Instead of insisting on freedom to create spiritual reality, shouldn’t we be seeking to discover it and disciplining ourselves to live according to it? . . .
In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions.
Her heart pain rose up, up out of her chest and demanded expression in deep sobs. Jesus saw her. He stood by her side, his arms outstretched to offer love and guidance.
She didn’t notice Him.
In the prayer room that same week, Jesus communed with another woman, one of his dear ones. In the quiet, she was growing in hearing His voice. And then, prompted by Him later that week, she took a risk.
“Jesus sees the tears of the mother,” she whispered that day to the stranger, to the hurting woman. The stranger was the one who had been sobbing all alone. And in that busy place, at work, hearing the words from God, she burst into tears again.
The hurting woman could now sense Jesus was near. Jesus spoke His words through the mouth of one of His servants. Her words came from the heart of God and were received by another as a hug from Jesus.
The hurting friend relayed the story to me.
“I didn’t tell her anything about my daughter,” she gushed at me, astonished.
But heaven met earth that day. Light from beyond our sun, from the Son himself, streamed into the heart of one of His children and exited her mouth to wrap the hurting woman in a hug from Jesus. And a seed of faith was planted in the heart of that hurting woman that day.
And all heaven rejoiced.
Breakthrough happened in one more heart.
The unseen became visible, if only for a flash of a moment. Will this spark be fanned by the flame of the hurting woman making time for God, giving expressions to her reservations about church and the brokenness of His people? Will she push past the frustrations and find her way, in the quiet, to the place in her soul where Jesus speaks?
May she find her ears.
Will she pick them up, attach them and give them a listen?
They are lying there on the floor next to her. She may put them upside down or not quite in the right location initially. Will she re-attach them and try again tomorrow?
Will you?
Oh God! Open ears! Un blind eyes! Help us exchange our mud puddles of entertainment and distraction for the vast ocean of Your joy and presence! May Your Kingdom come! Help more and more of Your beautiful children, the ones You paid the ultimate price for on the cross, get out of their boxes and realize they have wings! Help them soar, Jesus, we pray.
If so, take a risk. Consider laying down your pride and showing up at the church near you where Holy Spirit is moving. Or join us online as we learn to lay aside our distractions, pick up our ears, and learn to love to pray. And may you, too, friend, be set free.
Caveat: This isn’t a promise of a highway to an easy life. But we do have Someone to help us. And walking with Him leads to more life.
It’s worth it.
What is the next step on your spiritual journey? Do you have time to follow your clues? May you keep travelling, dear friend.
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!
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.
Or did I put on my work pants, and get busy constructing a new life for myself and for my homeschooling family, one that we would have the strength to complete all the way from September to June?
And you? Is anyone else feeling the February pull into that familiar black hole of despair?
How do we dance in joy through the dark month of winter?
1. We lift our despair, scoop as much as we can in our hands, and we lift this offering to God.
3. We tell others in our trusted community what we think the spirit of God is whispering. The sounds are muffled and garbled, and the sound waves pass through our hearts mixed with wrong motives, so we have trouble understanding.
4. We look for our dancing shoes. Where are they again? Where are those dreams? Where did we last leave them? Who did God say I am, again?
5. We gingerly take His hand and step onto the dance floor of our lives. He is in the lead, not us. Will we humbly let him lead our lives? Will we give up our right to drive our own car and our accompanying future car wrecks to learn how to dance?
God, all of us long for a good father who holds out a hand to help us up when we fall. The one who has everything we need to open the right door of opportunity for our future lives.
You are that Father.
Open our eyes to see this.
May we trust You more deeply. Help us get off the couch to escape from the lies we believe about ourselves and our lives.
You alone offer us genuine hope for our futures.
May we have the courage to step onto the dance floor with You.
Teach us to dance.
As you meditate on the words below and listen to the song below, take deep breaths and practice quieting your heart before God.
You did it: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers. I’m about to burst with song; I can’t keep quiet about you. God, my God, I can’t thank you enough.
Should we call all our homeschooling friends and organize (another) hockey party on the free outdoor ice rink?
Do I give them as much “independent work” as I can and try to tackle the mess of stuff in the basement, the pile that seems to have acquired a life of its own and that roars at me as I pass like a Yeti in the basement?
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide behind the fun. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that our home is so disorganized that we can no longer find pencils to do our math. Or that no one cares. “I like using a green pencil crayon for math, Mommy!” she asserts.
She is not trying to make me feel better. She is genuinely happy. Her needs are met.
And mine?
“I’m not worried about the kids,” my husband would assert. “I’m worried about you.”
So I offer you tea and a listening ear, dear homeschooling Mom and Dad, and ask:
And then your tears, and your head in hands, and I put my arm around you to comfort you.
Husbands, put on a helmet first and then TRY asking your wives if PMS is real.
You know the answer, or you will find out soon enough.
Similarly, the homeschooling in February blues is real.
I want to propose (shout out to Mystie Winckler for the essence of this paragraph’s wisdom!) that the path we walk through the regular monthly cycling of our emotions gives us a hint for how we walk through the annual cycling of our feelings during the homeschooling year.
And February is hard.
Now, I know that you don’t have time for a dissertation. Your child is pulling your arm already, something is burning on the stove, and you have dog vomit to clean up, but you need some help. Now.
Don’t quit homeschooling in February.
If you take the advice of the sentence above, then go! Go and get through the day! Well done, Mom and Dad!
If you have another 5 minutes, here is an explanation for the statement above.
When sailors would navigate using the stars, how would they do it? They would choose their course on a cloudless, moonlit night. “I am heading north-east,” they would assert, and set their hearts and sails in that direction.
On a cloudy night, when the stars were invisible, and they didn’t know which way to go, what did they do?
They kept sailing in the same direction.
February, head in our hands month, is a cloudy night, desolation.
Ignatius describes desolation as “. . . darkness of soul, . . . the unquiet of different agitations and temptations, . . . when one finds oneself . . . as if separated from his Creator and Lord.” . . .
Ignatius warns us that someone in desolation should never change an important decision . . . made when they were in a state of consolation.
“He’ll throw that up later,” I thought, but I stayed where I was, slouched on the couch, watching the commotion.
How had homeschooling become so complicated?
Welcome to February.
And it is to you, dear homeschooling parent, that I send out a blimp in the sky, something that you will notice amidst the noise. “What is that?” you wonder, looking up, up at some shape you can barely recognize high up in the sky.
The dishes have piled up again, and secretly, you find yourself wondering more and more often what it would feel like to don work clothes and to wave “Goodbye!” to the kids each morning with a smile and a wave. Next year? (The rest of THIS homeschooling year . . . ? What WOULD that be like . . . ) You are lost in a daydream again.
We try to shake ourselves awake. We walk to the next room in a half-hearted effort to clean up. The piles of half used, forgotten curriculum mocks you from every room you pass. “Ha! You didn’t finish me either!” it yells at you.
The kids are happy, delighted. They kiss you as they soar past, trying out a new paper airplane they designed, as they throw it, again, from the top of the stairs, laughing.
They stop to offer you a kiss. “Do you want a cup of water?” they ask sweetly, wanting, in their limited way, to help you. They have a look of concern in their eyes. They know that mommy doesn’t feel “regular” today. These are good kids.
But even they can’t help you climb out of your pit.
The pull of February drowns out their voices. Their words sound muffled, far away.
Dirt falls from the side of the walls and won’t hold your weight when you try pulling yourself out of this pit with a promised martini.
Maybe you can wait here, sit in your despair until spring, you wonder?
You look up at the top of the pit. “How can the light reach way, way down here?” you wonder.
I will be writing a series of posts, dear homeschooling parent, to help you through the February blues.
In February, the long winter stretches out with no Christmas in sight. The rest of the school year seems long, long away.
If you haven’t felt discouraged yet, you probably will.
(Shh… God is holding a ticket out of here for you. Do you see Him? But the only way out of this pit is if He transforms you so you have wings. Are you ready to fly?)
Stay tuned to this series of posts to help you:
(1) Not be surprised at the February homeschooling blues when they knock at your door and come in uninvited,
I said I FORGOT to finish the blog post series I started on Healthy Habits. That is only PARTIALLY true. I am more organized than you think!
The TRUTH is that I didn’t think we would want to discuss fasting the week before Christmas when we are constantly stuffing our faces with stuffing and turkey and homemade treats and eggnog.
But now that we are on the couch, stomachs in pain and feeling like losers (Losers in a good way, if you haven’t read that post), let me help you get off the couch and let’s punish our bodies again by doing things we don’t like: eating less food, exercising etc.
Or let’s trick ourselves into believing we like doing the stuff we may not always feel like doing.
Whatever.
So January is here!
I would recommend starting off the year by re-reading my blogpost series about Healthy Habits.
Time to get fit!
This post in the Healthy Habits series is a recommendation to try to (more or less) eat dessert on Sundays only.
But that is impossible, right?
Yeah, I know, but we have to try to wean ourselves off the hourly Christmas treats, eventually.
Here’s how:
1. Trick yourself into thinking you are eating dessert when you are not.
Like a cocaine addict (are they the ones that use needles, again?) seeking a fix, I MUST HAVE a snack like this one every day. This is the FIRST item I make when I run out. I’ll skip cooking supper to have a week of these on hand.
Why? Because they FEEL like dessert, even though they are not! Fat and sugar and chocolate and yum all rolled up into a ball! But it’s healthy fat (nuts) and healthy sugar (dates) and chocolate (of course). I eat these at 3:00 pm when I’m craving my fix, and there is just enough heroin (substitute) to help me last another few hours till supper and my nightly camomile tea fix.
2. Downscale your addictive personality.
Our church has been reaching out to our city’s homeless population, and it is AMAZING how much sugar these people who have kicked their drug addictions mainline (Can you mainline sugar?) Whatever.
But let’s face it, mainlining sugar is a LOT healthier than mainlining crystal meth!
Since the reality is that we, too, are just nicely dressed balls of addiction, chasing the wrong desires, let’s learn from them!
Let’s downscale our addictions!
For example, I met a lady last week who stopped smoking and then gained 30 pounds. But stuffing our faces with food is better than stuffing our faces with cancer sticks!
In my case, I am more addicted to sugar than I am to processed chips. So I TRY to eat chips instead of sugar. Once I’m addicted to chips, it’s easier to wean myself off of that addiction. I’ve been downscaled!
It’s easier to eat less chips than it is to mainline crystal meth!
Get the pattern?
While we’re at it, downscaling our addictions, let’s upscale our Levels of Happiness!
3. Let’s look forward to making massive pigs of ourselves.
As per the theme of point two above, we don’t start out at the finish line, having already won the race.
Meaning let’s cut ourselves some slack! We are all basically crack-addicted homeless people, seeking happiness in all the wrong places, so let’s cut ourselves some slack!
Let’s LOOK FORWARD to making a COMPLETE PIG of ourselves on Sundays! A COMPLETE cheesecake with Oreos and highly processed foods on Sunday, anyone?
Start where we’re at!
We’ll eat ONE piece of cake with good manners and a napkin sometime on the future Sunday. Even if our progress is WAY OUT in the future, we celebrate successes! You’re awesome!
I was frustrated, kicking the ground as I walked. Homeschooling is impossible enough without this additional hurdle lying prostrate before me. I didn’t have enough speed to make it through the regular hurdles of life. . .
. . . nevermind this race I’m running strewn with toppled school desks, kid’s toys, and homeschooling supplies.
We did a personality test for a fun homeschooling project.
Not a great white shark, terrifying those within a several kilometre radius.
My personality, most unfortunately, given that I have a lion-like child trying to bite me whenever I’m not looking, is best compared to . . .
. . . a sweet and gentle creature whose favorite past time is to play.
My personality is most similar to that of an otter.
“And HOW is an otter supposed to lead a lion?” I yelled at God that day, kicking the path as I walked.
“All that kid wants to do is eat me!”
Try being David when your child is Goliath. Sure, it’s one thing to vanquish Goliath in a one-off contest using an unexpected weapon. But LEAD Goliath, David? Day after day? Good luck!
And that’s my job.
Also the strategy of “hide a bit and hope to survive until, oh, 8:30 am when the school bus comes each day” won’t work for me.
Nope.
This kid is with me 24/7.
We homeschool.
What was I thinking taking on this mammoth task?
“God!” I called out, my anger turned to desperation. “How is an otter supposed to parent a lion?”
And the picture He gave me in my mind that day as I walked changed everything.
The picture was of an otter, front legs straight out and entirely touching the ground, tail wagging.
Now pause here because this picture has meaning to dog owners. This is the position dogs assume to indicate it’s playtime.
And the rest of the picture?
The lion assumed the same pose, following the cues of the otter. Behind the roaring facade, she wanted to have fun.
She just didn’t know how.
Play with her, God whispered.
And I was given a tool that unlocked my daughter’s heart and opened a new parenting door for us, leading to a beautiful place.
I understood what He was whispering.
The lion will WILLINGLY submit to the otter so she can play.
The next day, when that little lion led me to an emotional place I never wanted to visit again, I stopped myself from following her lead.
I wasn’t in the mood to play.
But “Let’s play,” I announced.
I thought, “Let’s play a game where I try not to wring your little neck.”
But when I took the reigns, went with my natural strengths, and played with her, even though I didn’t feel like it, the little lion unwound herself and laughed a bit. And she hugged me.
And she was so dang cute that we played a little longer, and soon, I was having a great time, too.
I was leading again.
She naturally followed.
But this is the weird thing.
She came under my leadership for the rest of the day.
Fifteen minutes of play transformed her into a little lion-otter, expectantly waiting for me to help fun tickle her side at any moment.
And I made it through that homeschooling day.
Reflecting that night with a glass of wine, I asked my husband to promise to help me remember to proactively PLAY with my little lion so I could dominate her.
Er. . . LEAD her, I meant to write.
Whatever.
The point is that God has a solution to our EVERY problem.
And who knows? Maybe this strategy would work in other situations?
Try it with your boss. Tell him he’s a loser, and then laugh. See if you get that promotion after all!
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
God, thank you that our mammoth problems are tiny piles of sand to You, that can be blown away with one breath of Your Spirit. Speak to us and remind us to hide beneath Your wings, the place where You hand out both love for us, and wisdom for our myriad challenges, we pray.
He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.
BEFORE YOU SLAM THIS POST CLOSED IN DISGUST… remember that I promised this post was based on peer-reviewed philosophy, which will be clarified in a moment.
These are my examples (admittedly not perfect) of four principles to becoming happy that have been recognized by philosophy!
The 4 Levels of Happiness, undiluted by my own examples and as proposed by Aristotle and later by modern philosophers, are the following:
Happiness Level 1- Happiness found in simple material pleasures. For example, eating a crisp apple while standing right next to the tree we picked it from.
Happiness Level 2 – Happiness found in delayed satisfaction. For example, setting aside other priorities to do the work of training for a race, and the happiness found in completing or wining the race.
Happiness Level 3 – Happiness found in serving others. For example the unexpected joy we feel when we help those less fortunate than us.
(Now, we better not talk about Happiness Level 4 because in order to be sophisticated moderns, we should never talk about spiritual needs. Here goes anyway.) Happiness Level 4 – Happiness found in the pursuit of, or an experience of God. Don’t shoot me! I’m just a messenger!
So now, if we compare my examples to the unfiltered levels of happiness proposed by real philosophers, you can see where I’m coming from.
Happiness Level 1 – Eating chocolate is obviously the ultimate fulfillment of material pleasures. (I’m sure you can think of others).
Happiness Level 2 – Now that I review the Levels of Happiness more thoroughly, I can see that the object of Happiness Level 2 is not entirely ego domination. But I was on the right track in the sense of receiving happiness from completing a race or something. Close enough.
Happiness Level 3 – To expound on my example of Happiness Level 3, put food in the food hamper VERY slowly so people notice. In my case, I tend to do it quickly and run away because I am putting in items that have almost expired. But in your case, if the food hasn’t expired, relish in the fact that you’re helping someone else! Let them exalt you! Wait -As I’m refreshing myself on the general principle of Happiness Level 3, I can see now that the point is actually serving people not having others SEE you serve people. Whatever. I guess we learn new things all the time, even as we’re writing blog posts!
Happiness Level 4 – The last level of happiness, of course, is found in hanging out with losers. I was right about that one. As mentioned here, people who call themselves Christians are losers! (People who don’t call themselves Christians are also losers, but they are too spiritually blind to see that at the moment.)
And of course, by seeking God I’m not talking about swallowing everything thrown at you at church hook, line, and sinker. (Yes, I realize these are mixed metaphors, but who has time to edit their writing these days?)
Ahem . . .
So don’t leave your brain at the door when you walk into a church. Rebuke them sometimes. That’s what you’re there for.
But we also pray that the scales will fall off your eyes and ears so that you can see and hear the real God who is speaking even though he is surrounded by so many weird-os that sometimes it’s hard to get in close enough to get his autograph or to touch the hem of his cloak, or whatever you’re hoping will fill your bucket of need as you draw closer to God.
He will turn everything in your life upside down if you get close enough to touch him. That is his way.
For example, God even talks about happiness coming from suffering.
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
Joy from problems seems a little crazy if you think about it.
Don’t think about it too much.
Just hold His hand and the hands of the other losers who love being near Him, and may you rise a little higher up the Levels of Happiness (maybe even to a Level 3 or Level 4?) this season.
Restoring Life 