The little girl was clinging to her small blanket, wiping her nose with her arm.
We are busy. We have appointments. We dress to accomplish, checking the time as we walk past.
She stares around her, alone, in a world of busy, busy people.
Jesus sees her.
He kneels, offering her a Kleenex. She spontaneously hugs him, clinging round his neck, and he picks her up. Then he sets her down and guides her by the hand.
They walk away somewhere.
Where did they go?
We turn round for a minute, casting another look, pausing in our day. Where DID she go, we wonder? We MEANT to bring her some food and a warm blanket, to bring her home.
But we were busy.
Oh! And look at the time. And we are off again.
And Jesus is sitting nearby at that busy intersection, watching, watching the people.
He drinks his coffee and waits.
One of the busy men in a suit falls in pain.
Ill health is the cog in the wheel that stops his rush. He falls to his knees. He holds out his arms, willing himself to go faster, but his leg won’t obey. He looks up at the sky for help.
The people sidestep around him.
Jesus bends his knee and offers a brace, a cane and an arm to lean on.
They hobble away together somewhere.
Again, the busy people take a second glance.
“Was that man hurt? I meant to come back and check at lunchtime, on my break, but I got distracted. The good jokes in the lunch room distracted me, and it was too late. I had forgotten.”
“Wasn’t that Bob? He’s not here, walking with us anymore. Where did he go?” We ask each other, but no one knows. We weren’t paying attention.
Closer, nearer, pungent aroma of steamy breath, foul stench of death surrounds me
“HALT!” I yell. “BACK DOWN!”
It cowers at my feet
My raised hand bears the silhouette of a dagger
In this eerie place
I light my torch
It’s blazing fire light comforts
And the dragon vanishes with the darkness
It lurks nearby, I know
Ready to draw nearer, to pounce
Should I forget, again, who I AM
It flies at me again
Like a mosquito
Irritating
Except it is the dragon
It will consume me if I let it
It seems to be only a minor irrigation
But it will leave me cowardly, a broken shrivelled residue of myself if I listen
To my thoughts
And so I pick up my sword
And I fight
Though I am already exhausted
And I win
Only when I remember
Who I AM
The Accuser of our brothers and sisters thrown out, who accused them day and night before God . . . So rejoice, O Heavens, and all who live there . . .
God, may we no longer be blustered by accusations. May we remember who You are, and therefore remember who we are as heirs of the King. Please empty our head of the thoughts that do not align with how You think of us.
May we keep Your thoughts of us, Jesus, closer than the dragon’s.
As you listen to the song below, consider asking Holy Spirit, “How do You see me?”
If our goal is win long-term wars, we will lose short-term battles.
As homeschoolers, we lose many short-term culture battles because the system is not designed for us.
Take swimming, for example.
I signed one daughter up for a private swim lesson, one-on-one with a teacher. Then, wait – I noticed they offered private swim lessons for up to two students. I decided to throw both kids into the pool.
“Oh, Ma’am,” the lifeguard explained apologetically, “we can’t take both of your children simultaneously because they aren’t in EXACTLY THE SAME swim level. The rule is that for a private swim lesson with a MAXIMUM of two students, both kids must be at EXACTLY the same swim level.
As homeschool parents, our brains go into culture shock.
EVERYTHING WE DO, ALL DAY, EVERY DAY HAS TO BY DEFINITION, be tailored to teach multiple students at various levels.
I found myself wanting to explain how to homeschool.
“Oh, come ON!” I wanted to say. The younger kid will undoubtedly learn a BIT of the more complex swim stroke if not the same proficiency! Undoubtedly, the older kid can do a BIT of review and maybe brush up on the nuances of a swim stroke while the younger one gets the main idea.
But if I were to speak, the words would go around the ears and over the head of the lifeguard. These words cannot penetrate -be understood. Two cultures have made their way to the front lines of the battlefield and only one culture wins this war.
I placed only one child in private swim lessons.
Inwardly, I laugh hysterically at the idea that two children of slightly different skill levels can’t be taught simultaneously. But my morale plummeted a little because I lost another battle. We lose a lot of short-term culture battles as homeschooling parents.
We must decide which long-term wars we are ultimately strategizing to win.
I propose the following:
1. We strategize to win the war of, when kids have left home, having kind children.
But they may look like idiots according to middle school report cards (losing a battle) when we are aiming for high SAT scores at graduation (ultimate war to win). “What is she going on about now?” you ask. I’ll explain next time.
3. We strategize to win the war of having passionate and engaged young adults.
For example, consider this post. We don’t kill our children’s natural God-given drive to learn. Similarly, the Homeschool Legal Defence Association found homeschooled students to be particularly diverse, tolerant and civically engaged.
4. We strategize to win the war of having the strength and wisdom, as parents, to finish the race of homeschooling for as long as this is the best option for our family.
In the interim, though, we are in our cocoons and so we are losing cultural battles all over the place, or at least it appears that way since we are blind for a while to what truly matters. Our goal is to win the long-term war of living in alignment with our most authentic intuition of a good life (although the good life almost kills us).
When our transformation finally arrives, and our identity is formed by how God (not our culture) sees us, homeschooling parents can finally relax and have fun.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
Then, our children can survive the most important, long-term wars.
What wars are you preparing your kids for, getting them dressed in armor for, hoping they will survive the fight?
Jesus, give us wisdom, we pray. May we look at each of our children and at our culture, using the glasses You use to look through. And may we strategize well so that our children will win the most important wars. And strengthen us for this challenging journey of parenting and of standing up and of walking upriver in the strong tide of our culture, we pray.
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.The Message
1. To Enjoy – We want to have fun with and enjoy our children while we have them in our home.
It might be hard… but let the mother have the courage to do for themselves what they do for their children… and life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. Charlotte Mason, Developing a Curriculum
2. To Think – We want our children to develop critical thinking before entering the mindset of this culture.
Why do we think they are learning more because we are talking at them, or because they are writing in workbooks? The child’s instinct [for ‘real’ life] is wiser than ours.Susan Schaefer-McCaulay, For the Children’s Sake
For in the end, he was trying to tell us what afflicted the people in ‘Brave New World’ was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice.Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death
3. To Love – We wish to bond with our children in a stronger way, and to avoid peer orientation.
[Love] comes forth out of a relationship which has to grow and deepen. We can even say that the love between parents and children develops and matures to the degree that they can reach out to each other and discover each other as fellow human beings, who have much to share and whose differences in age, talents and behaviour are much less important than their common humanity. Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
We forget how deeply they grieved as little ones… there is no greater cause of unhappiness than the lack of parental sympathy (i.e. What is it like to be in their shoes?) Clay Trumbull, Hints on Child Training
I have been giving him treats for “staying” and lying down in one position for more than a minute or two.
One ear cocked to the side, yawning sometimes – the dog’s instinctual response to say, “I’m trying to understand you here!” – sometimes excitedly getting it.
But most of the time, he stares at me, wondering how to get more treats.
And this is a perfect example of what we are like as we come before God.
He has something to give to us. The analogy breaks down here because God doesn’t simply tempt us with crumbs but has the full banqueting table to offer. But you get the point.
My dog sometimes forgets about me and my rewards and lies down distractedly.
And then I give him a treat.
And doesn’t that happen to us too? We forget about God, go about our business, and then we hear His heart whispering. He offers us food when we least expect it.
Well done, God comforted me, excitedly offering me a food reward. Huh? “What the . . .” I had just woken up. In my heart, I looked up at God, my head cocked to the side, confused.
He comforted me in His love, in His presence.
What was I doing right? I stumbled to the coffee machine, trying to put the puzzle together. The machine brewed, and God poured delight into my heart as the coffee machine poured delight into my cup. I scratched my head, trying to figure out why God was pleased with me.
I listened to HIS cues.
I responded to HIS call to obey.
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
He had been asking me to wake early, to write, to offer this page of food to you, dear reader.
And I obeyed.
That’s it.
Regardless of outcomes as defined by our culture, in God’s eyes, this writing is a success because it is motivated by obedience. Like a child with a crooked, smudged, stick-figure drawing, the parent is pleased with her art. God, the parent, is pleased with our crooked efforts at responding to His whispers.
And what you are seeing is the actor on the stage, the polished version of me for you to read about.
God says write.
I write.
Applause.
End of show.
But behind the scenes, there is chaos. An entire repertoire of people, those on lights and sound, and the director helped me look polished for you. They cried tears, remade the costumes, and helped me fit into my new identity.
I offer credit where credit is due:
1. Thank you to our friend who scared back the monsters intimidating me and offered me his hand. “Stand,” he said. And he prayed passionately that day in our kitchen, “She is about the King’s business!” he declared.
And I believed him. And I exchanged another piece of my old heart, the one linked to how people judge my life, for a princess robe. And I danced in joy.
And You danced with me, Jesus. Keep dancing, you whispered. Keep following Me where I lead child, regardless of what they say.
And I’m still dancing.
2. Thank you to my husband, the giant man. When I was in the metaphorical hide out, the place I shouldn’t have been, God led him to find me. He ducked to half his height to enter the place that held me captive.
When he entered, the evil shapes fled. He is not scared of the same things I am. His lack of fear terrifies them.
“Come, friend,” he offered, holding out his hand. “Don’t be afraid.” And he held me in his arms and comforted me as I wept. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
And there wasn’t. Because he regularly prays I will dance in freedom, in that grassy place. And so I do.
3. And I say thank you to so many of my friends. You prayed for me. And you told me what you thought God was saying to me, though you didn’t always understand.
And I took those pieces, precious as each one was, and I thought and considered and prayed and placed them into the puzzle of my life. Thank you. I honor you.
4.And I thank you for the eagle you sent, Jesus, who swooped down and woke me and fed me. “Get up.” She nudged me, and I rolled over, trying to go back to sleep.
But she was persistent, unphased by my life’s lack of spiritual success.“Try this food,” she suggested. I tossed that aside, too. I wasn’t used to the taste.
She tried milk, and I drank it with relish. I was thirsty. Later on, my stomach could hold a bite or two of meat. I was growing up.
“How is your time of worship?” she asked me again, and again, and again. Finally, I could answer her to say that I am learning to abide more frequently in Your presence. And the next time I danced, I held the sceptre you gave me, Holy Spirit.
And so thank you, Jesus, for the many, many actors behind the scenes of our lives.
What was the path that took me from there to here?
Good question!
I’m glad you asked.
Here are the key stepping stones that led me across the river, onto a narrower path, without so many hurdles.
1. Pretend to be sick when you aren’t
What I mean is, if a few sniffles and a “headache” can help your kids bring you tea, quietly close the door behind them, and get all their homeschooling work (mostly) done in a hurry to “help” you out, then isn’t that just a helpful parenting strategy?
Yes, they may play a few more video games that day, but sometimes we have to negotiate with the enemy (is there perhaps a more precise word here?)!
And how do we need fewer “emotionally unstable” or “sick” days? This is the obvious question we want to ask ourselvesas the mature adults that we are. We don’t want to HAVE to lie (I prefer the term “play pretend”) to our kids quite so often. What I’ve learned is the following:
2. Try not to be such a nutcase
Oh, come ON, admit it! You ARE a nutcase, too! I haven’t met even ONE homeschooling parent, for example, who didn’t start this way.
We start our homeschooling adventure with our new homeschooling planners (I have paid up to $99.99 for mine – a VERY expensive calendar with a bunch of blank paper inside).
We ALL start with our new, sharp pencils and energy overflowing from within. We purchase a shiny new curriculum or textbook and dutifully divide the book into 36 weeks, the total number of weeks in a school year. When we have completed this exercise with our stack of texts, we wipe the sweat from our brow and think – GREAT! I know EXACTLY what my kids will be learning on March 16, next year!
We ask for ONE or maybe TWO areas of prayer for each child. Oh, and for us.
God’s priorities will not be those we choose for our kids. We prioritize hockey and extra math lessons so that EVERY KID born in this country will be in the NBA (or whatever the popular sports leagues are) and have myriad universities begging them to attend.
Instead, we humbly exchange our vanity, linked to our child’s successes, for God’s chosen priorities for them.
And His priorities for us are interior postures of the heart, a heart sickness within each of our kids, and in us to focus on. Lying? Selfishness? Bickering? Jealousy?
Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
It’s the kids who are born as tyrants, but if you become a tyrant, there is order in the home. Then the true skill we need to learn next is how to become a tyrant to ourselves. We need to grow in the skill of bossing OURSELVES around.
When we show up at a paid job, in our office clothes and clipboard, we say “Yes Ma’am!”, do what we are told, then come home exhausted and put our feet up.
But when we show up on our first day of homeschooling, for example, no terrifying boss threatens to fire us each day.
It’s easy for us and our kids to stay in our pyjamas.
Essentially, what is the MINIMUM work that needs to get done by my kids and by me? CHECKING my kid’s work is MY JOB I need to do, whether I feel like it or not. How am I doing with that job?
And if you find you are in overwhelm again? No problem, dear friend.
1. Declare another sick day!
2. Pray a LOT!
3. Learn a couple of tangible skills to proactively manage the ship!
When do we jump from a sinking ship and when do we bail frantically to save our lives?
When do we decide that the public school system is broken enough that it can’t be fixed and jump ship to homeschooling? When do we stay in the school system, attend PTA meetings and volunteer as a playground supervisor? When do we put our kids in the public school system and do our best to bail out the ship?
How am I supposed to know?
But who wants to screw up their kids?
When my soul welled up with reasons to seriously consider homeschooling, flooding cultural expectations for my life, this is some of what it said:
1. Before we had kids, I would hear something about homeschooling and a random tear would erupt, sliding slowly down my cheek. What was going on? (If you have a lump in your throat right now, you’re done for. Just sayin’. Stay in your pyjamas today to get used to it because you should be homeschooling soon.)
2. A kid tried to beat me up on my way home from school in Grade 3. What was that about? I was “the kindest, most empathetic person” a teacher had “encountered in a long time” (verbatim wording from my report card). Is there any way to spare our kids from UNNECESSARY pain?
Sure, they WILL experience pain, but if we know they will get beat up with a baseball bat emotionally, spiritually or (even) physically day after day, can we at not, at least, flip a coin to see if there are other ways to learn the alphabet?
3. And there were those times when I would walk home from grocery shopping with my mom, hand in hand. We would sing songs. This was most cherished memory of my childhood.
It wasn’t expensive. It wasn’t complicated. How could we live to have a few more of those kinds of moments?
4. Then I read the parenting classic Hold Onto Your Kids by Neufeld and Mate. Their words were a confirmation, like check marks on my intuition. Maybe we AREN’T supposed to structure society so that kids and teens spend most of their time with people exactly the same age as them.
5. And what if some of the ideas we hold dear as a culture, the general beliefs, are wrong? If another culture’s beliefs are (obviously to us) wrong, some of our culture’s commonly held beliefs WILL BE wrong too. Which ones?
6. Maybe kids DON’T need the latest cultural clothing styles as defined by other kids their same age. Maybe a second-hand sweater will do.
7. Maybe kids don’t need their own menus of sugar and hyper-processed foods. Healthy food habits WILL get pulled down to an outlandish level in a culture of extreme bizarreness, of kids eating two-thirds of their diet as highly processed foods. As much as we wax on about eating healthily, stepping into another culture, home, where everyone eats a bowl of soup at lunch is a realistic way to instil normal food habits.
Schools are increasingly mimicking the culture of Brave New World (so my middle school substitute teacher friend asserts), but it’s our kids who suffer there.
It was time for us to jump ship, to swerve onto a narrower road. How about you? Is it time for your family to jump ship? Do you sense the pull of your heart towards giving homeschooling a try?
We have to wean ourselves off the cultural drugs that addict us to the wrong desires first.
Our status in society may drop precipitously. We will have to pick up a new identity, one others may gawk at. The old identity, defined by perhaps lots of stuff, expensive vacations, and value in corporate America (i.e. a job in exchange for money!) may no longer stick with us.
Here’s some food to strengthen you for the journey.
Blogpost Footnotes
Since this post was written, a teen in our community died from a drug overdose. Also, I received a text from a local nurse that youth age 12 – 14 using meth is the new normal. Sheltering kids for a few more years, using whatever resources are available to us, is becoming increasingly important.
I am writing this blog for you. This blog is a gift from the Father to you through me. And by you, I don’t mean you, necessarily.
You will know who you are – the you I am writing this blog for.
Is it you?
Or maybe you don’t yet know if you are you as you read a few lines and move on to something else.
But for YOU – there is something here that you need. So I write for you. Except that I don’t know anything about you – your tastes, hobbies, needs, or soul yearnings.
But God asked me to write. And so I write. I write for you.
I write because He whispered in my ear. I could almost sense Him one day in the library, excited. He wanted to show me something. I looked blankly at the wall of books.
He seemed to be saying that He wanted the voice of His children to create books for these shelves.
I believe He wants to flood the earth with books about His Kingdom written by His people.
He was planting a seed in me, showing me His heart, opening a bit of heaven’s storehouses to see a tiny glimpse of the treasures He wants to give us if only we can lift our eyes to see.
The soil of my heart where God so gently planted a seed is dry. The seed cannot penetrate the earth.
I tell no one what He has been saying. The soil is too hard.
But God brings the rain.
At the women’s breakfast with our church, she prays for me. “I don’t know what this means,” she begins, “but I feel like God is giving you a pen. And the ink is the Holy Spirit. As you write, the ink of Holy Spirit will guide you.”
And I weep and weep because her words touch the deepest layer of my heart, the part with the ear that only You have whispered to.
Can it be true?
Have I correctly been hearing from You? It took one of your beloveds to dig into the soil, turn it over afresh, and whisper into my ear confirmation of what Holy Spirit had already been saying. Write.
And so I write.
And if you are the one I am writing for, welcome. It is good to meet you. May these words feed your soul. For they came from the Father and pass, garbled, through my hands. I apologize for mixing up the words, ignoring what I should have written, and writing something else instead. For erasing what should have been left and for the messiness of this page.
But may you, even through the dirty, ripped page, be encouraged somehow.
For that is His way.
My heart is to obey in joy. May a few of these words encourage you, dear friend. And may you also, one day, hear more clearly what He is saying to you, so He can bless others, through you, with His voice, as well, garbled and mixed up, as we may understand it with our broken ears and our broken desires.
We endeavour to speak to the world what we think He may be saying. May many seeds from the dirt that we throw earnestly to the wind land on soil already moistened by Holy Spirit
For that is His way.
God said [to Moses,] My presence will go with you. I’ll see the journey to it’s end.
God, help us to plant the seeds of Your voice whispering to our hearts. Help us to scatter seeds afar of the life that has unfolded because we chose to walk with You.
And God, bring the rain, we pray. For this is the only way life can arise from the dust of our lives.
Consider asking God, what is one step I can take today to align my life to Your vision of who I am as I learn to walk more closely by your side?
He put a slip of paper in my hand before he held out the rope to lower, lower me back down the pit, back down to the kids with their swirling needs and to a dog with multiple dietary discomforts.
When I returned to the couch and to the kids and the dog that day, I held the folded slip of paper He had given me in my hand.
I opened it carefully and somehow the room quieted in my soul, even through the sharp noises of bickering kids and an excited dog.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.
The book I love that I longed to introduce to my children.
When she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to a teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterward used. For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.
And He got a big red pen, the one that I use on my kids to edit their writing, and He edited my life.
This has got to go. This too. And this.
He gave me one or two things to focus on this season, one for each child and one for me.
And it got a little easier.
I was the one who needed to change, to tweak our homeschooling life so that joy could erupt through the cracks of the brokenness of our lives a little more often.
Consider asking God what wounds He wants you to lift to Him so He can remove the bandaid to allow light to shine through the scar, blinding others so they too, may seek their healing.
We were preparing our family to go skiing for the first time this year.
Only two people had mini meltdowns. Yes, one of them was an adult. Frustration levels were rising as we tried to find all our stuff.
We THOUGHT we had checked our daughter’s gear to make sure it fit from last year, but we forgot that she grew like a troll, and her skis were now only about half the correct size.
The only helmet we could find for one daughter was so big that she needed several thick toques under it for her to see when she was skiing.
We made do.
When we arrived at the hill (yes, I’m just venting now- who says writing isn’t cathartic?), one daughter snapped her boot into her ski. Snap. It fit.
The other boot wouldn’t snap into the bindings, and on closer inspection, we realized that although we paid a LOT of money for the guy at the hill to turn the screw so that the bindings fit the correct size of her foot, apparently, he only did this for ONE of her boots. Not for the other. Did I mention that our province recently legalized pot and that everyone seems to smoke it?
Enough said.
So we were frustrated.
And yes, marriage is just like that. It’s a lot like preparing to go skiing on the first day of the year. A lot can go wrong!
Thankfully, we have the following two nonsense words to share with you to save* your marriage:
1. sorryf’r – A contraction from the full “I’m sorry for . . . ” The details of what exactly we are sorry for are unspecified and undescribed. This word is used a lot in our marriage.
Like, every day.
By both of us.
An example would be “sorryf’r” after I accidentally kicked you while trying to get my ski boots on because I (honestly) didn’t see you walking past me. Or “sorryf’r” drinking the rest of the coffee cream because I didn’t want to share. I felt bad afterwards, though, if that counts.
It means that I know that I am an idiot – a lot.
And I know that you are an idiot, too.
We don’t overanalyze or even discuss details to describe WHAT exactly we are apologizing for. We don’t have to. The beauty of this phrase is as long as BOTH people remember that we have married dorks and that we each do dorky things ALL the time, well, we don’t dwell on that.
We move on.
And now I will teach you the correct response to sorryf’r.
2. yaIknow – A contraction from the full “Yeah, I know.” This means, as per sorryf’r, that I KNOW I’m an idiot a lot of the time, and I know that I mess up, and let’s move on, okay? Yes, you also are an idiot!
Can we change the subject yet?
And then we move on.
What’s for lunch? We forget about all the “stuff” and “incidents” and “offenses” and “infractions” that occurred before and after and around those words. Having low expectations for each other saves a LOT of grief.
Give it a try!
Have low expectations for your spouse!
Oh, and for you, too.
In another blogpost, we continue the skiing metaphor, discussing two acronyms for moderate and expert skiers only. Have you mastered the groomed ski runs of the sorryf’r and the yaIknow? If so, move on to the next post.
“. . . we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners . . . and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us”
In (some) seriousness, God, help us to have the humility to know we need to forgive and to be forgiven a LOT. And in (less) seriousness, help us to take ourselves and our spouses a LOT less seriously. Thank you for your continual spirit of forgiveness towards us, should we turn towards you to receive this from your outstretched hand.
The song below is about an ancient king named Manasseh. He needed forgiveness for being a jack(what?) at a 100% level, but God extended this grace to him, too! As the song below plays, let’s consider asking God where WE (not our spouses) consistently trip up in our marriages.
And let’s reach out to receive Jesus’ hand of forgiveness to wash our lives so we each can smell a bit sweeter to our partner.
Blogpost Footnotes
* Or destroy. Results not guaranteed.
This post is part of our Say-It-Again On Friday series, where we say it again, on Fridays!
Restoring Life 