Previously, I talked about mourning with the group.
I also talked about coyotes, but let’s face it, we all know I just made that stuff up. You should never trust things you read on the internet, anyway! Except you should entirely and wholeheartedly trust everything in this newsletter – Of course!
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How do we develop an exercise routine we can stick to as parents?
We must morph into the parents we never dreamed we’d become.
And I mean to become the parent we feared we would become.
I’ll explain.
It all started the day I started sniffing my kid’s butts.
When I was a well-coiffed, austere young woman in my twenties, I wrinkled up my nose at those homesteading women with several children crowding around them as they made cookies and managed a beehive simultaneously. “Isn’t that disgusting?” my sophisticated friends and I whispered, and we looked away in horror when one of these busy moms lifted her toddler, sniffed around their child’s middle for signs of a “Number two” and quickly set them back down on the floor again. This mom then happily continued stirring cookies, unpasteurized honey, or whatever she did all day.
“I would never do that butt-sniffing manoeuvre!”
When my children were toddlers, I gasped my way to a mom and toddler’s event one morning, my hair dishevelled, unmatched dirty clothing thrown over my and my toddler’s forms. I was clinging to a half-drunk coffee for dear life as I sat next to a fellow mom and empathized delightedly with her. We shared similar tales of near survival, of these miniature beings often holding us hostage to their need.
Suddenly, I remembered that I should probably check the older daughter, who was not yet fully toilet trained.
I grabbed my daughter’s arm and yanked her away from her friend. My daughter morphed from playing contentedly to screaming like a fire truck. I nearly lost the battle of the wills but managed to stuff her into the change-room, where I opened her training diaper and
. . . nothing.
There was nothing there.
When I returned to my friend, she was already chatting with another dishevelled woman, and for the rest of that “mom’s time,” my two toddlers had incessant needs again.
So it didn’t take long before I happily lifted my toddlers when they were playing contentedly, smelled their butts, and set them back down again with a wink and a nod.
I continued my coffee and well-deserved amiable chat with other homeschooling parent survivors,
My identity had shifted.
And similarly, what kind of identity shift do we need to become the kind of homeschooling parent who exercises?
1. We realize that if we are going to stay in this game long-haul we’ve got to surrender our pre-conceived ideas of success as defined by this culture, or worse, by our expectations of ourselves.
2. Our identity must be firmly linked to those who are societally undignified. We delight in our identity as children of the king, not as classy members of a specific culture (i.e. of any culture).
3. We have fun, dancing with joy with our two-year-olds because we finally figured out that when we are happy, our little ones are too.
Throw off your chains, captive daughter . . . ! God says, “You were sold for nothing. You’re being bought back for nothing.”
And it was this change in perspective, from “culturally respectable” to “daughter of the King,” that led me to be the kind of parent who exercises regularly, as well.
The link between a shift in identity and exercise will be discussed another time.
I promise to say something useful sometime! That is if I remember to finish this blogpost series on exercising when homeschooling. This post was essential to set the foundation for when we will dive into the nitty-gritty of the shift in identity required to exercise while homeschooling young children.
For now, the first step is to stop trying to be “respectable”!
It doesn’t work anyway!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
“Wait, what are you doing right now?” he asked me.
I was melodramatically pretending to cry as the youth left the party.
“Oh, I’m just pretending I’m sad to see him leave,” I explained. “I made fun of him a lot tonight, and so now I’m building up his self-esteem.” The youth listened, mouth agape, staring at me.
As I’ve said before, my magnetism to youth is remarkable.
But unfortunately, we’re not supposed to make fun of millennials anymore. In fact, we’re not supposed to make fun of anyone anymore. So, at the next party, I tried to conform.
I stuffed snack after snack into my mouth in an effort not to speak.
The problem is that if we really want to do this self-esteem thing right, we shouldn’t say anything true at all. Millennials, for example, have self-esteem that is 1/4 inch thick. If we accidentally blow the truth in their vicinity, they cry or get upset. “How dare you assault me with the truth?” they retort. “Don’t you know I’m sensitive?”
And so we apologize and cower to the needs of their egos.
“You’re doing great!” we assert, every time they look up from their iPhones or get out of bed.
“I can see you are trying to do some math! You get a star!”
“You ran in a race that you didn’t even train for? You get a medal! Everyone gets a medal!”
And with all of this self-esteem and encouragement, and “Well done!” floating around, you’d think our youth would be boyoed up by all this praise and floating happily on their circumstances in life.
Of course, we all know that youth depression and mental illness are at an all-time high.
So why not try another approach?
What if we tell everyone they’re losers?
It’s counterintuitive (like all my best advice), but we can finally let our stomach fat out and relax! We can stop pretending to be someone we’re not. We can get on with enjoying the party games, popcorn and time together.
“What are you talking about?” you ask.
Well, if we could relax and let our kids relax, I think we’d have a lot more fun. We don’t have to, in fact, shield our kids from the fact that they’re messed up and that we are, too. There is surprising freedom in realizing that we are all losers.
If we are at the bottom of the pit, there’s nowhere to go but up!
Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us.
Hope abounds because things can only get better!
Once we stop showering accolades on each other, and accept that we are all dorks, lost on the ship we call life, the adventure can begin!
Anyone around here seen a Captain? We could certainly use some help getting cleaned up a bit, and figuring out how to work together to get all of our oars on this boat pulling in the same direction.
And so, how do we feel better?
1. We realize we are a directionless loser.
2. We find someone to help clean us up a bit.
3. We follow this person and therefore, all grow together in the same direction.
He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
And life gets a little easier!
Spiritual people, for example, those who know that they are losers because they desperately need someone to clean them up, lead them and help them all row in a similar direction, tend to struggle a bit less frequently with their mental health.*
So stop building up people’s self-esteem! Trash them instead, knowing that this is the best way to build them up! They’ll (eventually) feel better!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Blogpost Footnotes
*Of course, many people within the church struggle with mental health, and research is based on averages.
Our neighbour at the lake was working on his house.
He told us the story of running out of roofing screws. Now, where we live, we can’t walk or even drive 10 minutes to the hardware store to buy supplies. We must wait until the intense storm on the lake has passed (insert dramatic music here) before attempting to dodge large waves in a small boat to get to the other side.
(It’s not that bad most of the time – It could be a lovely kayak in sunny weather, but you get my point).
Anyway, THEN, you have to pay money to park your boat, or get the trailer and take it out of the water. Then there’s the 20-minute drive to civilization. Picking up supplies is a significant hassle. Being lake people, we share stuff.
So, I offered to share.
“Well, anytime you want a screw, just come on over,” I offered helpfully, smiling.
(Yep. True story. Anyway, back to the tale.)
The man and his grown son burst into laughter. My husband turned and walked away. The wife stared at me with her head cocked to one side, trying to discern if I had always had a significant head injury.
But the most facinitating part of this story was my inability to see.
I literally meant roofing screws, of course. And I rationalized all of the hints that I had said something askew. When the man and his son burst into laughter, I reasoned, “Must be an inside joke.”
When my husband suddenly left, I blamed him by assuming he was in a bad mood. When the wife stared at me, I internally rationalized that too. “An interesting bird behind me?” I reasoned, also looking over my shoulder.
I was seeking evidence that fit my worldview.
The point is that I couldn’t see the clues. I wouldn’t see the clues. How often I do that in other areas of life is the question that keeps me up at night.
Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”
How else are we blind?
How are we worse than blind and UNWILLING to see the truth?
To avoid humiliating ourselves again, or worse, to avoid missing out on God showing up in our lives, consider three ways to prevent willful blindness:
Holy Spirit, remove the blinders we construct, carefully keeping You out of our lives. Help us to BE WILLING to see the obvious, we pray. As I finally saw the truth of my speech faux pas, Jesus, help us finally see, with fresh insight, how You are at work in our lives today, we pray.
After a moment of quiet, considering asking God, “How am I blind?”
When we were five years old, we thought everyone was laughing AT us until we suddenly realized they were laughing WITH us.
Remember that?
Well, that happened to me recently. I’m unsure which side of the laughing AT me/ laughing WITH me continuum I ended up on. But at least my rear end isn’t THAT sore from the fall.
This story starts, like all good narratives, with dog barf.
So after the dog… ahem… expelled his undesirable digestive remains (well said?) . . . we looked around at each other, wondering what to do next. We were enjoying heartfelt gut-level sharing. I guess the dog wanted to join in in his own way.
We only had a few minutes left together and desperately needed time to pray together, to invite God into the messes of our lives that had been unearthed.
Thinking that we won’t have time to pray, I fetched paper towels to clean up the mess the dog had unearthed. Someone pleaded with me to stay. “Let’s pray together while we have time,” he said.
At another’s brilliant suggestion, I quickly covered the dog’s mess with paper towels, and we stood in a circle, sharing hearts, tears and compassion.
“Don’t step in the dog barf on your way out!” I called cheerfully.
They genuinely thanked me for the reminder, side-stepped the soaked paper towels, and left with a wave and a smile.
Years later, our dear friends complimented us about that meeting.
“Recently, we were learning about the levels of friendship,” they explained. “There are friends that you dress up for. You wear a corset under your sparkling dress to ensure you look as good as possible. You enjoy an evening with them and then put your feet up. Your stomach fat and your real selves come out later.”
Who needs another “See how great I look when I suck in my stomach” kind of friend?
“Then,” she continued, “you have the friends who invite you onto their couch when you are crying and simply move the laundry hamper to the floor so there is room for you to sit down. These are true friends.“
I teared up at her warm assessment of our friendship.
I was about to hug her, but she was still speaking.
“And you guys took it to a whole new level. We come over, and you just suggest walking around the dog barf”. The others in the room stared at us, mouths agape, not wanting to ask for elaboration. I didn’t blame them.
But yes, a compliment . . . right???
And so the secret to a healthy relationship? Get real. We get real because we want to be authentic.
1. Authentic in how we REALLY look. For example, we don’t use the “Make me look better than in real life” filters on our Zoom meetings. (Have you SEEN that function? It’s AMAZING! I WANT to turn that filter off but wow! Do I EVER look better!) Give me a break! We are all a work in progress, ok?!
2. Authentic in how we REALLY feel. For example, maybe we ask our friends to clean up the dog barf later. What we just unearthed emotionally or spiritually is a lot viler and should take precedence.
3. Authentic in our RESPONSE to our friends. We are humans clothed in the limits of time. We can clean up the dog’s barf or clean up you. Which do you prefer?
So, let’s get real.
And if that sometimes means standing around dog barf, so be it.
As a dog eats its own vomit, so fools recycle silliness.
This saying doesn’t quite fit this post, but it perfectly fits in another, less profound way. Let’s go with a partial fit today and move on. There is someone at my door ready for a cry.
Lord, teach us to order our values to reflect your heart more accurately. After a moment of stillness, consider asking God where your life may not be aligned with the upside-down priorities of the kingdom of God. Maybe He is asking you to stand around the dog barf, too!
We were discussing the more profound things of life, unearthing the cultural assumptions that keep us in bondage.
And this is what she said: “Homeschooling gave me the confidence to try new things.”
She said it matter-of-factly, confidently, as if she believed it. She was homeschooled, and then homeschooled her kids. So she had many years to mull over homeschooling.
I was struck by her confidence and creativity to try new things, but she brushed me off, attributing these traits to being homeschooled. For example, she is a self-taught photographer and took these photos of our daughter, assuring us that her red dress would “pop” in the pictures at this location. She was right.
She explained her homeschooling philosophy to me as her camera clicked, “When you are homeschooled, there aren’t as many kids hovering over you, making fun of you for trying something different. So I felt free to try new things.”
She painted her family’s camping trailer with flowers and a mountain scene and then was commissioned by her city to paint a mural.
“I’m mostly self-taught,” she explains, but she’s having fun, exploring the talents God endowed her with, instead of burying them in fear, as so many of us accidentally do.
“I was afraid I might disappoint you . . .”
(Jesus) was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live!”
But we’d rarely seen another way.
She reminds me of my kids, who are also homeschooled.
For example, today, our family is in Salt Lake City, Utah, attending a “Reborn” doll conference.
Our 15-year-old daughter had the confidence and time to explore the God-given gifts endowed to her, too
Last week, she sold one of her dolls overseas for over $400.
“I didn’t know you could do that!” I exclaimed from my public-schooled worldview.
She didn’t know either.
But she’s not afraid to try.
Our other daughter wrote and self-published a novel by the time she was 15 years old.
What would we do if we weren’t afraid to try?
I would keep writing even though you may laugh at me. How is God calling you to awaken? What do you imagine the next step is on the life adventure He has mapped out for you?
Ready to take another step, friend?
Let’s hold hands because I’m afraid, too.
I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.
The definition of courage is NOT “Not being afraid” but “Doing it anyway.”
What is God whispering to you?
What’s the next step?
Let’s go!
What if people HAD to love you?
I figured out what my family REALLY thought about me lately, and it was a bit of a shock.
Here’s what happened.
We were reading an excellent book together as a family.
Caveat: Before you get the wrong idea of us all drinking hot chocolate and stringing popcorn and cranberries by the fire as we each take turns reading aloud together, singing a song between each chapter, aka Little House on the Prairie style, no, it wasn’t like that. It was an audiobook played in the car during our day-long drive to visit extended family. The book just helped us not to want to kill each other.
Setting the mood.
Anyway, the book was excellent. It was called Jesus Revolution. I would highly recommend it*. We all got into the story, and even the child we initially had to bribe to listen to the story with us asked for more!
At one point in the book, the author, Greg Laurie, is described as having something like “deep spiritual depth and a bit of an unpredictable, crazy personality. You never knew what he was going to do next.”
My husband looked at me sneakily out of the corner of his eye, smirking. “WHAT???” I asked. “What are you smirking about??”
“Oh,” he replied, looking away casually, “just something said in the book.”
“What??” I protested. “I’m not…!” And then he laughed, and there was a muffled chuckle, I think, from the back seats.
So I guess my family thinks that his personality describes me!
Hmmm. . .
But that’s okay because my family HAS to love me.
What do I mean, you ask?
Well, we homeschool them, so we read to them from books that say things like this:
Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it.
Then, we go to a church where they read the same stuff.
At church, they HAVE to love you, too! If you find people who don’t love you there, find some others to love. You’ll find true believers who promise to love you no matter what your personality – even the “unusual” ones – whew!
So we can finally relax and have fun.
We’re loved!
And this reminds me of what we did last night. I bought a gift for my family – well, sort of. Okay, yes! I did buy it for myself and pretended to give it to the family!
It is called The Adventure Challenge. You scratch off an “Adventure,” and then the family HAS (Yes, teens, that word is “HAS”) to do the Adventure together. Last night, we strung out yarn as an obstacle course through the basement, and we had to go through it as fast as we could, being sprayed in the face with water each time we accidentally touched a string.
It was fun.
And my superhero outfit? Yeah, I am wearing a bathing suit over the top of my leotards. And yes, the big “S” on my shirt WAS made a spur of the moment. It helped me go faster!
I even got first place!
Before any of the others went, I was ranked first, that is.
So relax! Make your teens do fun and crazy stuff with you! If you’re unsure how, try making “fun” a prerequisite to “food,” for example! They’ll thank you later (Okay – maybe MUCH later).
Your kids are loved, too!
And that was the message of the Jesus Revolution book, actually. It was about a bunch of crazy hippy kids who were overcome, in some cases literally, by the love of God. That love overflowed to others and transformed a nation (Even Time Magazine did a cover article about this movement on June 21, 1971).
So go ahead and be the real you, whatever that looks like.
They HAVE to love you!
Blogpost Footnotes
* If bribing your kids to watch a movie with you is less expensive than bribing them to read a book, the movie Jesus Revolution can be rented here.
She rejoiced.
It happened!
She danced in the field that summer morning, praising her maker.
What He promised, quietly, with a whisper of love, that He would guide and comfort, HAD materialized.
Here is what happened.
At the women’s gathering that day long, long ago, this good mother poured out her heart to another.
The tears racked her body as she openly shared her fears.
Generational problems pursued her family. Her grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, sister, and auntie bathed in the pool of these problems. None of them had figured out how to get out of this pool, dry off, to dance in that grassy place in freedom.
They all felt like they were drowning instead.
How would her relationship with her daughters differ from what was experienced by every other family member?
The despair of this situation overwhelmed her.
They bowed their heads, these two women, and prayed together that day so many long years ago.
And God spoke, in the recesses of this desperate mother’s heart, a strategy and plan to walk in freedom, step by step, to carve out a new path from the dysfunctional road all her family member walked.
I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
And she was joined in marriage to a man who also longed to walk a new path, the one that Jesus walked ahead of them and beckoned them to follow.
And they did.
And years later, when their first child leaves home, they look back with a cool drink and remember the pain and branches across the path of the road they followed Jesus on. They remembered their hair and clothes full of the pieces of branches, yet their hearts grew larger each day as they learned, through following Him, how to love a little less selfishly, and pour more of their lives out on the other.
And He healed their union, their diversion from the path the others in their family travelled, with a different destination.
Their relationships with their children were healthy.
Not perfect.
Each member of this small family worked through and argued past, chopped chunks off each other, as a sculptor does to a piece of art.
But their path led to healthier relationships.
This couple celebrated the new lineage of increased unity that bonded their family, as they were all refined by this artist, Jesus.
And they danced together in that grassy meadow, this small family, for something new had risen from the depths into life.
Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?
Blogpost Footnotes
*Also known as “God”
As you know or can presume from the style and classiness of these posts, I have excellent taste.
Ahem.
And I hesitate to point out, most reluctantly, that in this post, the exact BRANDS and style of clothing I was wearing were noted for interested readers! (I mention that cautiously and with true humility, of course.) In this post, I describe the fancy hat collection I am developing for use in my old age.
So yes!
I CAN EASILY advise on how to look good!
So, HOW do we look VERY GOOD at church, you ask? Great question! I’m SO glad you asked! Ahem!
First, set aside your pride and go ahead and have a big ‘ol ugly cry at church. Seriously! I describe my own (rare) undignified moment here.
You’re welcome.
But wait, wait, you ask, “How does ugly crying make us look good?” It seems the opposite would be true! You hang on my every word, waiting to discover how to lock and seal this seemingly disparent advice into a philosophically coherent indisputable argument.
I’ll explain.
The more we air our neuroses (sorry for the analogy, but it’s like flatulence), the less we smell bad! Seriously! Now, you know that I never even like to MENTION the word flatulence, as described here. However, the analogy fits SO perfectly.
When we hold in, er- what SHOULD be aired – the inside of us smells terrible, though the outside has no odour. Okay, this analogy MAY be breaking down a bit, but you get my point, I think? If we HOLD IN our neuroses, and pretend everything is okay when it isn’t, the inner neuroses pick away at us, and the rotten stench that all of us carry around with us festers there, though often we are the only ones who can smell it.
(If you think you always smell good, have you ever wondered – “AH! What IS the meaning of my life?” – JUST before you fall asleep? If so, that’s a case in point. You are more messed up than you let on, too!)
So, let out the uglies! A little cry at church is just the thing. You’ll find that people who love you bring you a Kleenex and a pat on the shoulder.
They may not be able to help you much, but they genuinely want to, which counts for something.
You see, at church, God COMMANDS others to love you. Now, granted, NONE of us are that good at loving others, but some have figured out how to channel a morsel of God’s love for us through their arms into compassion.
These are the people we can be honest with, and -no surprises here – they have already taken their turn in the ugly seat.
They are not surprised by your big cry!
And somehow, expressing what we feel is enough to keep the evil dragon at bay for a while.
Knowing that someone is praying for us helps too.
Add a little time with the Father to ask Him a bit more about WHY we were neurotic freaks at church last week and He gives us the Kleenex that is the softest kind that dries all of our tears because His Kleenex is fragranced with hope.
At church, they will read to you from a book, and it may say something like this:
And this will put a bounce in our step and hope in our hearts.
We’re not as neurotic as we thought!
Well, we are if we dig deeper, but that’s for next Sunday.
The point is, we’re not sucking in our guts anymore, pretending our way through life.
‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’
Whatever we bring to the light can be healed.
Whatever we hide infects us, rotting away at our insides.
So let’s let our neuroses out!
And maybe after we’ve let out some of the uglies, we may shift the direction of the ship we are sailing a little closer to true north.
And as we go about our week, we’ll find we are starting to smell better!
We’ll look better, too, through God’s eyes.
We take libraries for granted.
But think about it for a minute with me for illustration.
So we excitedly sign up for a library card, rubbing our hands with glee. We think, “I am now a MEMBER of a special COMMUNITY!” These people will give us access to tons and tons of books!!
At your request, they will order what they don’t have in the vast building of books from another library.
OH! All of these books are FREE to read and borrow. Who WOULDN’T be excited to be a member of said community?
(Besides people who don’t like books but stay with me for illustrative purposes.)
So we rub our hands with glee, excitedly awaiting a moment to sit in a corner with our favourite snack and a travel adventure.
“Are you a member of the LIBRARY COMMUNITY,” we are asked. We are annoyed. We want to enjoy our free book, which we borrowed from the LIBRARY.
“Sure,” we say, returning to our snack and the next paragraph.
“Oh.” The person nods assent and then sits cross-legged, cross-eyed, cross-limbed, and sticks out their tongue in a strange pose.
We are not interested in this behaviour because we want to return to page 4 of our book.
Then another person, and another, joins the first person, sitting next to them, adopting the same pose, staring cross-eyed at each other.
“Um – what are you doing?” we reluctantly ask.
“Oh, this is what we do at the library,” the person calmly states. She goes back to her pose.
WHAT??? Now, we are baffled, and we have one of three choices.
1. Renounce our library cards. These people are crazy! Of course, we also lose the privileges of ALL those free books . . . OR
2. Stay at the library and join them in the weird poses. After all, it’s only a tiny amount of time, and there are ALL those free books . . . OR
3. This is my recommended choice: We MAINTAIN our library membership, but clearly state that we will not join in the weird cross-eyed poses.
And what is the point of this entire post?
1. A library membership is like belonging to a church.
2. The weird poses are like some aspects of church culture.
3. Do we give up the church simply because a few weird-os are doing a bunch of strange poses – or otherwise having some sub-culture that has NOTHING to do with reading books or, in the case in point, with Jesus?
No.
That’s the answer.
So, let’s fight past the people on the front lawn standing with one leg up and posing in strange ways. Let’s fight past the person wearing a pink unicorn suit.
No – wait – that person is me, and I am reading a book and waiting for you. Unicorn suits are cool.
But don’t let them ruin your enjoyment of reading great books, or – SURPRISE! – of finding Jesus behind that huge library bookshelf. He offers you a hug.
He’s so glad you made it.
Restoring Life 