Want to see them? I know you do.

This is my Nanny and Pawpaw. How great is this picture? I can’t even imagine them looking like this. Also, I want that chair.

This is my dad (far right) and his siblings, minus one of my aunts, who… wasn’t born yet? I’m not sure how much younger she is. They are so cute, you’d never expect them to turn into the crazy adults they are.

Nanny and Pawpaw again. I love the expression on his face. Hard to believe this is the same guy who calls me from the golf course in the middle of a windstorm and yells into the phone asking about the Nashville weather.

My dad, holding cupcakes that I’m sure were meant for everyone but he probably ate himself.

Nanny and her sweet glasses.

I don’t know who the lady is that uploaded these pictures, but I’m so glad she did. I was pulled right out of the chaos of my adult life in Tennessee and dropped into the 1960s in Mesquite, TX. Completely unexpectedly. (We won’t talk about the part where I cried a little.) It is so easy to get caught up in where you are and forget to look back and where you came from.

My life right now is so focused on the future and planning for what is to come. And that is mostly okay. But these people are MY people, and I am thankful for that reminder.

I spent some time last week in Dallas. When I booked the ticket a couple of months ago, it was to attend a weekend wedding extravaganza for a friend I’ve known since I was four. Four! How does a 29-year-old person have 25-year-long friendships? HOWEVER, a few weeks ago, that friend, after a heart wrenching process and a lot of crying group therapy sessions and emails with our friends, decided to call the wedding off. It was a tough, but right, decision, and it resulted in a whole different kind of weekend for me.

I never get to go to Dallas and just hang out. We are always there for a reason – holidays, events, family things. Never just to visit. All of a sudden I had four days to fill with whatever I wanted. It was awesome.

I landed in Dallas Thursday afternoon. My parents picked me up from the airport and we talked about going to a sports bar somewhere to eat and watch the basketball tournament. Somewhere in the conversation it came up that there was a new ALDI grocery store in Mesquite, my hometown. Then we had an obvious breakdown in communication, because when I was saying ‘go out to eat and watch basketball’, my dad was hearing ‘go to ALDI and look at weird food with a bunch of crazy people’. So that’s what we did. It was fascinating.

Then we played wii swordfighting.

Friday morning my mom and I, armed with nothing but a Gap coupon and some fairly comfortable walking shoes, headed out for a full day of shopping. We went to multiple Targets in search of the Liberty of London line (seriously, y’all! Look at this! and this! and this! and this! and this! Oh, how I wish Aaron wore ties regularly.) We loaded up on notecards and tops and dresses for little girls we only kind of know but who HAD to had them because they are so cute. We walked a GIANT outlet mall circle and found great deals on sandals and dresses and… ponytail holders. So fun.

Then we played wii ping pong.

We got back just in time for me to turn around and have dinner with two of my most favorite people: Allison, my high school friend, college roommate and bridesmaid, and Julie, our awesome friend who was also one of our youth leaders when we were in high school. She hates it when we tell people that. We had pancakes and crepes at Cafe Brazil and then hung out at Allison’s total jealousy-inducing Pottery Barn-ish house in the M Streets. Great night that ended with the creation of the phrase “Fake Asian Babies For Christ”, which I would explain to you if I could. But I can’t. So I won’t.

Then I went home and played wii bicycling.

Saturday morning I had brunch with my friends from high school. I know I write about them every time I go home, but I can’t help it. I have eight awesome girlfriends that I have known most of my life. Who has that? Not many people, that’s for sure. I am very lucky. We had monkey bread and fruit and talked about turning 30 and having babies and canceling weddings and how things are never quite what you plan them to be. It was wonderful and restful and comforting. I love them.

Then I went home and played wii basketball.

I never seem to hang out with my mom and sister without getting our nails done, and this time was no exception. We were on our way out the door for mani-pedis when my dad came down the hall asking if he could go. That’s right, my big dad with his mangly feet (sorry, Dad) got a manicure and pedicure with us. It was awesome. That poor girl who had to scrub his ticklish feet.

My sister and her boyfriend work at one of those movie theaters where you can eat dinner. So Sunday after our nails were done we headed over there to watch Alice in Wonderland in 3-D and eat fried appetizery things and ice cream sundaes. For free. I loved the movie, the food was great, and all it cost me was a few dollars for a tip. Can’t beat it.

After the movie, I ran across town to have dinner with my friend Jon and his family. Jon and I have known each other for a long time… he was my first real boyfriend and we have a lot of history together. I don’t know how it turned out that we are actual friends after everything that went down and how much time has passed, but I am thankful for it. His wife is awesome and his kids are hilarious and we had a really nice time.

Then I went home and played wii jetskiing.

Before I flew out Monday afternoon, I met up with an old pastor of mine. We didn’t really have a youth pastor when I was in high school, but right before graduation a guy named Paul and his wife Jill came in and took over the youth program. It was life-changing for me – they were young and fun, and I volunteered with them throughout college. I always thought Jill’s life seemed awesome because she got to teach English and be a youth pastor’s wife. (I obviously did not live in a church culture that let me believe that a female could be the real youth pastor.) Anyway, they were one of the only functional youth programs I’ve ever been a part of, and Paul is now a pastor of a church really similar to ours in Nashville, so it was really great to spend some time just talking with him. He gave me some much needed encouragement and perspective on my current situation and future plans. So helpful.

Then I went home and played wii canoeing.

I love going to Dallas – it’s always relaxing and fun to see all my old people. This trip turned out to be an unexpectedly good one, and I am thankful. Especially for the wii.

After we finished our read-through of the Bible in my ordination class last month, we decided to take it easy for a while. Take a break from the insane pace and piles of studying we’d been doing for over two years and just spend some time talking. So, for the past several weeks, we’ve been taking turns telling our stories. Who we are, where we come from, how we got here. What we think. What we believe. It’s been such an interesting and enlightening exercise getting to know each other in such an intimate way.

I worked for days putting mine together. I wanted to hit all the important details, but also have a thread that tied the whole thing together. Part of what we were required to do was define a metaphor for our spiritual views… a picture of how we see the world and how our faith fits into that idea.

If I had been asked that question ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, it would have been easy. Something about spiritual discipline, exercise, how working hard will get you where you need to be, spiritually-speaking. But I’m not really that person anymore. My life, and my outlook, has a lot more grey than black and white.

I took my turn before I read this book, sadly. It would have made the process a lot easier. Or, if nothing else, reminded me that I’m not alone on this road.

Jesus Girls is a collection of essays about “growing up female and evangelical”. It’s a book of women, like me, who came of age in the church and have had something of a complicated relationship with it ever since. Some have reconciled, some have not, but they all have a story to tell. And not a black and white, right and wrong story. A real story.

Like this, from Anne Dayton, that I’m pretty sure she wrote while looking INTO MY BRAIN. She writes how it felt to get involved in church as a teenager with a family that didn’t find it as… appealing as she did. (It is taking all the self control I have not to type out the entire essay, just FYI.)

I was hooked. With the fervency of a new believer, I threw myself into youth group. I started coming every Wednesday night and promptly developed a crush on one of the boys. I soon felt very comfortable there, but no matter how many weekend retreats and campouts I went on, I knew almost instinctually that I could never quite fit in. I hadn’t been in Sunday school with them since nursery. They all seemed to have this vast and secret knowledge of song lyrics that I could never hope to acquire. They listened to the right music – Michael W. Smith and Stephen Curtis Chapman and Amy Grant, and later Audio Adrenaline and the Newsboys – not Mariah Carey and Nirvana and Weezer. In short, they had a carefully filtered world filled with positive influences and inspirational media that would lead them along the way everlasting. I had a family who watched PBS on Sunday mornings.

My family listened to America’s Country Countdown on Sunday mornings, but the rest of it sounds very familiar. It didn’t have anything to do with my family, or, really, with the youth group specifically. I just had such a desire to belong. There is nothing worse than being fifteen and feeling like an outsider.

I wanted someone to give me a True Love Waits ring. I craved one of those “Go Against the Flow” t-shirts.

But I never got any of those things. Mostly, I think, because I never bothered to ask. And to this day, I’m not really sure why. My parents are not selfish ogres, nor are they anti-church. They never denied me much.

I guess it somehow didn’t occur to me to ask my parents to buy these things for me. Part of my reticence was a shyness, a sense that religion was a private affair, and that talking about it was deeply revealing and embarrassing. Even in church, I couldn’t work up the courage to pray out loud; prayer was something I did in the quiet space of my mind. We rarely talked about God in my house. The one time my mom suggested I pray over a Thanksgiving dinner, I was so self-conscious I just shook my head and started eating.

I’m sure there was also a certain sense of guilt involved, as if embracing the Christian subculture was rejecting the mainstream world my family lived in, and thus, them.

In Kari’s review of the same book, she talks about the idea of testimony and how we were taught early on that ours needed to be compelling so as to win more people over to Christ. That was never an idea I was comfortable with, partially because I didn’t really feel like it was my job to convince people to believe, and partially because my story wasn’t all that interesting. I wasn’t a drug addict or a gang member or a prostitute before Jesus found a place in my life. He didn’t turn my life around, he came alongside me on the path I was already taking.

Instead, my story is about finding room at the table for everyone. I had the idea that Christians were all the same shape, and you better squeeze and contort yourself until you fit the mold. Now I understand that we are all who we are because that’s who we’re supposed to be, because we are made in the image of God and there’s a lot more to who he is than we can imagine. I understand that faith is personal, and unique, and that it has very little to do with listening to the right music or wearing the right clothes or having the right job.

But even though I was stuck with parents who drank wine with dinner and believed in science, they allowed me space to be who I wanted, and they tried to encourage a healthy balance between my “church things” an the rest of my world. In other words, they were always trying to get me to lighten up.

College is a time when you’re supposed to refocus your view of the world. My Christian friends were questioning the narrowness of the culture they had been brought up in, and many started rebelling against the parents who had sheltered them in the bubble of Christian pop culture. I, on the other hand, was looking at the choices I had made and wondering if maybe my parents might have been right all along.

And the reason I can understand those things is not because of the church, at least not the church as I knew it in high school and college. It’s because of the family I was born into, the one that taught me to love the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac and Sunday morning breakfast, and also how to think for myself and be independent and not let someone else dictate who I am.

They were teaching me the lessons that would later define both the faith I cling to and the way I teach the teenagers in the youth group I am now in charge of. I just didn’t see it at the time.