believing - Ashleigh Baker

I only have my stories.

I don’t have deep theological rants, or meandering dissertations.

I don’t lay bare my politics. I will no longer tell you how to mother your children. I can’t tell you what to believe.

I owned the answers, once, and I handed them out here and there and everywhere. My opinions were strong, my conviction mighty, my certainties unwavering. It all bubbled and spit until I laid it out in type.

But the boiling eventually spilled over, too much, too soon, and the heat was on. It all boiled down, and down, and down.

It boiled down until it was gone, all of it. The opinions, the doctrines, the practices, the reasons, the answers, the formulas.

pen

Now I have the stories.

I don’t have reasons anymore, but I am free to discover them again. I am here to be filled up, to seek and find. The boiling over and boiling down, it wasn’t for naught.

I’m filled with these stories, stacked by tens and twenties like an overflowing bookcase. I have stories of a little girl exuberant, knowing her own mind. I have stories of a young woman confident only in fear and self lost during the in-between years and little-girl-grown-up, found again.

Stories of handmade floral jumpers and pretty scarves of submission tied ’round my young head, of stapled paper magazines and old pen-pals. I have an account to give, here, of paradigms shifted, of crashing down and building up. Jesus known, Jesus lost, a new Jesus found.

Do you want to know the true tale behind that diamond ring finding its way to my 17 year old left finger, of babies born to young (yet married) parents, of childhood mothering?

I can talk to you about ten years of military life, the support, the hatred, the love, the quasi-pacifism, the pounding patriotism, the breast of conflicted emotions, the truest versions of those deployment sagas.

Let me whisper of family, the way we push and pull. The friendship casualties, the kindreds gained. I show the front of my marriage, the forward facing side, but perhaps this time I can be honest.

My ballet dancing son, my love of red wine, the way my fingers work yarn endlessly. My work and hiring a nanny. The way I read Common Prayer and took a break from church. The months spent curled in the corner of my sofa. The therapy and the doctor who discovered the secret. The horror of the midwife and the redemption of babies birthed. The months I contemplated walking away. My year in a hippie town.

These stories, I have them, tucked down deep and hidden, covered in a bit of a haze, bound tightly with a ribbon of fear. They beg to be released, to have the tape ripped from their lips, to climb to the rooftops and shout their own names.

Be warned, friend, I’m a new one, here. You know me and you don’t. I know myself and I don’t.

No cohesive topic. No pointed argument. No special knowledge to share. No axes left to grind.

But I still have my stories.

I only have my stories.

on drinking nothing but water for 40 days

I was planning to still drink coffee.

It seemed unecessary to give it up, it’s just a drink after all, and I could donate 55¢ for each K-cup I pop into my high tech coffee machine.

I’d still be giving up my syrupy sweet mochas and my smooth lattes and my wine on quiet Sunday evenings. I’d pass on that juvenile glass of creamy milk with dinner and I would pour one less tumbler of orange juice on pancake Saturday mornings. No diet Coke at the date night restaurant and no root beer with pizza.

It would be water, water, water. Forty days of water.

But don’t ask me to give up my coffee.

No matter that it’s for a reason, that each cent I save by not drinking milk and root beer and Cabernet will go into the grand fund and together, all of us water drinkers, we’ll build a well and give water to those without it.

Just don’t ask me to give up my coffee.

So I planned to do this, to tell you about Blood:Water Mission and how we’re building wells in Uganda, one glass of tap water at a time, and how you can be part of it, too. But I was going to confess to you my strong grip on the plain drip dark roast, and how I would match each mug of the steaming bittersweet goodness with an equal donation.

Because don’t you dare ask me to give up my coffee.

We’re building a well in Uganda, friends, these 40 days. We’re drinking water, unglamorous water, and nothing but water.

These people across the ocean, they’re brothers and sisters here on this planet and they need something so simple, something we run down our toilets and allow to flow over our food-stained dishes and find has flooded our yards when the small ones play with the garden hose.

In Uganda, 33% of the population is without access to that substance we waste in excess.

But I want to ask them to wait for that, just hold on a minute for that water. It’s a little too much of a sacrifice for me, because I can’t make my brain function quite right if I don’t jump start it with this steaming mug, so just wait a bit, friends. You’ll be okay without that water for another few days, won’t you? Just let me sip this warm drink.

Blood:Water Mission is hosting the 40 Days campaign, in which we gather together with our water bottles and empty goblets, tracking each drink we give up and putting those quarters and dollars toward bringing clean water to Uganda. It’s forty days, starting tomorrow, February 13 – March 30.

Lent.

It really isn’t at all about the coffee itself, whether or not I drink it.

I need to feel this.

I’m asking you to join me. It’s really such an easy way to partner with our brothers and sisters in North America and Africa.

(You don’t even have to give up your coffee. Several people on our team plan to match the cost of the coffee they drink or even double it. This plan is totally acceptable.)

Learn more about 40 Days at Blood:Water Mission. (I’m a big fan of their Empowerment and Partnership model.)

Create your profile and begin tracking your drinks right from your phone.

You can follow along on my profile and on Twitter and Instagram with #40Days.

We can do this, you know? Coffee or no coffee, eh, I can live without it for a while.

But water? They can’t live without that.