The Allume conference...and a giveaway!

My long-held dreams of attending the Allume Conference for Christian women bloggers came true. Thank you, Workplace, for funding my opportunity! It was easily one of the best conferences I've ever attended: well-organized, substantial in content, deeply spiritual, and dang, girl. That goodie bag. I will not weary you, dear readers, with a play-by-play of the conference like this is an entry on Cruisers Forum.

I will, however, share one epiphany.

Growing up as a girlchild who knew she wanted to pursue a career someday that was heavy on the interplay of words and people, I felt as though I had a limited set of female leaders. You know those she-idols doing that thing to which I aspired. There was Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Candy Crowley, Connie Chung and a select array of other women in media who held those coveted top seats. I learned that you had to work a small market for awhile, and then perhaps get promoted to a middle market and work crazy long hours and never get to read the new Judy Blume book, and eventually, if you were perseverent, talented, and incredibly lucky, you might score a top tier post. But this was never guaranteed and you'd have to work three times harder than male peers and you best not ever have an eyelash out of place or else!

Allume reminded me that the landscape has changed. The coveted top spots for women in media aren't the only mansions on the cul-de-sac. There is a beautifully vast and seemingly borderless industry producing media in which women can creatively steer careers in whole new ways. They can be the CEO of Yahoo or the servant leader of a small cottage industry and it's all within their reach. I met so many amazing women at Allume who are girl-bossing their way in the blogosphere, running happy homes, and leaning in to Lord's unique calling on their lives. It was so encouraging, especially as a journalism professor trying to encourage young men and women to think beyond just the job offerings on mediabistro.com but to think of the lifestyle they want to lead, to envision the kind of philanthropic legacy they want to have.

To celebrate being filled-up full from Allume, I've got a little giveaway for you, dear readers. I received many a good thing at the conference, most of them priceless. Some were tactile, though, and they can be yours. Just enter the rafflecopter below and a winner will be announced on Tuesday. Woop!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I did a great job in Miss Schlosser's class

You hold on to the pencil from your 6th grade teacher, the one she gave to everyone as a memento of your year in homeroom 6A where she hung curtains on the bookshelves to make the cinderblock room look more homey. "I DID A GREAT JOB IN MISS SCHLOSSER'S CLASS" it reads in gold letters on one thin panel of this wooden implement painted red. Because she loved you all so much, because she told you all how she prayed for each of you three minutes a piece one night, you all sort of believed it. You did a great job. Why would she have given you all this pencil if it had not been so? She lost her mother that year. You broke the obelisk on her desk that year.  She prayed for you and hung curtains and gave you a pencil.  You hold on to the pencil and decide not to sharpen it right away because it's a bit of a novelty item and there are plenty of other pedestrian pencils and erasable pens to jot down your rising 7th grade thoughts about sleepovers and boys whose voices jump whole octaves overnight. The eraser you use; it's a decent eraser and you make a lot of mistakes over the next few years, trusting too much in the correctness and permanence of the story you are writing. You pack the pencil from your 6th grade teacher into a wad of other writing instruments, rubberbanded and ported from dorm to apartment to condo to house, and every so often you consider how long that pencil has held up. Like so few other things that shine with their original glory, the message is unmarred and unmistakable. It is only once you become a teacher that you understand the point of view of that message in gold letters. The pencil is not, as it appears to an egoistic middle schooler, a brag flag to wave. No one cares whether one did a great or superlatively poor job in sixth grade, it turns out. Pencils, after all, are chosen by the user. Pencils are the tool of the essay writer, the math test-taker, the form filler-outer. The pencil does not guide you; you guide the pencil. More and more and more and more, the pencil obeys. As you file bills or rifle through a drawer of receipts, you look up to see a streak of red peaking from the back of your desk, and occasionally it touches you but sometimes it floods you--that you were loved enough and affirmed in gold letters once upon a time. You did a great job. In a room where books were hemmed in by curtains. By a teacher whose name you will not forget.

Review: Wild in the Hollow by Amber C. Haines

I live in a shoddily-constructed rental home and I'm worse than ashamed about it. I'm irritated with the ground wasps that multiply in August that sting my husband whilst he's trying to cut the grass. I'm annoyed, generally, with the lack of well-configured space and the moody windows that usually don't stay open and the ugly countertops that are forever being stained in my kitchen. I'm full-blown ticked that I'm nearly old enough to run for U.S. President but am so broke as to need to rent property from a colleague. I'm malcontent and it's not okay and author Amber Haines seems to understand me.

Wild in the Hollow: On Chasing Desire and Finding the Broken Way Home is something of a masterpiece.

Truth: this is the best book I have read about spiritual conviction and the spiritual landscape in North America. Truth: I am so jealous of Haines' eloquence for writing about said conviction and landscape.

How can I be both jealous and in awe of a writer at the same time?

I just am. I cannot recommend this book enough. I've marked it up something fierce with my pen of conviction and I've already got it slated to lend to my girl Brandy who also teaches me things about spiritual convictions and landscapes and who reminds me not to be cranky about my rental home because I am a rich woman indeed and good things come to those who wait and hope in the Lord.

Here's the trailer:

Wild in the Hollow: On Chasing Desire and Finding the Broken Way Home from Matthews Media on Vimeo.

Please go read this book if you have ever: - felt a bit too wild for your environment - wondered why you have an ache for something more at the end of each day - known anxiety, depression or some combination thereof and wondered why you couldn't pray it away - desired community but were afraid you had nothing to offer - felt despondent about church or the capital "C" church and didn't know what to do about it