SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

Over the last few days, I've been skimming through Dr. Kevin Leman's Becoming the Parent God Wants You to Be.
I picked it up from the church library after one of those weeks when I figured my fertility must have been oversight on God's part. "Oh no, Annie had kids? That wasn't supposed to happen..."

Yeah, yeah, one of those. And after one of those conversations in which a recently-returned-to-town friend casually threw out the, "So, what are you guys up to? What's been going on with you lately?" bomb-of-a-question.

Eh? I wanted to say, Do you see these small people following me? They are what has been going on lately, and as far as I can tell, they are what will be going on for the next ten or fifteen or (dear God please help me) twenty years. That's what I'm up to.

I held my tongue and said something vague and more appropriate. One of these days, though...

Anyway, on to the point, which I have now forgotten. Oh, yes, the book. The book that I brought home and which subsequently sat on my desk until another one of those weeks went by, at which point I pulled it out and thought, Maybe this would be more helpful if I read it.

Indeed.

"...godly parenting means treating your children the way God treats us, His children. He lovingly helps us make wise decisions about the realities of life." (p. 21)

The line "treating your children the way God treats us" made me stop and think. God is not a taskmaster. God is not set on vengeance. God is not offended by our failures. God is not demanding our perfection. God is available. God is listening. God is speaking in ways I can understand, over and over again until I get it. God is not interested in the outward appearance, but in the heart. God is understanding, loving, gentle, kind, and merciful. God is truthful, firm, strong, and secure. God is happy: the joy of the Lord is my strength. How can He give me joy if He doesn't have it Himself?

Ready for the obvious translation?

I should not be a taskmaster over my children. I should not be set on vengeance toward myself, for failing, or toward anyone else. I should not be offended my my children's failures. I should not be demanding their perfection. I should be available. I should be listening, aware, watching. I should be speaking in ways that my children can understand, over and over again until they get it. I should not be so interested in how they look and should be completely interested in their little hearts. I should be understanding, loving, gentle, kind, and merciful. I should be truthful, firm, strong, and secure. (Not wavering. Not a pendulum.) I should be happy, too. It's good to be happy.

I say "should be" not to pour guilt on myself or anyone else but to show us all what is possible.
Of course, with man these things are impossible. They are too high, too wide, too deep for my narrowness. But with God... with God...
all things are possible.

I congratulate myself on my skills of observation. It only took me a month to notice that those boxes of toys I keep tripping over - in the sun room, the front room, the bedrooms - are left emphatically alone by my children. Dismally untouched.

I don't want to think about the amount of money represented there, now just sitting, unused. Little plastic pieces and rubber gizmos and wooden blocks -- they've even abandoned the wooden block set! That one hurts because I like the idea of neat little towers of wooden blocks. Maybe if all the wooden blocks weren't lost in the jumble of MacDonald's toys and raggedy baby dolls.

I'm thinking of a drastic change. I'm thinking of just getting rid of the toys. Chunked. Out the window. To the Good Will. I can do this, I think, because I haven't bought most of them. They were gifts or hand-me-downs or maybe thrift store purchases. And they are taking up space while my children play with non-toys. Things like

• my bowls and spoons in the kitchen
• random lengths of ribbon and yarn
• sticks
• gravel
• dirt
• mud
• water
• markers and crayons and play-dough and glue sticks
• bubbles
• sidewalk chalk
• books

Today Mara and Robbie spent an hour standing on little chairs in front of the sink washing dishes for me. An hour. And I actually had to tell Mara it was time to stop... Sure, they got wet. They got water on the floor. I needed to mop anyway; it actually made the job a bit easier to have some sudsy water there.

I'm getting a message from the kiddos and the message is this: hey, Mom, we like to play but we like to play with real stuff. These other toys are boring.

That makes sense. The only toys around that they do pay attention to at all are things like

• trucks and cars and tractors
• train table with trains
• purses and "fancy" dresses
• play kitchen with play kitchen stuff
• a few special baby dolls

They like things that are helpful for playing at real life, because that's what kids are interested in. Real Life. The real life that Mommy and Daddy are part of.
The real life that they're going to grow up and have. That real life. The one that matters. They know this, instinctively. They care. They are playing at it because that's how they learn about it and that's how they prepare for it.

Two days ago Mara spent 30 minutes chopping mushrooms with a butter knife. A few days before that, Mara and Robbie sat at the counter diligently peeling boiled eggs. They were more absorbed in this "work" than they would have been in a movie or any fancy shiny new plastic thing.

So, hmmmm, let me think: I can entertain my daugher with a handful of mushrooms and a butter knife, and she's learning kitchen skills, or I can spend $25 on a toy that will teach her nothing and will break and will lose its appeal before it breaks. You can buy a lot of mushrooms for $25. That's a lot of chopping.
That's a lot of time with my daughter at the kitchen counter, chatting me up while she works away, helping me with dinner, not just playing at real life but actively participating in it.

This is getting to be less and less of a tough decision and more and more of a given. I'll keep you posted.

Images

1. Who needs toys courtesy of Ernst Vikne on Flickr.

So I was thinking about what I mean by Modern Homemaking. I throw the term around, nonchalant, basically because I want to say hey I'm a cool hip young Mama, I can take care of my house and kids and still rock out on a Friday night.
Except.
Except that, sans caffeine, I will most likely be asleep by 9:00 on a Friday night.
Except that I've never really thought of myself as cool or hip, even when there might have been a smidge of validity to it.

These exceptions lead me to conclude that what I think I mean by Modern Homemaking isn't really what I mean at all.
(They also lead me to conclude that I think way too much about things that probably aren't important.)

Things I Am Trying to Say

What am I trying to say, then?

I'm trying to say that the divide between "career woman" and "housewife" is arbitrary, stupid, and well past its expiration date.

I'm trying to say that there is glory, beauty, and honor in caring for your home and those who live in it with you. Even when that caring means picking up dirty socks, washing another load of linens, putting together another last-minute dinner.

I'm trying to say that I do value the daily managing and making of a home, but I don't value many of the standard side items.

I'm trying to say that I'm coming to peace with my own decisions. It's okay that I make a quick dinner so I have time to write an article. It's okay that I don't make dinner at all because I am flowing with this chapter and I want to get it done. It's okay that I close the laptop to do the laundry. And it's okay when the laptop, the laundry, and everything else must wait because I am resting, thinking, being. Or because I have fallen asleep on the couch again...

Homemaking is a term relegated to certain categories: outdated 50s-esque domestic mamas or crafty creative DIY types or simplifying, organizing comfort mavens. None of us fit perfectly into any category, and some of us resist categorization at all. We're all unique, but we feel like by identifying ourselves as someone interesting in "homemaking" we are instantly boxed, labeled, and shelved.

I tend to resent that just a little bit.
Okay, a lot.

Modern homemaking isn't about wearing vintage skirts or knitting scarves or cooking gourmet meals or having children or even having a husband. Wherever you live, with whomever you live, you can either make a home to dwell in or clean a house to sleep in. Those are two different experiences.

Home is important. We need home. We need the atmosphere of comfort, warmth, order, freedom. We need space to relax in, stretch out in. We need space by which we identify ourselves, in which we can be ourselves.

I've never lived alone, so all my talk of home includes, in my mind, the people we share a home with. But that's not even the core of it. Home can exist whether it is for me or for us. And sometimes, depending on the circumstances, you have to create a little home for me within the larger house for all of us. Sometimes that's how life is: not ideal. But you shouldn't wait for ideal.

Modern homemaking doesn't look the same for everybody. I am a stay-at-home Mom and a freelance writer; among my friends and acquaintances are women who are single, single or separated with children, separated without children, living alone, living with parents, living with friends, starting a career, having babies, staying at home with kids, working part-time, working full-time, running a business, working from home... you name it. All sorts of in-between places, roles that aren't clear-cut in a world that likes simple categories.

But all of these women are in the midst of daily making a home.

So my question is this: what is it about making a home that is important to all of us, as different as we are? How are we the same? How are we different? What can we learn from each other, both in terms of inspiration and practical, day-to-day methods? Are we willing to expand our category blinders a bit and see that the world - even the world of something like modern homemaking - is a bigger and more varied place than we knew?
Okay, that was more than one question. I'll narrow it down to one, because this is the one I'd really like to hear your answers to.
When you clean, or cook, or hang a picture, or wash a towel, or paint a wall, or organize the closet, or any of the myriad items that fall under "modern homemaking"...
What are you trying to say?

I've got a little plan. I've coerced some of my friends into writing guest posts for me so we can a few different perspectives. These guest posts will be running for the next several Mondays, the day I normally post some house/home related article. Next Monday will be Marci from Overcoming Busy. Stay tuned!

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Images

1.What, you expect me to use this? courtesy of NicasaurusRex on Flickr.

Oh, joy, the haunting questions of motherhood. If you females didn't have a guilt complex before you had a baby, I bet you got bit by one full-force in the postpartum days. Suddenly everything matters. Everything could be it - the mistake - the one wrong thing you do as a parent that is so wrong it warps your child unalterably.

What should my kids learn, what do I deal with, what is a normal part of childhood, what do I ignore?
What will they just grow out of?
What matters?
What will mess them up for the rest of their lives?
What will they tell their therapist about me?

More Haunting Questions. I'm Feeling Very Haunted Today.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to a kind of parenting style I haven't heard much about. It's not permissive, it's not authoritarian. It's pendulum-swing-style parenting. It works like this: I know, know know know know know, that my children need boundaries, need to respect authority, need to know absolutes. So I set the line and I hold the line. I instruct, I train, I reprove, I discipline, I get exhausted, I feel overwhelmed, I feel guilty.

Am I going overboard?
Am I keeping them from expressing their creativity?
Am I stifling their little souls?
Am I damaging their emotions?
Am I making everything too big of a deal?

Wheee This Is Better Than Disney World

So I hop on the pendulum and swing to the other side... I ignore things. I only deal with "the big stuff." I let it go. I give sweet little phrases meant as admonishment. I ask questions. I just dump choices on their heads. I check their preferences. I follow. They lead. I realize this is wrong. I realize we are falling apart.

I get back on the pendulum and swing to the other side.

And so it goes until we are all dizzy and confused.

This morning I read a verse that, I think, must be new to my Bible. At least I've never noticed it before.

"Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the tablet of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man." (Proverbs 3:3-4)

Let's Get Together, Yeah Yeah Yeah

It's that first part, do you see it?
Mercy and truth. Both of them. Mercy and truth together. Mercy and truth as a pair. Mercy and truth working together.

You see the connection, I'm sure. Truth, the authoritarian side, the black is black and white is white, the walk-the-line parent. Mercy, the empathetic heart, the emotional response, the nurturing, explaining, protecting parent. They're supposed to work together. Really close together. Bound on your neck and written on your heart together.

I'm not sure how I missed that all this time. I'm not sure exactly what that looks like in parenting: how does it become an even, steady gait instead of a dizzying ride back and forth? I think now would be a good time to find out.

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Images

1. Requisite photo courtesy of EdenPictures on Flickr.

We get confused, with our climate control options and antibacterial everything. We think things like dirt is bad, subconsciously maybe, but still strongly enough that we shy away automatically from dirty little fingers or mud puddles.

And we say things like, Oh, kids, c'mon, can't you stay clean for 5 minutes? I know I've said that last one recently. Maybe yesterday...

There's nothing wrong with being clean - by which we mean free from dirt - but there is something wrong with attempting to live and keep our children in a sterile environment. Sure, it's germ-free. It's also fun-free.

"Sylvia thought how all parents wanted an impossible life for their children -- happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending. No plot of any kind. What uninteresting people would result if parents got their way" (1).

The reason children can't seem to stay clean for 5 minutes is because they don't (yet) have that subconscious antipathy toward dirt. They seem to have the opposite. They like the feel of dirt, the squish of mud, the splash of puddles. We need to let them like those things. This is how the explore the world in their tactile, no-nonsense way. What is this? they wonder. So they feel it, touch it, see what their fingers can do with it.

Now we know, most of us, that being outside is good for our children.

"For we are an overwrought generation... and every hour spent in the open is a clear gain, tending to the increase of brain power and bodily vigour, and to the lengthening of life itself. ...perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time... the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air" (2).

So even if we, the Mommies, are not of the outdoors persuasion, we try to get our children out. It's good for them, so we go on walks. We go to the park. Maybe we even grow a few vegetables on the patio. But how much time do we spend trying to make the great big, dirty, muddy, puddle-wonderful world a little bit more like the small, stifling, sterile indoors?

How many times have you just laid in the cool green grass, no blanket between you and the earth?
How many times have you walked around in gloriously bare feet, feeling the textures and temperatures beneath you?

Of course, you the parent need to oversee things. You don't want your kids squishing the dog poo into neat little shapes. But try - try really, really hard - to hold back your own normal, grown-up desire to be clean. Try to squelch the eeeeeew that automatically comes to your lips when your daughter shows you the super-big worm she just found.
Try to give these unconscious explorers time when they can be outside, in the real world, getting real dirt on their hands.

When it's time to come inside, go ahead and break out the antibacterial soap.

"...a love of Nature, implanted so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing pursuits, health, and good humor" (3).

Images

1. Mud is my new best friend courtesy of BionicTeaching on Flickr.

Sources

1. Karen Joy Fowler, quoted in Michael Dirda's Book by Book: Notes on Reading and Life. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2005.
2. Charlotte Mason, Home Education: Training and Education Children Under Nine. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989. Pages 42 and 43.
3. Charlotte Mason, page 73.

Cape optional.

Habit & Routine

Habit and Routine make the daily things that need to be done automatic and easy. No more wearing your mental capacity out on a hundred mundane tasks and decisions. Form a habit, and line your habits up into a routine, and the daily needs are being taken care of on auto-pilot. You can compose poetry in your head while you go through the routine. Habits and routines give you the mental freedom to focus on the bigger decisions, the priorities, without neglecting the daily things that keep life in order. Read the rest of this entry »

We do need to compare, we just need to compare ourselves to the right person. We need to look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. But that's not what I do, most of the time. I look at somebody a little more, oh, down to earth. Somebody not perfect. Somebody I can find fault with.

Two things can happen when we compare ourselves to others. Either we will find somebody who is struggling in the areas in which we are strong, and we will mentally pat ourselves on the back and think something like, "Well I've got nothing to worry about... I'm way ahead of that person..." And we feel self-satisfied and we become prideful and we are headed for a fall.

Or we find somebody who is very strong in the areas in which we struggle, and we mentally berate ourselves and see only our failure and think something like, "Well I'll never even come close to that... I might as well give up..." And we feel discouraged and we become disheartened and we are already falling.

Neither scenario is the way Jesus wants us to live. Comparing ourselves to others is deadly, and when we start extending that bad habit to how we parent, we bring our children into a situation without any good options. This is not of Christ, my dear sisters. This is not freedom. This is not truth. This is not joy.

I have three antidotes to offer, ones I'm learning to apply in my life as I try to drop this comparing habit and start living the way God wants me to live.

1. Quit demanding too little of yourself.

Okay, so I'll just be honest here. I feel best about how I'm doing as a parent after a trip to the mall, or Chuck E. Cheese, or even the grocery store. If I get the privilege of watching another family whose children are clearly out of control, I walk away feeling pretty confident about my own parenting skills. After all, my kid didn't shove that little girl off the slide in the play area. My kid didn't scream and refuse to eat because the pizza had pepperoni on it. My kid didn't grab boxes of Mac'n'Cheese and launch them across the aisle...

But my kids do other things that require my vigilance, attention, and loving discipline. My bad habit of comparing makes me apathetic to those other things.

Colossians 1:10 tells me to "walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work." That's my standard. That's where I need to look and see how I measure up. Am I walking worthy of the Lord who gave me these children? Am I being fruitful in every good work as I raise them? Hmm.

2. Quit following the blind.

You've heard the adage about the blind leading the blind, haven't you? That's what I do when I base my values and decisions on what other Mommies are doing. They may have clear leading from the Holy Spirit, they may have based their decisions on Biblical principles... but I don't know that. And what if they didn't? What if they, like me, are often just stumbling along, looking around, and making random decisions based on what other people are doing? Is that really the foundation I want for the way I raise my children?

No, it isn't. And even if the woman I am watching is following Jesus, what He directs her to do may not be what He directs me to do. God is very personal.

Colossians 2:2-3 tells me that it is in God that I will find "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Colossians 2:8 tells me that I should "beware lest any man spoil [me]... after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." People may not mean to mislead me, but they might anyway. Why would I take chances when I can go to the source of perfect wisdom?

3. Quit feeling inadequate.

It is such a temptation to just wander into the forest of self-pity and stay there for days at a time. I can get lost there so completely that I lose my vision, I lose my joy, I lose the knowledge of who I am in Jesus Christ.
It's the first step we need to avoid, and it usually starts when I start looking around at other women. Then I ask myself impossible questions: "What does she have that I don't? Why is God blessing her finances/work/relationships/ministry and not mine? Why doesn't my house look that good? How does she have it so together? She has so much more. She has better this and that. She has an easier situation. I can never get there..."

I allow the frustration to make me feel inadequate, unable, defeated, and then I just settle into this swamp of selfish self-pity. What a horrible way to spend my precious days!

Colossians 2:10 tells me that I am "complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power." Colossians 3:9-10 tells me that I have "put off the old man with his deeds. And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him..." I never see the complete picture of another Mommy's life; that's why I shouldn't try to compare myself with the part I do see. My vision is imperfect; that's why I look to Jesus, who has perfect vision.

Don't fall into the comparison trap. No one else looks like you because no one else is supposed to.
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This post is linked up with Steady Mom's 30-Minute Blogging Challenge. 24 minutes to write.

I'm not a crafty person, like, at all.

Once I tried to decorate cupcakes for our church's harvest party. They were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, and I had this yellow and orange decorator's gel, and I thought, "How hard can it be to draw a little leaf shape on the top of the cupcake?"
Pretty doowopping difficult, as it turns out, at least for me. The leaves looked like mutilated spider webs, so I just dumped a lot of decorator's sugar over the top and let it be. Sometimes you just need to know what you're not good at...

But then with kids you don't get to just avoid the things you're not good at. Instead, you get challenged and inspired and sometimes you just grit your teeth and make yourself do whatever it is needs to be done for their general welfare, well-being, and development into a semi-normal person. I'm still not sure that "crafty stuff" is necessary for development into a semi-normal person, but I am no authority on things normal. So. Wanting to give my children some chance at a "normal life" (whatever that is) and feeling Mom-guilt upon perusing blogs of people who, apparently, have crafty as their middle names, and (this is the real kicker, I can ignore the other two) seeing how Mara and Robbie light up whenever I pull out things pertaining to artsy endeavors or general craftiness...
I pulled out the pipe cleaners.
And the yarn.
And the scissors.
And the construction paper.
And the (sigh) glue sticks. I hate glue sticks. Glue sticks are supposed to prevent glue messes, but somehow that's never the result for us. Oh well. Fun is worth it!

And we had fun a nd were semi-crafty, at least as crafty as it gets around here.
I made yarn pictures of their names. Zeke didn't get one because he was napping. And because he would have eaten the yarn. And the pipe cleaners. And the glue sticks.
And helped Robbie draw a rocket ship, because last night Daddy told us about rocket ships and rocket science and astronauts and planets and outer space and, most importantly, the FIRE that comes out of the rocket when it takes off from earth...

And helped Mara make a picture of balloons: YARN balloons! Who knew there was such a thing? I did not until we started making them. Watch out, crafty Mamas, we're starting to get creative over here!

And then we made the fun chains of pipe cleaners and had rousing games of "make the pipe cleaners hisssss and squirm like snakes" and "wave the chains of pipe cleaners around while jumping and singing songs" before hanging them on the windows. Who needs curtains when you have pipe cleaners?

All this craftiness is wearing me out. I need to go bake something and then NOT decorate it.

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I linked this post to Se7en's Fabulous Friday Fun #10! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It is 8:30 on a Saturday night and I am about to gorge myself on good chocolate and books. I am full of resolution. I am full of cheer. I am alone with the hot running water, in a cocoon the color of the shower curtain. My library loot is stacked beside me on the handmade, colored "Mara HEARTS Daddy" step stool. A pile of Ghirardellis on the ledge of the tub, next to my bottle of cold water.

Joe's out snowboarding, the 3-under-3 are sleeping, and tonight I'm kicking it Mommy-style. Mommy after 3 days of no-routines, messy-house, movie-overload, good-times chaos. Mommy after 3 days of feeling slightly guilty that she has trouble going with the flow and that
she kind of resents the extra work that results from all this fun. Read the rest of this entry »