Musings on Home Education

 Why I Homeschool Our Children

A Brain Dump

I think that when people learn that I homeschool our children, they assume that they know why. Really, no one has ever asked me why I homeschool or questioned it in any way that I can remember. It's usually something like 'Do you homeschool?...Oh, that's wonderful. *Smiles at children*". It's nice to have a positive response from people, but I hear things from time to time that make me think that people assume they know why we homeschool, when they don't really. Honestly, I was asking myself today, "Do I even know why I homeschool?" Since I was happily homeschooled for most of my school years, leaving my early and trying days of first and second grade at a typically-flawed Christian school, far behind, it simply seemed natural to keep homeschooling. I wouldn't just set up lesson plans for my kids, I would pick up from where I left off on my own education and keep my nose in as many books as they did, and we would putter and hum our way through the crisp fall days with open-windows, the blanket-wrapped winter sick days that are mostly audiobooks, or winter snow days that are rushing to get one required subject done before hitting the sleds, and then float (or trudge as the case may be) into spring, interspersing scholarly endeavors with forays into the garden and lunch at the picnic table. I just wanted to live this life.

But of course, the real reason we are home educating our children, is that there are no schools in convenient distance that are inculcating the truths and virtues that we desire for our children - such as worship of the Creator, deep family relationships, and the high hilarities of language, Greek, Latin and English - among other things. That's a good justifying reason. 

But as I've now kept the home school ball rolling for 6 years, and the thought that our oldest may someday need more instruction than I can provide, I realized that my attachment to homeschooling was not merely one of principle. It is perhaps even more an attachment of fierce independence. Imagine - having another person, separate from our family, dictate my daily schedule - my child's teachers at some school having power over when we eat breakfast and what books we have to read and what time we have to go to bed at night. I inwardly recoiled at the thought, and pitied in my heart all the poor, slaving mothers who toil to keep their kids on the school's schedule. It made my blood hot to imagine myself losing my days of idyllic independence in order to be at the beck and call of another institution. I also reflected that this reaction is not exactly virtuous. But really, how can people say home schooling is hard, when they have to roll out of bed in the darkness to send their child to a school that probably has fluorescent lights in the classroom and no fresh flowers dropping dried petals and spider webs onto the spelling book? Not even mentioning the leftover bacon and fresh banana bread that may be acquired from the absurdly nearby kitchen during school hours, I believe that homeschooling can possibly be too idyllic to prepare children for the harsh realities of life in a fluorescent lit office cubicle. But I'm not afraid to defy that fear and give out spelling words from the kitchen, with my hands buried in sticky granola mixture, which will soon sustain the weary apprentice of cursive handwriting and spoil his appetite for lunch (oh dear, what are we having for lunch?). 

I do not disguise from myself that this idyll has its shortcomings. I do not imagine that home education can give a child all that they need, any more than a public education. These will each leave a child with gaps, of either community or family or knowledge, that they will long to fill. But we will pray about filling those gaps. Ultimately, whatever way we prayerfully choose to educate our children, the education is something that God has provided, and we give thanks for the blessings and trust God to provide what seems to lack. My feelings about homeschooling may come and go, and be better or worse from day to day, but the life that God has provided for us is a reality for which I can give thanks, even as time brings changes. 

Faith That Can Move Molehills

Imagine faith as small as a mustard seed. What does it look like when it moves mountains? Can it move molehills too? Yes, for while nothing is too great for God's power, nothing is too small for His care. He is abundantly gracious. When we make mountains out of molehills, and then almost despair, he is still there to strengthen puny faith.

It's late winter. I've been inside a lot with three children, and being fond of neatness and order, the grand propensity of small ones to destroy all things visible can drive me a little bit batty. That's not a real trial, right? I mean, on my dresser, I have the Smyrna ministries prayer guide, where I'm reminded to pray for families who are without home and job because of their faith, or who are left to mourn their brutally beheaded loved ones. There is heart-wrenching agony going on in God's worldwide family. So I feel that a bit petty becoming downcast over the fact that the kid's bathroom is being systematically broken to pieces, splattered with mud, and water-damaged, and my top-load washing machine seems unendingly filled with wet mess clean up towels. With the crowning event of the six year old crashing down on the toilet tank while standing on the seat to wipe up the toothpaste he just flung on the wall, and acquiring a knot on his head and splitting the tank from top to bottom - meaning that the kids will now have to share our relatively pristine master bathroom (Nooo!) until theirs can be repaired - I became just a little despondent. It wasn't just the mess, it was the money. Every family with kids usually has a back list of extras they'd like to have when they can save up. Shelling out the stash for a new toilet that you didn't really want is deflating. Still, I was making a mountain out of a molehill. It becomes easy to do when you're in a small house with small people most of the time. But God is not limited by that.

I sat down at the desk in a random quiet moment while the children were playing, and flipped open the Bible, like a hungry person hunting in the pantry between meals. The Parable of the Ten Virgins. "...Watch, therefore, for you know nether the day nor the hour" (Matt. 25:13) Here is reality in its final state. Here was truth beyond the broken toilet. I thought about the horror of being told to depart from Jesus, and the joy of entering with him into the marriage feast. Imagine Him coming at any moment, any second. The sky outside the window was the blank white-grey of cheerless winter. But at any moment the Son of God whom we have long loved unseen, could be breaking through those clouds like lightning and changing reality forever. The devastated bathroom, stained carpet and leaky budget wouldn't matter anymore. All that would matter is that we had loved the Christ of God and been faithful to Him. My heart was flooded with joy - a joy that I felt I could not have had if the fretful state of things had not made me previously disillusioned with life. Was the Holy Spirit really filling me with joy in the midst of trials - when my trials were so silly? I knew he would do this for persecuted Christians, for people really suffering great pain, but somehow that he would use the mere disruption of my daily comforts as a step in the journey to fellowship with him was a marvelous surprise. I did not deserve this. I am too petty. But His grace is not like that. We never deserve it.

I return to this. My faith can move mountains because it is a tiny link to the massive, powerful joy that I belong to the returning King. If we don't get the toilet fixed before He comes back, it's okay. Am I silly enough to need reminded of this? Yes. Is He gracious enough to come to me in the remembrance? He is.

In Another Bleak Midwinter

Is it truly mid-winter? I thought the 21st marked the beginning of winter, but it's lovely to think that we're almost halfway through the cold, dark tunnel. The holiday season is rarely one of natural joy for me, because the absence of warmth and sun usually bring fatigue and illness to our little family, and I struggle with the winter blues in real earnest. All the talk of hustle and bustle seem like a joke - I mean, we're just trying to stay alive here. I got my little coughing, fever patient to drink some water. I got the supper dishes washed, mostly, before crashing into bed and trying to nurse the baby to sleep. And somehow in the coming weeks we are supposed to visit all sorts of family with feasting and jollification.

I wonder if little Mary felt frustrated at the holiday travel required of her. I imagine her being a much more godly, submissive, patient person than I am, rather than putting up her feet and saying "Go to Bethlehem? On a donkey? Now? Um, no. I'm pregnant. I'm staying right here. Caesar is greedy and power hungry, but even he couldn't expect people like *me* to take part in the census." But she did the right thing and took her baby bump to the right place, and Jesus was born in the eternally destined location. God always knows what He's doing.

All this is just a bit of what I've been thinking about the things we don't like about Christmas being the things that are most nourishing to our faith and our vision of the Savior. I remember one Christmas season a couple years ago when I had the flu and was lying on the couch feeling crushed in pain and I looked over at the Nativity display we had set up, and whispered "Why, why did you come here? This miserable, broken place of pain. You didn't have to come. Oh, how you must love us." And another time as I looked at our Christmas gathering schedule that I was jotting into a notebook, and thought, "All this to do, to be with people, and I am too tired for any of it." That itself is a vivid picture of the first Christmas. Travel, people, bustle, exhaustion, and God getting his work done through ordinary people.

I saw this beautiful old quote from Ambleside Schools on Instagram that said it so well:

"The grass withers, the flower falls away, but the Word of our God endures for ever." As if Peter had said, 'All that has grown out of this root shall drop off in order that it may be seen how deeply the root itself is fixed in the soil.' We do not keep Christmas in the bright, sunny time of the year, but now in the heart of winter, when everything is bare and dry. And our Lord himself is said to be "a root out of a dry ground," from which all the blossoms of hope and joy are to come, but which must first be owned in its own nakedness before they shall appear. If then, men have begun to fancy that their gladness has another root than this, it is meet that for a time they should be left to try whether they can keep it alive by any efforts and skill of theirs. If Christmas joy has been separated from Christ, it is no wonder and no dishonor to Christ that it should grow feeble and hollow. But Christmas is not dead, because the mirth of those who have forgotten its meaning is dead. It is not dead for you, it is not dead for people who lie upon beds tormented with fevers, and dropsies, and cancers. It is not dead for the children in factories, and for the men who are working in mines, and for prisoners who never see the light of the sun. To all these the news, "The Word who was in the beginning with God and was God, in whom is life, and whose life is the light of men, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not anything made that was made, became flesh and dwelt among us, entered into our poverty, and suffering, and death," is just as mighty and cheering news now as it was when St. Peter first declared it to his countrymen at Pentecost. You want this truth, you cannot live or die without it. You have a right to it. By your baptism God hath given you a portion in him who was made flesh; by your suffering he is inviting you to claim that portion, to understand that it is indeed for you Christ lived and died."
from "Christmas Day" sermon, Frederick Maurice, M.A.

Let us embrace an ideal of the perfect Christmas as the one that makes us fall more in love with the incarnate Christ, whether it is in jollification or in quiet pain or grief. He has come for us. By faith He is ours to possess forever. Here is joy unceasing, consolation without end.

Carl Blechen - Landschaft im Winter bei Mondschein (1836)

The Family Road Trip

It started with my visionary husband's idea for a mercy ministry that integrated financial advice and the gospel in a biblical way. Over a year ago, he decided that he wanted to get the curriculum and training from the Chalmers Center to implement in our church and community, and none of my "Honey, let's just do the raising kids thing for now" would phase him. Last year he wanted to go, and I said, "Please wait for next year." This year, the training was at a church in Normal, IL. He would take vacation time to go. Maybe I would go with him. Maybe the kids would go with us too. But this would be the summer trip. I did not want this trip to happen, but sound doctrine being the wonderful thing that is, I realized that my job as a wife is to help my husband fulfill his mission in life and not the other  way around. Since he had decided to do this, I needed to encourage and support him as cheerfully as possible, and not kick and drag, because that doesn't glorify God and it ain't fun for nobody.

I looked up Normal, IL. It appeared to be about as uninspiring as its name suggests. Our only summer trip opportunity - no mountains, no beaches, and no historic sites, just a mildly depressing, flat, midwest town. Then it occurred to me to check how far Normal was from Caleb's mom's house - where we had never yet visited in our seven years of marriage, because we'd been having babies all that time, and the drive is eleven hours. Waukegan was three hours away from Normal - and that became our trip plan. Take two days to drive to Grandma's house in Waukegan, with enough days at her house for Caleb to be with us before and after the class, the children and I stay with her while he drove to Normal for two days training, and then came back for Sunday and her birthday which conveniently occurred on the Monday before we left for another two day trip back. It would be an adventure, and I knew it would be utterly exhausting. I'm already tired from doing the three kids thing at home. But that made me pray about it a lot, which was a good thing. And the closer we got, the more I was determined to go, because I didn't want to miss that time together, however grueling it was.

When we told Caleb's mom our trip plans, she said "We could go to the lake!" I knew that she lived somewhat near Lake Michigan, but I didn't realize it was only six minutes away from her house. As I thought about it, the whole trip began to take on a new color. I would be able to relive with my children childhood trips to Michigan to my grandparent's farm, which was also not too far from the lake (on the eastern shore). Every summer time, my heart feels a compass needle pointing north, tugging me with longings for the region of my birth and of my happiest memories. I would try to be content to tend the garden in our West Virginia country home, only dreaming of aspens, pines and clear, cold lakes twinkling in the light of long northern summer days. Because of the way our trip plans had formed, these feelings had not been part of it before. I knew we would have to drive through Chicago to get there, and I didn't realize that the beauty of the north country lay beyond it. But Waukegan was beyond what I had expected in similarity to Michigan, and during that week, the children and I went to the lake three times - once with Grandma and the baby, and twice just by ourselves - and every time there was such joy and beauty in it and a refreshment of spirit hard to describe.

A Mountain Adventure

This morning, our 4 yr. old son insisted that we are going to the mountains and began packing the car with essentials such as golden books, rubber balls, a cooler with freshly picked oregano and a picnic blanket . He has previously insisted that we were going to run a hotdog stand or go to the beach, which I had to convince him was not happening - but since we live in West Virginia, I thought this wish wouldn't be too hard to gratify. A little Google-mapping found us North Mountain - 20 minutes away, but we had never gone there before, so we hopped in the car and headed for I-81 North. On the way up, I returned a call from my neighbor who wanted to give me some hosta bulbs she was dividing and told her where we were going. "I was born on that mountain" she said. Knowing her childhood history of mountain pentecostalism and its accompanying strangeness added a touch of eeriness to the adventure.

We drove west through the quaint little overgrown town in the valley, then through farms with grassy fields running into the deep leafy green forest of the mountain side - then up, up to the junction at the top and then with several back tracks to the junction, took all the different routes in turn.

L. M. Montgomery on Living Education

I love reading L. M. Montgomery's works. They are just delicious. With any of my favorite authors, I also love, when I am nearing the point of expecting any further enjoyment from them to be in the form of re-reads, to discover a book I have never read. Finding an old green-covered copy of Jane of Lantern Hill at the big city library, next to the familiar Anne books was a treat indeed. Is it really the same Montgomery? Yes, oh yes!

As with nearly all Montgomery's heroines, Jane's domesticity, sympathy and industry inspire me. In this particular work, Jane's relationship with her father is exceptionally lovely, and I appreciated these lines on her summer education under his tutelage. (For context: Jane had grown to hate the Bible because of being forced to read the Old Testament each evening under the critical gaze of her stern grandmother and severe aunt.)

When dad had converted Jane to the Bible, he set about making history and geography come alive for her. She had told him she always found those subjects hard. But soon history no longer seemed a clutter of dates and names in some dim, cold antiquity but became a storied road of time when dad told her old tales of wonder and the pride of kings...Thebes...Babylon...Tyre...Athens...Galilee...were places where real folks lived...folks she knew. And knowing them, it was easy to be interested in everything pertaining to them. Geography, which had once meant merely a map of the world, was just as fascinating.

'Let's go to India,' dad would say...and they went...though Jane would sew buttons on dad's shirts all the way...Soon Jane knew all the fair lands far, far away as she knew Lantern Hill...or so it seemed to her after she had journeyed through them with father.

 

~ Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery

What an inspiration for a living-books based education! But more than that, a reminder that the best things I will teach my children are things that I have learned myself to love and can pass on to them wrapped in the glow of my own delight.

  Views across the Bosphorus, Constantinople by Hermann Corrodi

"Appraisal"

A friend recently shared with me a radio website that still airs the old Gateway to Joy programs. Today I listened to the first one I'd heard probably since my mother played them on the radio during my childhood. It was sweet to be listening now as a mother, especially while holding the late speaker's tiny namesake, Esther Elisabeth, in my arms. The conversation was so rich, I will surely be going back for more - it was like finding a pearl in the first shell one opens, and the pearl was mostly a poem by Sara Teasdale that was read aloud. The poem spoke of how a husband lives in his wife's heart. I looked it up immediately to save in my lessons blog, but the vivid imagery is already etched into my mind. Is it changing the way I think, or did it only give fresh words to what I do think? Perhaps it was both - poetry is good like that.

"Appraisal" 

by Sara Teasdale.

Never think she loves him wholly,

Never believe her love is blind,

All his faults are locked securely

In a closet of her mind;

All his indecisions folded

Like old flags that time has faded,

Limp and streaked with rain,

And his cautiousness like garments

Frayed and thin, with many a stain -

Let them be, oh, let them be,

There is treasure to outweigh them,

His proud will that sharply stirred,

Climbs as surely as the tide,

Senses strained too taut to sleep,

Gentleness to beast and bird,

Humor flickering hushed and wide

As the moon on moving water,

And a tenderness too deep

To be gathered in a word.

A Travel Chronicle

I've not made a diary-style entry on this blog for quite awhile, but it seemed the best way to record our recent trip to Canada with the few pictures taken along the way.

It all started with another of Caleb's Canadian cousins deciding to get married, to our great delight, and on Memorial Day  (for us) weekend at that! So we planned our vacation days, booked a little motel in Smith Falls, Canada, and departed from Virginia with well-diapered toddler, safely enveloped passports, too much luggage, just enough food to get eaten up before the Canadian border crossing (homemade beef jerky in the border dumpster wasn't an appealing thought), and having a prized pot of flowers safely deposited in care of our 92-year old neighbor Rosa.

We stayed a night going to and coming from the north country at my parental home in Pennsylvania, where we enjoyed attending Wednesday night prayer meeting at Grace Baptist Church (for Caleb and I, who met at the church, this is a little like going back to the coffee shop where you had your first date) and spending time with two of my brothers and their wives. Here's Uncle Benjamin and Auntie Megan regaling Walter before bedtime with one of Grandma's books.

The trip up to Canada was rather long and weary, especially as it was Walter's first road trip longer than 2 hours. We stopped frequently, including one rest stop in New York where we met two Pakistani couples (one US residing, one visiting for the first time) who asked us to take their group picture and then promptly invited us to sit down and eat with them from their generous supply of spicy chicken curry, naan and mangoes. We asked them to return the photo favor so we could remember the unique moment. Walter was too busy stuffing down spicy chicken to smile for the camera.

Who thinks of hospitality on the road? I certainly don't make a practice of packing enough food to host unexpected guests at a rest stop. It was such a sweet learning moment, and a blessing. I wish we'd gotten another passerby to get a picture of all of us together. There probably would have been enough food for them too! It was superbly delicious, but as we got back on the road, thoroughly bespattered with curry sauce (guess why?) I was already thinking about doing laundry when we got back home. I obviously needed a vacation!

The drive through the Canadian countryside after we crossed the dreaded border (where they didn't even ask if we had any meat or produce) was lovely. I'd never seen the northern profusion of lilacs that bloom across the Canadian countryside in late May like giant lavendar-plumed hedges. I didn't get a photo of them, but it probably wouldn't have done them justice. And there were the sandy-earthed stretches of birch, aspen and ferns that my Michigan-born heart loved. It was good to be north. Our travel listening encouraged this sentiment - C. S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy with Bree whinnying for "Narnia and the north!"

When we got to the little hotel in Smith Falls, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the Indian family who operated the hotel lived on the premises. I never told them that I grew up playing with Indian children in Guyana, but it made me feel quite at home to see their shiny black braids and hear their distinctive high pitched voices chattering. Their three little girls all ran out to see "baby boy" and invite him to play on their swing set. He preferred to investigate the riding lawn mower.

After a trip to the slightly bewildering Canadian grocery store, we returned to the motel to cook our supper of chicken and green beans on the camp stove in the chilly evening breeze. It was a decidedly northern evening - light and cold at 8:00.

Grandpa and Grandma Smith had reserved the motel room right next to us, but they didn't arrive till the following afternoon. We visited the nearby locks and canals in the morning, which was very interesting (and slightly terrifying until the very curious toddler was finally strapped into his stroller where he couldn't fall off 8 foot drops into canals). I didn't get any pictures as the phone was charging in the car, but here's one off of a local website (credit) of just one section of the locks where we walked. The path continued along the canal through woods and past houses and was quite lovely.

The afternoon was simply the best of hotel life - microwaved hotdogs, naps, books, and no dishes or laundry.

Friday evening the grandparents arrived, Grandma and I whisked off to Walmart to try another round of bewildering grocery shopping, and then all of us trooped off to see the cousins at Josiah and Jenn's wedding rehearsal. The fact that the wedding program on Saturday went off without a hitch was probably due to the fact that the groom being his own excellent wedding coordinator drilled everyone with remarkable thoroughness in their steps and duties. My husband was thrilled to discover that some assistance was needed with the cordless microphones  and therefore he could technologically participate in the wedding ceremony, which made his pleasure complete.

And then,  Saturday, the wedding! It was simple, sober and sweet with navy blue and baby's breath all round and much singing. We both got teary eyed as the bride came down the aisle in her simple and elegant hand made dress (Caleb and I did - not Walter, who was more delighted that we were keeping him quiet with a tube of kid's toothpaste from my purse). We sang both new and old songs, including one new to me from Psalm 127. Considering that the groom is among the oldest of a family of ten children, the hearty singing of "Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them" gave hope of an equally fruitful future for the newly wed family. We hope that God will so bless them as they show characters fit for being fantastic parents. 

I left partway through the reception to put Walter for a nap at the hotel, and when he (and I) woke up I returned to find the bride and groom still not departed and Caleb helping with clean up. I managed to get a picture with him in the remnants of our wedding finery. And look, I did get capture one of those magnificent lilacs after all - right in the background. Good job, Abby.

The bride and groom finally left the church in united Newton-hood, and back at our motel the evening was clear, crisp and cool. I had such a whim to go and look at the night sky declaring the glory of God in some part of the Canadian wilderness that my rather tired, but kind husband agreed to take me on a creation-gazing date in the direction of Murphy's Point while Grandpa and Grandma agreed to watch Walter at the hotel. We hadn't done anything like this for many moons and it was delightful. We stayed out much too late waiting for it to get dark, as we drove down winding woodsy roads, but it was worth it to see the crescent moon hanging in the deep blue above a forest-enclosed lake, the wind rustling so cool and sweet in the silhouetted leaves and the peepers singing softly. My wish to see the stars covering the unpolluted dark sky wasn't satisfied as we hadn't realized how late full nightfall was already beginning to be at this time of year far north, but it was all beautiful nonetheless.

Sunday was spent with the remaining Newton family, attending church, preparing and eating Sunday dinner with much conversation, and poking around the ever-interesting Newton property which included things like young John's souped-up lawnmower, beans and corn seedlings in homemade seed pots, and two sweet brand-new kittens in the garage. We had a windy walk down their country road, seeing new sown fields and marshy woods sprinkled with ferns and trillium and watching young Tim and Sam spar with sticks. Somewhere my skirt pocket holds gifts of snail shells and leaves, and one shaped like a heart, from those rough but tenderhearted three youngsters who accompanied us. 

Monday morning, Memorial Day, found us packing the car in the rain to head back to the states. I was anticipating a rather dreary and weary trip, but the rain cleared as we neared the border. When we stopped in a poky little town in NY for food, Caleb declared he wanted to eat lunch in a park somewhere and followed some small signs out of town for a state park. The rolling countryside was charming, but I was even more charmed as entered the designated picnic area and saw a vast expanse of twinkling blue with no visible shore, flashing through the trees. It was Lake Ontario! I hadn't been at a Great Lake for so long, and was as happy as a clam to run down to the stony shore and walk at the water's edge after we'd eaten our lunch.

 Walter was rather concerned about the chilly water.

Happy on the pier.

The outing sent Walter into a nice long nap as we resumed our trip southward. He woke up quite cheerful! 

When we at long last reached my parent's home in Pennsylvania, my oldest brother and his wife and their son were there also, having arrived from their new home in western New York for his attendance at the Banner of Truth minister's conference with my dad. It was so good to see them all and to watch the cousins interact as real 'grown up' toddlers for the first time. 

Vacations are sweet when you don't get them often. (Who does? I guess that's the point.) It was good for this small-town mama who doesn't like driving anywhere more than 5 minutes away to pack up and go...well out of the country- and feel the bigness and yet the smallness of the world God has made. It was good to be together with nothing to do but enjoy each other and our family and nature. That's all you need in a vacation, isn't it? A few baby chuckles make it even better.

"The Lord is good to all,

and his mercy is over all that he has made." 

-Psalm 145:9, ESV

About Parenting

The Scripture truly is sufficient for parenting. That is, if you read your Bible heartily, consistently and prayerfully, you won't really need parenting books. The Bible is the best parenting book ever, and it will take all our lives to mine its riches in just that one area.

You might be saying, "Really? I mean, yeah, there's the fourth commandment, and that Deuteronomy passage about teaching them diligently, and then a bunch of the Proverbs about parenting, and Ephesians 6, and then that passage about Timothy's mother and grandmother...and it's all really good, but that's such a small percentage of the Bible to study when I want more specific answers for how to deal with my children every day." At least, that's kind of how I thought at one time.

But consider this: The Bible is a book about all about parenting the way the Bible is a book all about marriage, because both of these relational realities picture aspects of God's relationship to His people. In the Bible, we see God dealing with his children from beginning to end - loving them, directing them, blessing them, punishing them, reasoning with them, rescuing them, helping them, and welcoming them home. He does it perfectly. The more we learn from God as Father, the better we will know how to parent. But it doesn't come off nice and slick like a 20 Steps to Raise a Dandy Kid. God did plant some outstanding parenting sign posts throughout His Word, but the Bible isn't just a handy list. The Bible is a story about God and His ways with men, and we have to spend time in that story, following His ways with our hearts as we read His word over and over, praying to see Him, letting His revealed character transform our vision of what it means to be His, and then what it means to glorify Him in stewarding the children He gives us.

I haven't quite finished the journey I've described - but I've started it, and the glimpses of the road are enough to make me say, "Come on down this way - it's amazing!" That is, the road of reading more Scripture, memorizing, meditating, repeating, reading over. At the beginning of this year, I took a challenge of reading a book of the Bible 20 times. I'll admit, I didn't make it to 20 - I read my book of choice just 10 times, but then I did choose 32-chaptered Deuteronomy, so I don't call it a  goal failure. But I was amazed at what happened during those ten readings. God Himself started to become very familiar, and His methods of dealing with His people started to impress themselves more deeply into my moral sense and thinking patterns. That's what Scripture is supposed to do. (When you find yourself making automatic mental reference to Israel in the wilderness while trying to deal with a complaining child, my premise at the top will start to make sense.)

So read the Bible and pray. Yep. Comes down to that, doesn't it? But more and more. And maybe stop reading all those blogs. Except maybe sometimes read them, because (thank you) you're reading mine and I hope it did you some good.

-- A word to other mamas. I only have one child, so it's easier for me to read the Bible than others, but it's still not easy. Ask God to help you read His word and then keep your Bible(s) handy and look for how He will answer. No complaining that you can't find time if you haven't seriously asked God to provide some for you. Seems to me its one prayer He will be quite willing to answer.

End of an Era

Today feels like the winter is almost over. Something about the melting snow, blue sky and singing birds says 'it's not far off'. I know spring really is quite far off. I won't complain that it's not spring though. I'll enjoy today and every day of sunshine between now and sweet May.

Something else is over though. Something that always seemed so far off, and now has come rather quietly, with the strange freedom and bittersweet sadness that I'd waited for so long. On Sunday night, my travel-weary, uniformed husband came home from his last military drill. The seven years of army service are ended. Today I hung out post-drill laundry for the last time.

I met my husband after his first deployment to Iraq. The time between that and his second deployment to Kuwait sufficed to just accommodate our acquaintance, friendship, courtship, engagement and our wedding squeaked in two weeks before he left again. The reality of his uniform and duties always marked our relationship and I've always known him as a soldier. He was the first soldier to join my complete extended family - both sides considered. He's still a soldier. Even the reality of his wife and toddler, whom he dearly loves, could not hinder him from a twinge of sadness over not being able to accompany his unit on their next deployment. I've always been proud of him for the real old-fashioned patriotism and love of service that marked his military career. That same love of service is now leading him to other things that make military service an added burden.  It's become more of a burden as those duties increased. And now it's over.  No more wondering if he'll be deployed again. No more weekends spent apart for drills.

But our true warfare isn't over. That's the battle in which I get to be his comrade, in a way I never could in those dusty battle zones of the middle east. To fight sin, to follow our Commander Jesus, to obey His orders, to help each other up when we stumble. We can't hang up our shield of faith yet, not till all the soldiers come home together. That's why this ending isn't quite as freeing as I'd dreamed - because it's not the real end of duty and service. How far we shall march before we reach that, only our great Captain knows. My husband was awarded for good service as he bid farewell to his company. But my prayer for both of us is much more that we will be found good and faithful servants when we are called to enter into the joy of our Lord. How good it is to know that our Lord Himself with us is the strength that will make our service faithful to the end.

Birth

I thought this description of Dr. Zhivago's wife after she had delivered their first child was a beautiful picture of birth.

"Squirming on the palm of the nurse's hand lay a tender squealing, tiny human creature, stretching and contracting like a dark red piece of rubber....Tonia lay exhausted in the cloud of her spent pain. To Yurii Andreievich she seemed like a barque lying at rest in the middle of a harbor after putting in and being unloaded, a barque that plied between an unknown country and the continent of life across the waters of death with a cargo of immigrant new souls. One such soul had just been landed, and the ship now lay at anchor, relaxed, its flanks unburdened and empty. The whole of her was resting, her strained masts and hull, and her memory washed clean of the image of the other shore, the crossing and landing."

- from Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Baby Walter, 19 November 2013

Leaving Me Behind

John Calvin understood what makes relationships work. He experienced both wonderful relationships (in his marriage and friendships) and unpleasant relationships (with church and city leaders) and he knew the Word of God deeply. What then, did he proclaim as the God-glorifying pattern of relating to one another in covenant relationships - in the church and marriage? He applied again what Jesus and the Apostle Paul proclaimed: self-denial. Here's a look at Jesus, Paul and then Calvin speaking to our need:

What Jesus said:
"“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." - (Luke 9:23-24 ESV)

What Paul said:

"Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord....as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

(Ephesians 5:21-25 ESV)

And here's what I read from Calvin this morning:
"Let us submit to each other in all humility.  If this is difficult for us, let us more earnestly work at it until God has mastery of us and until we have denied ourselves.  For we must leave behind everything that pertains to our nature and preserve the sacred union that God has placed among us by making us one body." - John Calvin

Now here are some thoughts that have been simmering in my mind for a while now:
If I am to follow Jesus and become a blessing to all His people, especially those with whom I am in a direct relationship, I must give up my right to be the way that I am. It's not giving up who I am; it's giving up that stubborn will that says "This is how I am and how I like things to be and if you do not accommodate me, I won't serve you." Service on those conditions is not the service to which Jesus calls us - it's not serving at all. It's the stuff that destroys relationships and their potential for magnifying the grace of Jesus, and it has to go. When it does go - when self is denied, when my life is given up for Jesus, when the will is submitted (wife to husband) or the life laid down (husband for wife), when we "leave behind everything that pertains to our nature", we do not become less of ourselves, but more of who God created us to be.

For example, I have an inclination towards extreme aestheticism - I adore beauty and abhor ugliness.
If I will only serve God and others in ways that allow me to keep my life pretty;
if I make my husband and perhaps, children, bow to my ruling desire to maintain beauty and order, or I won't be happy, watch out!;
if I will not stoop to serve in an ugly or messy situation, I have not yet learned to follow Jesus.

Indeed, the beauty-loving person that God made me begins to be lost in the very midst of my attempts to save it. The ugliness that I abhor enters into my heart, and the peace and order that I crave disappears from the relationships that are most important to me. "Whoever would save his life will lose it".
But if I leave behind what pertains to my nature, if I shower my husband with hugs and kisses even when he has not organized his papers on the kitchen counter for two weeks, and I don't stop speaking kindly to the old person at church who has hairy moles and bad breath, if I love Jesus my Savior too much to let my natural preferences get in the way of following Him, I will find my desire for beauty being satisfied in seeing my own heart conformed to Him, and my relationships glorifying His grace.

What "pertains to your nature"? Leaving it behind for Jesus might be the happiest thing you ever did.

For My Husband On the Evening of 6 Months of Marriage

My dear husband, this evening the sunset came like a surprising smile across a gloomy countenance. The clouds that had been gray before dinner were suddenly strewn with the most ravishing glory. 

I pronounced to my parents who were cleaning up the kitchen that there should be a law against washing dishes during sunsets and ran outside - with my camera because you could not be here to see it with me.

The canopy of deepest blue spread with ruffled gold was breathtaking. I must have smiled exceedingly because I came home with a pain in my jaw - quite worth is. Isn't it lovely, dearest?

The puddles from this afternoon's rain storm calmly drinking in the sky. Oh what a night to be a puddle!

I was so eager to be clear of the houses that I ran the last quarter of the block until I reached the clearing (blessed clearing - what sadness it would be to live without a space for sky to look through) and saw this.

and this...

and this...

...the heavens telling the glory of God. Oh how beautifully they told it tonight!

I miss you, my dearest companion. 

I would be desolate on evenings like this if I did not know that He who casts the rosy light across the clouds casts more dearly a smile upon my heart, and upon yours, wrapping us in the beauty of His beloved Son.

We are not alone.

The passage you read with me today came to mind:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the LORD your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes,

and honored, and I love you,

I give men in return for you,

peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you;

I will bring your offspring from the east,

and from the west I will gather you.

I will say to the north, Give up,

and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made.”

(Isaiah 43:1-7 ESV)

We are safe in His love.

and I love you

There Never Was Such Another - Repost

Last year, Kevin DeYoung posted on his blog a brief excerpt from the life of Charles Hodge. I read it before marrying my dear husband, bookmarked it, and keep thinking back to it as standing among the sweetest words I ever read on marriage. After reading it again today, I wanted to record it here.

Here is DeYoung's post:

I was moved by this touching description of Charles Hodge with his fifty-one year-old dying wife Sarah.

The next death that visited Hodge was infinitely dearer to him. On Christmas Day 1849, just four months after her return to Princeton with her daughter and grandchild, Sarah “softly & sweetly fell asleep in Jesus.” She most probably fell victim to uterine cancer.

Sarah’s health had begun to deteriorate soon after her return, and by December her condition was such that Hodge had lost all hope of recovery. In her final weeks, he personally nursed Sarah, spending countless hours simply lying next to her. During these times, he held her hand, and conversed with her when she had the strength. The depth of their love remained so intense that Hodge later commented that “to the last she was like a girl in love.” During her final weeks, Sarah asked Hodge to tell her in detail “how much you love me,” and they spent time recounting the high points of their life together.

Hodge’s last hours with his wife were particularly poignant. As her life ebbed away, Sarah looked at her children gathered around her bed and quietly murmured “I give them to God.” Hodge then asked her if she had thought him a devoted husband to which she replied as “she sweetly passed her hand over” his face: “There never was such another.” (Charles Hodge, 258)

Married couples, if you imagine that your final moments together will be like this, rejoice and again I say rejoice. Let the thought of such bittersweet sorrow put your present troubles and conflicts in perspective. But if this scene feels like an impossible dream, what must you change now so you and your spouse can die like this later?

It is my fervent prayer, which I trust God in His kindness will give me, that my husband and I may be together when the first of us passes from earth to glory, and that the send-off may be such a one as gives unspeakable comfort to the one left behind. How wonderful is the capacity of the human heart - made in God's image and renewed by God's Spirit -  to love. It is a gift worth cultivating above all other things.  Nothing is closer to heaven.

The Sweetest Calling

It is sweet to submit to a man you trust
       when both of you rest securely under the wings of a sovereign Lord.

"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior." (Ephesians 5:22-23 ESV)

"Indeed, none who wait for You shall be put to shame..."

(Psalm 25:3 ESV)

A short word on hearts and parents

My son, give me your heart,
and let your eyes observe my ways."
- Proverbs 23:26, ESV

Muril's Return of the Prodigal Son

If the Lord has given us a godly father and mother, how greatly we ought to prize them, and embrace their wisdom and guidance! It is a sad and foolish thing when we (young people in general) see our parents as a hindrance to our desires and dreams instead of our most trusted counselors and confidants.

Before Christ saved me, I would have quoted "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" and preferred the 'freedom' of letting my heart be broken by the young man I 'loved' than that I should humble myself and submit to my parents in matters of the heart. It took a mighty work of God's saving grace in my heart to change me from someone who despised my parent's love and counsel to someone who desires and seeks it - not because they are perfect, but because it is HIS way, and being His way is the best way.

To see our parents' faults and yet give them our hearts is sometimes hard and often humbling. But God ordains that we submit to and honor our imperfect parents, obeying them in the Lord, and humble submission to His order invites His blessing. As the divine Son submitted to the divine Father, so we whom He has redeemed submit our fallible selves to our fallible parents. In this way we reflect our love for the one who was 'obedient even to death'. It may mean the death of our pride and the growth of our wisdom in ways that we never imagined.

Godly parents are among the very greatest blessings God can give to a child. How we should honor them and the One who gave them to us!

Is Titus 2:4-5 only for married women?

Some scraps of my thoughts on women's roles.

Let's see... It commands young woman to be 'philandros' and 'philoteknos' - that is "man lovers" and "children lovers" This can be applied to loving father, brothers, and siblings, as well as mothers (who can be the "older women" previously mentioned). Certainly a tender-hearted love for parents and siblings is an adornment to the gospel in a single woman...
When it speaks of subjection to husbands (Gr: 'aner', as opposed to above 'andros', though English translations put "husband" in both cases) it probably applies to marriage. But I think it is foolish for a young woman to skip over the one passage in the entire New Testament which speaks specifically to young women, because she is unmarried and it mentions elements of married life. If I cannot follow this, what else do I follow? What the world tells me to do? If I decide to put this passage in the 'married' box, and look elsewhere for a guide to my single years, I'll miss out big time.

Here's a thought - I'm picturing two garments - one a lovely dress that doesn't quite fit yet (Titus 2 womanhood), and the other a rather mud-stained one-size fits all uniform (what the world does). When a Christian young lady wants to know what to wear into God's kingdom, isn't the lovely garment of Titus 2 womanhood - perhaps a little baggy in some places, but overall beautiful, better than the mud-stained uniform? By the time she grows into it, she will have learned to wear it with ease...

Democracy, Authority, and Education

from my Learning Theory class post

Democracy is popular in America. It runs the nation. John Dewey, whose progressive learning theories have been largely influential on the nation's current learning practices, was a proponent of democracy. He wanted to see democracy not only in the nation, but in the public classroom, beginning at the elementary level. This would mean that, as in the nation, so in the classroom - students should have a say in their education, so that educators teach them what they are most inclined to learn, or in the way that they are most inclined to learn within the necessary bounds of the curriculum. This, it was proposed, will make the students more engaged in their education, and prevent children from becoming passive sum-scribbling serfs under the despotic rule of a loveless lecturer. Best of all, it would equip children to grow up to be good citizens of a democracy, having been immersed in its practices from their earliest years.

Now, in a fallen world, where all people are sinful and fallible, democracy has proven to be one of the best political set-ups for a nation. This is mainly because an authoritarian government has often proven deadly to both the ruler and the ruled. Absolute power absolutely corrupts the already innately corrupt. Therefore, a nation may choose to counter the particularly concentrated corruptions of the one by parceling out the power into the hands of the many. This constitutes a democracy - the governors of a nation receiving their just power from the consent of the many who are governed. If democracy has proven the best way to politically organize a nation, why not the school? Why not have teachers receiving their just power of instruction from the consent of the educated? This is in measure what Dewey was asking for.

Here the answer to the question becomes a question of authority. Putting aside secondary and higher education, in which this proposition may have credibility, I want to focus the question on the education of the young, which happens to be my particular area of study, and answer it from the Scriptures. According to the Scriptures, the environment in which children are to be nurtured and trained is not one of democracy but of authority. The one basic command given to children in the Scriptures is "obey your parents". Christian parents and teachers must therefore see this mandate as the first and most important thing for a child to learn. This does not constitute a democracy. Of course, in a democracy, citizens must submit themselves to its leaders and its rules, and obedience to parents will prepare children to be cooperative citizens. But Christian parents are not to train their children merely for good citizenship of an earthly nation. They are to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of "the Lord". Here is a term of authority: "the Lord"! Christian parents are ultimately training their children to live under the rulership of the Lord Jesus Christ - to submissively do what he says and learn to love it. And it starts by learning to obey their parents, because Christ has commanded it. Sometimes this will mean doing things in which they do not see a point, or to which they are not innately inclined. But we are not cultivating the instincts of evolving homo sapiens, we are training young men and women in the knowledge of their Creator. This is the point of education. A good teacher will, of course, seek the good of their student by trying to make the learning enjoyable for them, even as a good governor seeks the good of the citizens. But when learning is not enjoyable - as it must necessarily sometimes be - the parents' authority wins the day, and the child must obey. When children obey their parents, they will be blessed. It's a promise. And it will not fail, even when democracies have crumbled.

Super-Hearty Wheat-free Man-size Lunchbox Cookies

One of my favorite activities these days is making cookies for my brother - who has both food-sensitivities to gluten and sugar, and the appetite of a large war-horse - to pack in his lunches. He seems to have enjoyed all of my experiments thus far... Here is one example

Mix together in large bowl:
1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup flax-meal
1/3 cup toasted coconut
(the flax and coconut help to replace some of the lost bulk of the sugar asked for in the original recipe)
1 T stevia
1 T molasses (gives a brown sugar taste, but less than 1g sugar per serving)
3 eggs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
(The original recipe asked for a cup of dried apricots, chopped, which are quite good, if fruit is not a problem.)

Combine in second bowl :
3 cups rolled oats or quick oats
1 cup oat flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat, sorghum or teff flour
2 tsp. xantham gum (to make cookies less crumbly)
1 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 375. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. Shape 1/4-1/3-cup-size hunks of dough into cookies about 3/4" thick and place on greased cookie-sheets. Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes, or till lightly browned on the bottom and set in the middle. Remove and cool. Makes about 10 cookies.
For lunch-box packing convenience, I put each cookie in a small sandwich bag with a twist-tie and then put all the bagged cookies in a big ziploc bag and stick them in the freezer.

Mother was waxing eloquent on Sunday afternoon, and looking up from her reading, declared with a chuckle:

"To avoid confusion we use confessions, and we use catechisms to define our dogmas."

....Hebrew or poetic parallelism may be defined in turn, but I think Mother's defies classification.