Many writers I admire often put together posts or columns that contain a hodgepodge of ideas. Usually I come up with a main idea for this space but I fear my life has been so scattered lately that I am fresh out of main ideas. So I am putting together this editorial and calling it Huzaren Sla after one of my favorite Dutch salads that consists of bits and pieces of meat, fruit, eggs and garden vegetables designed to travel well. The story behind this (you knew there had to be a story, right?) was that Huzaren Sla (salad) originated in the small garrison towns where the Hussars (mounted soldiers) were stationed. But because of the poor quality of the food in the barracks, the average Hussar was anxious to get one of the kitchen maids as a girlfriend — preferably one that served a rich family. After the familys dinner, the Hussar went over to his girlfriends kitchen to charm her into making him a salad out of the leftovers. Here is hoping you find something useful in the following mix of thoughts that I have hastily gathered up from my leftover musings.

• In Tabletalk (my daily devotional book) the current topic is a study of the Heidelberg Catechism. This Catechism contains questions about how the knowledge of doctrine might help us in our everyday lives. Last week the question of how the knowledge of creation and providence help us was discussed. The point was made that this knowledge gives us patience in our trials. “A patient response to suffering does not deny pain’s severity or the difficulty of seeing how the Lord is working for our good in some cases. Instead, patient sufferers acknowledge their troubles honestly before God. They realize that tragedy is not good in and of itself but that God uses it for good. And they continue to believe He is praiseworthy, even when they find it hard to worship Him. “ Furthermore we are told to give thanks in all circumstances. That means we have to believe that God sovereignly decreed those very circumstances, otherwise, how could we thank Him?

• “If the events and creaturely decisions that result in our good occur because God ordained they would occur, we can give Him all the praise and glory . Since the Lord’s sovereign decree is the foundation for everything that ever happens, we can be confident of God’s good purposes as He works all things according to His will (Eph. 1:11)”

• In our homeschool lessons with my middle son, we are reading through Modern Times: The World from the 20s to the 90s by Paul Johnson. This tome weighs in at a hefty 870 pages. We are currently about a third of the way through. As a child I scavenged the local rummage sales to find used history textbooks and I would read them cover to cover. Back then textbooks were still clothed in literary style and were the greatest stories instead of the mash up of facts and splashy eye catching twaddle of many textbooks today. I am really enjoying reading about what really went on in the world during this epoch of history covering the world wars and beyond. As I mentioned in last month’s editorial, I am covering this same period of American History with my youngest son in a history co-op I am teaching for first through third graders. This has given me the opportunity to study it in great depth with my nearly 16 year old son and in a distilled form using living history books with my 9 year old. It is always such a delight to be able to learn right alongside my children. My middle son has so often heard me say as I read Johnson aloud, “Wow, I never knew that!” Here is one choice bit from our reading. “The tragedy of interwar China illustrates the principle that when legitimacy yields to force and moral absolutes to relativism, a great darkness descends and angels become indistinguishable from devils.” (p. 201). This section on the gangs controlling China in the time of Mao and communist warlords read like the script of a gangster movie. It described a period of China history that opens one’s eyes to a world so very foreign to our American sensibilities. But that period was a cake walk compared to the Russian Revolution under Lenin and Stalin. Their dictatorship was so complete that every area of life was under their despotic control, and the intelligentsia of the west swallowed it hook line and sinker seeing as the new utopia. History is a cautionary tale.

• Recently I had a visit from my sister and one of her daughters, a niece who is the same age as my daughter. We have always been close. This niece is in her third year at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. Two years ago I visited her there and surmised this must be the college where all the sixties radicals and hippies send their children. I was appalled at the lack of responsibility, the names of the classes my niece was taking and the emphasis on saving the planet vs. saving one’s soul. After nearly three years at the college her re-education is nearly complete. As we shared a carmelicious brownie at the Blue Ribbon Café in Soddy-Daisy, she informed me she has no need for any spiritual life, at least not one of the orthodox kind.

  She is planning a summer at a Sufi Muslim organic farm called the Abode of the Message. Her boyfriend is a trust fund baby from the D.C. area. His mom worked for the EPA under Carol Browner in the Clinton administration. He now travels all over the world during his breaks rock climbing. Providentially he was in the Chattanooga area the week she was visiting me so we were able to share our family dinner with this supremely self-confident young man who knows exactly how things should be ordered.

  His senior thesis is on how the commonly accepted practice of completing one’s education, then getting a job, finding a wife and settling into marriage and children is all wrong. He does not believe in marriage. He thinks the way men have lived their lives in the western tradition is oppressive, especially to the disadvantaged. Of course he thinks one should have all the benefits of marriage without any of the responsibility and he is practicing this conviction with my niece.

  My husband put it well. “He is a cad.”

  I shudder for what these colleges are doing to the next generation. I can not help but think we must do all we can with God’s grace to equip our children to have a firm understanding of what they believe so that they will be able to strike at the strongholds of the enemy which has raised such towering edifices in the culture. My heart breaks for my niece who is so very lost and does not even recognize it. Hopefully we will stay in touch and God’s truth will be evident at some time in the future to her. That is my prayer.

• I posted on Facebook that I was feeling somewhat smug about the fact that I did not succumb to the Hunger Games books. I must confess that my daughter got me hooked on another wildly popular series which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty. So I have been wary of falling into another trap of sensational fiction even though I am tempted to read just the first book to see what all the fuss is about. I have, however, read a lot about the books, which is my mind is almost as enjoyable as reading the books. My take is that there has to be a better way to encourage our young people with noble and high-minded ideas than a narrative about kids killing kids. I understand the story is well crafted and has much to teach about totalitarian states and reality media. But it reminds me of a short story I was forced to read in high school, The Most Dangerous Game, about a man who slowly realizes that the hunter he just met has decided to hunt the most elusive and cunning of prey: him. I still feel the horror of that realization. The Hunger Games sounds very manipulative to me with impossible situation ethics in the vein of those popular lifeboat scenarios in high school social studies class. You know the one where you have only so much room in the lifeboat and you have to decide which person in the group is worthy of a spot and which is not. Horrid stuff which often forces one to jettison God’s truth in favor of pragmatics. That is never a good idea.

I am thinking there may be a theme in all of these bits and pieces of my Dutch salad of an editorial after all. Theology matters. What you believe or refuse to believe plays out in your actions. Your specific beliefs about God affect how you respond to circumstances in your life, whether or not you can offer heartfelt thanks, knowing that hard thing is from the hand of a loving Father God. A through study of history shows what happens when man rejects God and opens himself up to false doctrines. When universities no longer teach God’s truths, our young people will come up with a new truth, one that is more convenient, more earth friendly but will lead to a dangerous place where there is no sure foundation. When we are willing to accept premises in what we read that give no place to God and his commandments, we think we have to make impossible choices, and excuse one evil to prevent a worse evil. Let us arm ourselves and our children with God’s truth so that in the evil day, they can raise that standard with great confidence.

—JMT

“Let him (the student), on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age.” Vol. 1 p 281.

I fear that our students may be somewhat spoiled by fast paced lessons in multi-media format. To “linger pleasantly” is a foreign idea and has met with some resistance in my early elementary aged students. But I forge on nonetheless and cheerfully ignore their protestations!

My middle son is also studying the same period of history and I am listening to his high school lectures on CD. A recent one was on Theodore Roosevelt. So I have been immersed in his life. I have read or skimmed at least 4 books on him in the past weeks.

That may be why I was so taken last month with Downton Abbey as it too fit right into this period of history, at least that is what I tell myself in an attempt to redeem the hours spent watching and reading about this fabulous period drama!

But I digress — back to T.R.What impresses me about Theodore Roosevelt was his determination to be the best he could be despite some limitations.

As a boy he was thin, asthmatic, weak but his father had a talk with him that went like this. Keep in mind his father was a very strong Christian of the Dutch reformed tradition.

“ ‘Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body. And without the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body but I know you will do it.’

“His mother later remembered his son’s reaction was the half grin, half snarl which later became world famous. Jerking his head back, Teedie set his jaw and replied, ‘I’ll make my body. By heaven I will.’ ” (page 30 of Carry A Big Stick by George Grant)

God gives all of us some limitations such as physical strength, size, health, intellect money, time, talents.

We can do our best to compensate for limitations. We can put ourselves on any number of self-improvement programs. Many times we can improve, we can work on our weaknesses. But sometimes our weaknesses remain and in that is another lesson.

For He also gives us His grace and lets us know that He has a plan for our lives. What always encourages me is that His plan takes into account our limitations. The fact that we can simply not do some things is no surprise to God. He can give us the means to improve some things about ourselves – Teddy’s dad built him a little gymnasium off his bedroom on an enclosed patio and encouraged him to get stronger. He also learned judo and became a college champion in boxing. This ability stood him in good stead as an adult when he was attacked by hired goons. As a young state legislator he had the audacity to try to institute reforms to break the political machine in Albany. His ability to fight off his attackers made him a very popular figure. After a family tragedy, he went out West to make a man out of himself in the wilds of God’s creation where he felt right at home due to his childhood interest in the natural world. Here he was able to live out his ideal of the strenuous life.

Here is a quote from the Kingsmeadow Modernity Curriculum lecture series:

“He had asthma the rest of his life, yet while campaigning in Milwaukee, an assassin shot him in the chest at point blank range. It knocked Teddy over, but he fought off his handlers and the police escort around him and said, “Bring that man to me.” So they brought this trembling guy to him, the smoking gun still on the ground, and Roosevelt said, “Is that really your best shot?” Then they were ready to take Teddy to the hospital, but he insisted on making his speech first. So he went in and with a rasping voice told his audience that he’d just been shot. They thought he was kidding until they saw the blood begin to expand. His speech notes were pierced with the bullet hole. His glasses were broken, but he spoke for an hour and a half. Then he went to the doctor where the physician said he’d never seen a human specimen quite like that. He had worked so hard all his life to overcome his natural limitations.”

God has a place for you in building His kingdom here on earth and He already knows limitations. Furthermore He knows how all this will fit into His plan for getting us where He wants us to be.

His Word assures us of His sovereignty in the details: the strengths and the weaknesses.

Jer. 29:11- 14 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

II Cor. 12:9 – 11 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Psalm 139:16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.

Rom. 5:3-6 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Eph. 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

It is so easy to let the limitations in our lives be a constant source of frustration. Of course we should try to change or improve what we are able, with God’s help. But take heart for He knows our frame, all our circumstances and will weave it all together in a tapestry for His glory.

I encourage you all to take the time to linger pleasantly in your lessons. There is so much that we and our children have to learn.

—JMT

Why does it make me feel inadequate?

Ann’s posts are full of impossibly beautiful writing, including achingly poignant descriptions. Ann wears her heart for Jesus on her sleeve and there is lots of authentic bleeding of emotions. Notice I said authentic. Even in my most jaded times, I recognize that Ann Voskamp is the real deal. What she writes is what she is. And so everyday I open her post in my inbox and I am momentarily immersed in the life of a woman who so loves the Lord so much that it hurts.Ann is a homeschool mom living in Canada on a farm with her husband and six children. She has known much adversity in her life and she writes about her struggles, her homeschool life, their farm, her marriage, her family, on a blog called Holy Experience. Ann is also the author of A Child’s Geography curriculum.

Perhaps we are not all geared to have such an emotional relationship with God. Some of us may be bent in that direction. I know other women who have written about their relationship with Christ in a similar fashion. I know it is my problem, but it can make me feel like I am missing out, that I am cold-hearted, that I do not care about the Lord in the same way. Why is there no giddiness? Why no consistent heart yearnings for intimacy with Him?

That said, I am convinced that, regardless of our “bent,” we all should cultivate this attitude of gratitude. I want my children to be appreciative of the Lord’s graciousness in their lives. I know I must model this in mine so last year I tried to keep a gratitude journal. After one year, I had about four entries. What does that pitiful effort say about me? Probably that I am too busy and otherwise occupied to take time to be grateful or remember God’s abundant graces.

Shortly after the first of the year I read Ann’s challenge for 2012. She called it her “joy dare.” This time she dared her readers to join her in the January challenge to start counting 1,000 gifts in 2012. Instead of just numbering random gifts, she made suggestions for three things to look for each day of the month. I decided to give it one more shot. The results have been rather surprising. It has made each day a sort of treasure hunt for God’s grace. It is the 21st of the month as I write this and so far, I have kept it up fairly well. Of course, God’s grace is all around us. Our days are full of His mercy. But there is something about starting the day with the idea of looking for very specific evidences of his gifts to us, which has produced much delight. Let me share some samples with you.

On the eighth of the month, the prompt was: a light that caught me, a reflection that surprised me, a shadow that fell lovely. I read this in the morning and tried to find these things throughout the day. I have never seen such a gray cheerless day as that one, so I switched up Day 8 with day 9. The next day also dawned dark and dreary but at the end of the afternoon, the sun came shining through the rain and made the dogwood tree in the front yard look as if it were sparkling with tiny diamonds.

I stopped our lessons and pointed out the beauty in front of us to my 9 year old. He and I took a quiet moment to revel in the loveliness before us. Then I ran out to the back yard and sure enough, there was a spectacular rainbow, the reminder of God’s covenant with man.

On the nineteenth of the month, one of the prompts was a grace that might never have been. We were still trying to finish our lessons, but I noticed the sunset was creating an especially gorgeous sky out the window. “Hurry up and put on your shoes, I told my son. We have to take a walk.” Despite his objections, we bundled up and headed into the woods behind our house at twilight time. The trees were silhouetted in the waning light behind us. It was a short walk but infused much loveliness into our day, and we had almost missed it.

I must admit that my cynical self sometimes reads my journal and thinks some of the graces recorded are a bit contrived. But no matter. I am becoming aware each day of specific things for which I can be and am grateful.

Thank you, Ann Voskamp, for writing your beautiful thoughts and for inspiring this busy, often too-practical mom to recognize God’s grace all around me in a thousand gifts and more.

—JMT

Last month I had the privilege of talking with Dr. Grant about that vision and had to admit, I seemed to be in a season of disillusionment. Oh, I still listened to and was inspired by all the getting started with homeschooling talks that are so popular this time of year. It is not that I have any regrets but I no longer am starry eyed about how it all will turn out. Dr. Grant admitted that he too was not sure about his children at certain points in their life before they were adults. But the point he made was we really do not know what the future will hold for us or for our children. In the meanwhile we are to continue faithful to our calling as homeschool parents.At this point in my life, we have graduated our oldest from homeschool, and, Lord willing, will have another graduate this coming year. In addition we have another in high school and our youngest is in elementary school. On bad days I joke to myself that I even though I have made glaring mistakes with my teenagers, I still have hopes of my youngest emerging from my parenting relatively unscathed!

But, as I said, that is on my bad days. When I am thinking clearly and am in more of a spiritual balance (!) I can recognize much grace and much delight in all the years I have homeschooled. I have the fondest memories of early homeschooling, of amazing field trips, of entertaining talent shows, of countless mornings and afternoons just curled up on the couch with my children around me listening to me read aloud from many many living books. Homeschooling has given me the opportunity to teach my children as individuals, to tailor their lesson offerings to what they needed. I used the same curriculum through the years with all four of my children and each one took something different away from it. One child drank in all the beauty and creativity of the arts, another child’s imagination was fed by all the classic tales of fantasy, still another was able to keep up with his academic work even though he had huge difficulties reading, as I read everything aloud to him and we delighted together in the books that my older children read on their own without me. And now my youngest looks at me wide eyed at the antics of the Wilder children in Farmer Boy, the third time reading it aloud for me, but it is all new to him and we are both laughing and being amazed together at the hard work, huge quantities of food and industriousness of farm life.

I can honestly say I am looking forward to another year of homeschooling. I love that I can tell my oldest son what he needs to graduate and he can on his own, do the necessary work in a mixture of self study courses and outside classes. I love that I am still reading quite a bit aloud to my middle son, that I can choose books that I love to read, that I am looking forward to reading along with him. Books on theology, on worldview, on culture along with classics that I never got around to reading myself. And even though it is the fourth go round on teaching year three, I love that I can share those beloved books scheduled for this year with yet another child who will look at me with wonder.

But one of the biggest benefits of our homeschooling journey has been that I have become a lifetime learner. Earlier this month, I visited my daughter who is living and going to school in NYC. Before my trip I did lots of research on self guided walking tours. I am never happier than when I can visit a city and know all the stories behind the buildings, recognize the architecture and realize the life that was happening at the time that building was built. I get such a thrill looking at a street or a walkway and knowing that an artist, writer, musician, etc whose work has delighted me has walked those same streets, lived in that very building. So I purchased several books, checked out others from the library, and arrived in the city armed with a list of places I wanted to visit and guided walks for nearly every area of the city. The first day I decided to try to make an early morning gallery talk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Frans Hals. Because he is a Dutch painter, I felt an affinity with him. The talk did not disappoint. I left with a new understanding of life in the Netherlands, of the reformation, of the value of art in the common life. The rest of my week was filled with visits to other historic museums, libraries, churches and sites where certain events occurred. I had my trusty guidebook with me at all times. When my daughter accompanied me, she put up with my “obsession” as she called it, with the history of the city. I know it was humiliating for her to be with such an obvious tourist!

I do believe my years of reading about history, art, literature and so much more has whetted my appetite to continue to learn when the opportunity presents itself. For that I am so very thankful. I did not know or expect that when I started homeschooling my children. My goal was for my children to be lifetime learners, to be self-directed, responsible, freedom loving adults. The thing is that we really can not dictate what our children will be like as they get older. It is encouraging to see many of those traits in my children. Yet, we are all unfinished works, even this mom who is on the other side of 50, has so very much to learn. The upside is that our God is forming us daily into the image of Christ just as He is forming our children. We are not perfect, we make lots of mistakes, and yet, we press on. We may not always be the best example to our children. Some days it seems I have to do a lot of apologizing to my children. But instead of making me feel weaker, I know that it is the necessary burning off of all that dross. As my children get older, they are forgiving of me in a more understanding way. For this I am grateful.

It is good to have vision, to see in your children how God might use them in the building of His kingdom. I just need to be reminded that how that vision will be filled in is not for me to control.

And so another year begins. May your homeschool year be full of grace, rich in delight and grounded in His truths,

—JMT

Yet whispers of defeat were being voiced. “I’m so tired of homeschooling,” says one. In another sigh you hear this: “How hard is it to put your children in school after being homeschooled?” OK, I know you don’t exactly hear whispers when you are just reading email postings, but I am certain some of us may be hearing some discouraging words, perhaps just in our own mind, possibly even from well-meaning friends and family members. Hopefully you have started the year with a certain measure of excitement, maybe mixed with a modicum of trepidation, most likely with some definite expectations of the new year. Of course you were aware that not every day will go as planned, not every curriculum choice will be a perfect fit.

You feel weary after a day in which you may feel like you are doing battle with your children, pitting your will against theirs. Those whispers may be suggesting that today’s labor is a mistake, that you do not know what you are doing, that you were not adequately trained for homeschooling.

But let me assure you, you are “well doing.”

If you have those days where you feel like you are flagging, consider this.Is it your curriculum? Could you make some changes? You can always borrow something to try it out and you can always sell what does not work well for you.

Is there ill discipline among the children? Those need to be dealt with first, gently but firmly.

Are you getting enough sleep? A tired mom is often an irritated mom.

Are you tending to your devotional life? A dry cistern cannot water anyone.

Why did you decide to homeschool? Was it a calling?

An article by Reb Bradley, “Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling,” has recently been re-posted by Josh Harris and has been making the rounds on Facebook and other venues. It suggests some blind spots in homeschooling.

Actually the points made in this article would be fodder for a whole other column. But this is one of my favorite bits.

One of the reasons parents homeschool is because they want to accomplish something good in their children. Success in homeschooling requires that academic, moral and spiritual goals be set. It is only natural for parents to have high hopes and dreams for their children. However, when we begin to see our children as a reflection or validation of us, we become the center of our dreams, and the children become our source of significance. When that happens in our home it affects the way we relate with our children, and subtly breaks down relationship.

Of course we want to accomplish something good in our children. We want to give them a sound academic education but we want to do so much more than that. We want to educate our children in light of God’s truths.

We want all they learn to be seen through the grid of true truth as Francis Schaeffer was wont to say. We want our children to know they are in God’s hands, that all of history is in God’s hands. That the world about them is created by Him for His glory. That the beauty we see in literature, the arts, in nature study is beautiful because we are creative beings with a soul. He made us to know and glorify Him and the world we see and learn about confirms that. God calls each one of us to be faithful to the task of rearing our children. If He has called us to homeschool our children, then we are doing so as a matter of obedience.

But it is not a joyless, plodding obedience of drudgery. Nor is it merely a discharge of a duty. We GET to be with our children, we know them in a way we would not know them if they were in a regular school classroom seven or more hours a day (plus that hour in the yellow bus). We get to learn alongside them. We have the privilege of seeing sparks of delight, of nurturing their gifts, of helping them over the rough patches. We have the confidence that He who called us is faithful.

A verse I turn to again and again is Galatians 6:9. Here it is in the KJV “And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

One of my favorite ways to study the Bible is using a Strong’s Concordance with the Hebrew and Greek dictionaries. I do not do this often enough but it is always amazing to me what you see when you go back to the Greek and “unpack” just one verse. Here is the verse unpacked with the literal meaning in parenthesis.

And let us not be weary (lack courage, lose heart, be faint hearted, to fail in heart, to faint) in well (right, beautiful, valuable, virtuous, good, honest, meet) doing, for in due (the season divinely appointed for the reaping) season (the set or proper time) we shall reap (harvest) if we faint not (relax, dissolve, melt, put off and so to enfeeble).

What does that tell me? It is a friend who comes along beside me, throws an arm over my shoulder and says, “We can do this; let us not be faint hearted; what we are doing is a beautiful thing. We may not be reaping now all that we have planted, but in His time we will harvest if we don’t melt when it gets a bit hot.”

For additional encouragement, I asked a mom who graduated her last child a year or so ago to share her perspective. Most of us are still in the trenches, so to speak. Sometimes it is nice to hear from someone on the other side who finished well.

“Homeschooling was a long but worthwhile journey for our family. One of our greatest trials came early in our homeschool journey. We became caregivers for my dad after my mother became sick suddenly and died within four months. We took care of my father for the next 2 1/2 years who had lost both legs and was not mobile without help. During this period of our life we had to rethink how we homeschooled our children. Our schedule was no longer our own. For our family, homeschooling became a series of life lessons, not always found in a book. Homeschooling taught our children the discipline of education without the negative peer pressure. We learned to stay surrendered to God’s will. The awesome journey put before us was the key to perseverance in our homeschool journey. The blessings over the 16 years of homeschooling outweighed all of the trials we faced along our journey. When things got tough, I always remembered what one of my college professors wrote on the board during exam week: ‘THIS TOO SHALL PASS!’ Yes, it did, and we are stronger because of the journey God called us to.”

As we homeschool we are in a season of much busyness, lots of running around, schedules to follow, classes to attend, not to mention all that goes with life as a family. It is easy to lose sight of what we are doing and why. Are you fainting?

Be refreshed in God’s Word and by His people.

This month we are starting what I hope will be a regular column, “Where are they now?” (Page 14) in which we hear from a homeschool graduate about how homeschooling prepared her for life.

If you know of a graduate that would like to contribute to this column, please let me know. I firmly believe that God is building His kingdom through faithful families that are training up their children through home education.

—JMT

I was reading to my son in The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets about how noisy our world is. The author, Suzanne Clark, says we must learn quiet. Our culture is at war with quiet. Mrs. Clark quotes from C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters in which Screwtape boasts that he will “make the whole universe a noise … . The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end.”

Mrs. Clark goes on, “Our Creator asks us to ‘be still and know that I am God’. . . If we cultivate the art of inner quiet and develop habits to nurture the mind’s green fields, we will hear the melodies of heaven. … Stillness needs a larger room than most of us give it.” How do we create this larger room? “By making decisions to read a good book instead of watching TV or to take a walk instead of play a video game, you are enlarging this room. Writing poetry will add floor space and a skylight.”

OK, OK, I am not saying we all should be writing poetry. But some of us could and others of us can at least find that mind space if we made different choices.

In my devotions in Tabletalk magazine, the topic this month is Sabbath rest. People have differing views of the Sabbath and how it is to be kept. R.C. Sproul Jr. sums it up well when he says, “Rest isn’t just ceasing from working, it is also ceasing from worrying. It’s not easy. Indeed in a manner of speaking, rest, especially ceasing from worry, is hard work. It takes discipline and fortitude to let go of all that has us worried.” What a conundrum, now we have to work at resting! But isn’t that the way it always is. Something inside us urges us to war against what we are called to. God has to drag us kicking and screaming to the place where he will bless us. Dr. Sproul goes on to explain that when we rest in the finished work of Christ, we are a joyful Sabbath keeper.

But the most interesting treatment of the whole idea of solitude and being alone with one’s thoughts came from a blog post of a lecture given by William Deresiewicz to the plebe class at West Point in October 2010. The title is “Solitude and Leadership” and it can be found on his website billderesiewicz. com, or at the American Scholar website. His address put an emphasis on the importance of leaning how to be alone with your thoughts and how this ability is essential for leadership. Many of us pride ourselves on our ability to multitask. We may even think less of people who cannot listen to several conversations at once while simultaneously glancing at e-mail and Facebook. Dr. Deresiewicz cites research suggesting that the more you multitask, the worse you are at it. “Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it … in short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that is bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.”

Ouch, he just zinged our entire plugged in culture. He also gave my children some not-so-much needed ammunition to use against their mom. I am always trying to do at least two things at one time. I attempt to redeem the time watching guilty pleasure TV/DVDs by clipping coupons as I watch. Inevitably, I miss the story line on the screen and have to either ask what happened or, worse yet, rewind and watch again — all in all, very nonproductive. Dr. D gives examples of well-known writers who concentrated and produced something of real worth. James Joyce wrote Ulysses at the rate of 100 words each day for seven years. T.S. Elliot wrote 150 pages of poetry over the course of a 25-year career — which works out to half a page each month. All of this required concentration which Dr. D. defines as “gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input.” That is a pleasing image, to gather oneself into one place, to be all there where we are, it is the opposite of that scattered feeling which so often pervades my everyday existence.

But Dr. D. is not finished with us.

“Here is the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even the New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now — older people as well as younger people— you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice.”

But how do we hear our own voice? Dr. D. recommends reading books and then thinking about what you are reading, especially reading those books that are obviously the result of the author’s solitude and attempt to think for himself.

The last form of solitude Dr. D. recommends is surprising. It is the deep friendship of intimate conversation. It is not “skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while hanging out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying.” I fear far too many of our older students can relate to this image but even we homeschool moms are guilty of dabbling in friendship rather than investing in it. With intimate friendships you can think out loud, which takes time and patience on both your and your listener’s part. “Our new electronic world has disrupted it (friendships) just as violently. Instead of having one or two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three hours at a time, we have 958 ‘friends’ that we never actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship, this is distraction.”

Again, ouch; that hurts because it is so true. What are we to do? One thing that comes to mind is to welcome those times when we are alone, perhaps driving somewhere, perhaps waiting for someone. Decide at those times NOT to listen to the radio, iPod or chat or text on the phone. Use those times to muse, to think, to ponder, to pray. Have an intentional reading list that you slowly plow through with time for thinking about what you are reading. If you fall behind in the newspaper, e-mail or other tyrannies of the urgent, so be it. And, of course, spend time with real friends talking about important things — how to love your husband and children, how to walk with God, how to be faithful to what He has called you.

I mentioned that the idea of rest and solitude was also mentioned at the Charlotte Mason conference, where it was referred to as masterly inactivity. Cindy Rollins does an excellent job of applying that principle in her article on Page 13.

I hope to see many of you at the curriculum fair/Expo on July 22 and 23. Please stop by the CSTHEA table and say hello and pick up any back issues of the Esprit that you have missed. I cannot stress enough the importance of helping us get the word out about the Expo (see fliers that are included on Page 7 and in the expo brochure, mailed separately) and inviting your friends as well as coming yourself. It promises to be another wonderful Expo thanks to the hard work of our many volunteers. See how you can plug in on Page 3. Remember you will need to resubscribe to Esprit this month to keep in coming to your mailbox. There’s a discount for “re-upping” at the event.

Have a rest-full summer. It is possible.

—JMT

Every time I read an article on being a certain kind of a mom I think if only I was that kind of a mom, then my children would be really outstanding. I’ve read accounts of families who homeschool in an RV on the road visiting all those fabulous historical sites. Now that is a sure fire way to rear children who love to learn, who become history buffs and children who love being with their family to boot. I’ve read about families who make it a practice of assigning world news topics to family members every day at the dinner table, some even invite local or visiting authors, journalists, statesmen, etc. to the family home on a regular basis to stimulate conversation with their children. Now those children definitely would grow up to be world changers.

But family lifestyle aside, how we parent is even more discussed than the circumstances in which we parent.

It seems as if there are cultural winds blowing which swing from encouraging strict, no-compromise parenting to a style that encourages a mom to be her children’s BFF. What is a mom to do?A few months back, an article in the Wall Street Journal and subsequent articles, interviews and even a book put the spotlight on Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale, who claimed to be a “tiger mom.” By her description this is a mom who forbids many common outside activities to encourage her children to be outstanding academically and musically. You can read the article titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” on the WSJ website. You might be interested to know that Mrs. Chua’s elder daughter played at Carnegie Hall at age 14.

That article resulted in a huge response. It evidently hit a collective nerve resulting in almost 6000 reader responses from hearty “you go girl!” comments to gasps of horror at Mrs. Chua’s abusive methods. (The piano practicing knockdown drag out bit is especially shocking.)

Another mom, Ayelet Waldman, wrote a response to Mrs. Chua, calling herself the guilty, ambivalent, preoccupied mom. Her style of parenting was very relaxed but still calling the child to be responsible.

A mom I greatly admire, Wendi Capehart, over at heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot. com did not wholeheartedly endorse Mrs. Chua’s methods but she did rightly point out the difference in western style parenting vs. tiger mom in these comments.

“We westerners tend to worry too much, way too much, about self-esteem. We, as a culture, do value sports more than academics. We do worry too much about being our kids’ friends than their parents (as a culture). We are too easy on our kids, and it’s not good for them. We praise over every little thing, and by doing so, we cheapen our praise so it becomes meaningless to our kids and it’s counterproductive.”

Is there a formula for raising children who are successful, outstanding, superior children? And perhaps the question we should be asking is what is your definition of successful or outstanding?

If your definition has something to do with academic excellence and getting into an ivy league college, then perhaps Mrs. Chua has hit upon the right formula.

What does Scripture say about success? What is a Christian understanding of what God has called us to as moms?

(Now here is the part of my column where I tell you what we all already know but somehow need to be reminded of, me especially.)

Successful children in God’s eyes are those who are ready to take their place in God’s kingdom work here on earth. They know how to work hard, how to communicate with understanding, how to articulate their beliefs, how to put others needs before their own. They know how to study God’s Word and they depend on God daily in prayer. No matter what they chose as a vocation, they understand the relationship of what they do to who they are in Christ.

God calls moms to be faithful, to be in a right relationship with Him so we may know the way to walk. There is no magic formula to this motherhood, no 10 steps or even 100 steps. It is not a recipe of specific ingredients we need but it is a relationship, a daily looking to Him in prayer and in His Word so that we can hear the still small voice saying, this is the way, walk in it. Each of our children is an individual soul with differing needs. One child may need extra hugs, another might need extra one-on-one time. Still another may need more discipline than the average child, while others need more responsibility. Furthermore, the needs of our children change from year to year, even day to day. How is a mom to know where to put her efforts, how to divide her limited time? Our only hope is in Christ and our relationship with Him. Each day we can start by offering up ourselves and our children to God in prayer. Ask Him how we can love our children that day. He will make our paths clear.

In this issue is an especially long list of activities. Please note that this is a double issue and that you will not receive a separate June issue. Given that this is summer, most folks have more free time, at least that is the idea! There are some great things to do with your children in this area. Be sure to make some memories with your family this summer. Try something new. Plan an outing with another mom. We are all in this together. Happy Mother’s Day to each one of you!

—JMT

Later that week, we came across a word I was not sure how to pronounce. Ague. My first thought was to find my iPod and enter it into Google. But it was not handy so I had to think a minute for an alternative. Then it hit me. I was in a room full of books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias and the like, and I was bereft of my iPod. What is wrong with me that I no longer think, “Hey, I can just look that up in a real live dictionary?”

Alas, we all seem to be suffering from an overdependence on our high-tech devices and have somehow started to eschew the tried and true resources that have stood us in good stead not that long ago. But that is not the worst of it. I fear we have replaced so much that is real with what is just a bunch of pixels.OK, I am not going to urge us to go backwards, to not use very useful technologies. But I would like us to consider how we should try to live real life as much as possible, intentionally infusing real things into our life as opposed to virtual things.

In our homeschools, this suggestion becomes especially important. We now have e-readers, google books, e-books and other ways to read. Yet, can you cuddle with a young child over a computer screen? Can you hear the satisfying sound of pages turning as you work your way through a book on an e-reader? Never mind, I am sure that some of them do provide page turning sound effects! But you get my point.

Instead of visiting an actual art museum, you can now take a virtual tour of any number of galleries all over the world.

In a science class you can do a virtual dissection or watch an experiment. It is so neat and clean, no mess to clean up!

For history you can watch endless videos on the topic at hand. You can watch other homeschool moms re-enact lessons with their children. You can download so many lesson plans, lapbook patterns and other formats of gathering data.

For music appreciation, you can watch Youtube clips of the finest orchestras performing various musical selections.

Nature study can be a fabulous slide show of various wildflowers native to your area.

Geography lessons can be experienced via high production virtual tours of nearly any important city in the world.

And all of this can be enjoyed from the comfort of your home office or video screen.

Of course I know we could not possibly travel to all the places that we would like to go to, in order to see everything that relates to our studies firsthand. We have limits of time, resources and transportation.

My plea is not to turn one’s back on the wonderful technology that exists. I believe that God has given us these devices to expand our and therefore our children’s understanding and knowledge in many areas

That said, I do fear that the education we provide might tend to be a mile wide but an inch deep. Our resources, thanks to the World Wide Web, are virtually limitless. There is so much that we could present to the eyes and ears of our children.

It takes a little more effort to use real resources but I would like to encourage you to consider how not to totally neglect these.

We could actually go to an art museum and look at real paintings. We could go to a nature center or arboretum and look at live trees and flowers. We can go on a field trip and visit a battlefield. We can collect natural materials and create items to use, admire and enjoy. We can attend live plays and concerts. Nothing compares with the smell of a field of wildflowers after a light spring rain, the feel of cold cast iron as you touch the black barrel of a real cannon in the battlefield, or the sound your canoe paddle makes as you lift it out the creek you are exploring with your kids.

Please forgive me if I am stating the obvious. Remember I am the one who forgot the existence of dictionaries on the shelves!

I might also mention that we might consider picking up the phone instead of facebook messaging or chatting to offer strength or encouragement. That old-fashioned sound of a human voice still touches people in a way that a Tweet never will.

Lastly, we can always gather our children around us on the sofa or in the comfy chair, pull out a beautifully bound children’s classic and read aloud. Admittedly this is very low tech but very highly satisfying.

In our home, we are sadly lacking in real activities done as a family. I am resolved to amend this. Recently we purchased a family membership at the Nature Center and I am intending to force everyone, lovingly of course, to participate in some family canoeing.

For some similar thoughts, see Cindy Rollins’ article in this issue of Esprit. . One might think that Cindy and I get together and decide to write on similar topics but I assure you we do not. Somehow God often seems to put like-minded ideas on our hearts

As Easter time approaches, we are reminded of the promise of new life. Death no longer triumphs. Brown shriveled up plants start showing signs of new life, new buds tell of flowers to come. God’s goodness surrounds us in tangible ways. May we take comfort in His extravagant display at springtime.

—JMT

In Screwtape, the junior tempter’s “patient” becomes a believer. The demons know the outcome of the war for this young man’s soul that they lost. Nonetheless, they redouble their efforts to minimize the damage by coming up with devious ways of making the young man’s thoughts become a hindrance in his sanctification and make him less useful in God’s kingdom.

It made me wonder what the correspondence might sound like between a master tempter and a demon assigned to a homeschool mom. Their goal is to try to keep her discouraged and distracted from her great task of training her children. What might those devils try to get the mom to think about? What would they try to get her to not think about?

I do not claim to know how the supernatural functions in the realm of angels or demons but I can see how we homeschooling moms might be tempted by a similar line of thinking offered by Uncle Screwtape to the junior tempter Wormwood in Lewis’ classic.

Here is my version of a such a letter written to a junior demon, Squirmtoad, with apologies to Professor Lewis and thanks to my husband for his creative prose.

OK, this is way too easy for me to come up with these. Maybe because this is the way I think far too often. Once again I have written another column directed at myself. I am more than guilty of falling prey to all of the wiles of the flesh and the devil.

But I do not wish to leave you in the snares of the tempter. What should be our response? Has Our Heavenly Father left us defenseless?

Praise be to our God for He has already supplied the remedy for all of these false notions. Each one of these thoughts can be brought captive to Christ. The truth of His Word can break these strongholds of wrong thinking. His grace can deliver us from the ruts in our minds that are nothing but lies from the enemy.

    “When my heart is overwhelmed,
        lead me to the rock,
    Lead me to the rock
        that is higher than I.”

—JMT

Yes, you read that right, this homeschool mom, now a fairly conservative Christian, dabbled in the art of telling her high school classmates their future based on the lines in their hands. This was before I became a believer.

It was a fun skill that made for instant popularity, albeit heady and short-lived. I read a few books, practiced on my family, learned some terms and, before I knew it, word had spread and all the football players were coming to me asking me to look at their hands and tell them if they were going to get married, be successful, live long lives.

I share this fact about my life before I became a Christian because the start of a new year is always a time of hope for the future. As a teen, I was very confused about spiritual things even though I was brought up by religious parents in a very devout denomination and regularly went to church from infancy. My ideas of God and eternity engendered fear and awe, but I hoped that my demerits would be outweighed by the good things I did, thus making it possible for me to escape eternal damnation. Palm reading was not my only vice. I also developed a sophisticated method of cheating on tests based on American sign language. Don’t ask me why I thought cheating was OK; discernment was not one of my strong points.

I am always amazed at the transforming power of the grace of God. He takes broken, worthless pots and makes them into worthy vessels, fit for the master’s use. After I became a Christian I learned that all that previous dabbling in palm reading was a wrong-headed attempt to know hidden things and I renounced it along with my cheating schemes. This was part of confessing and repenting; God had made it clear to me in His time that I was to forsake these things. When I was doing a post-graduate internship, I roomed with a girl who was rather straight-laced, very conservative, and who was a mature Christian who knew and loved God’s word. She had a beautiful voice and often sang the Scriptures. One day we were in a rough part of town. “Do you smell that?” she asked me. I smelled something but did not know what it was. “It is pot,” she declared, rather matter-of-factly. When I asked how she knew, she laughed. “Didn’t I tell you? I was a pot-head in high school.” I was floored. There was no vestige of the girl’s former life in her. Sometimes I meet people who come from the most broken homes, who have gone through a series of step-parents, who did not have a Christian upbringing, who made some bad choices in their early lives. But in looking at them today, all one sees is God’s redeeming grace.

The promise of grace should be a tremendous encouragement to us today as homeschool parents. We may look at our children and see lots of foolishness, immaturity and gaps in character development. “What will they grow up to be if that is what they are now?” we moan privately and perhaps not so privately.

Take heart. What you see is not what will be. God promises to complete the work He has begun. In my morning devotions recently in Tabletalk I was encouraged by this explanation of hope: “Hope is the ground of faith and love, the source from which they spring and are sustained by the Spirit’s power (Col. 1:5). Such hope is not a wish for something that may or may not happen, but the present expectation of what will surely be experienced in its fullness in the future. Knowing that we will experience the fullness of salvation in the age to come, our faith and love are sustained in the present era.”

Yes, our children may be foolish, immature and not all we hope in the character department. But God has a timetable for them to conform to the image of Christ. I have often thought: What a mercy it is that God does not show us immediately all that is wrong in our lives at the moment of conversion. Instead, He gently leads us into His truth, revealing our blind spots as we look to Him.

A booklet that was a great help to me as a young Christian was titled “My Heart, Christ’s Home.” It used the analogy of the rooms of a house for the areas of our lives that we must give to Christ as Lord. As an illustration the reader imagines that Christ is walking with them through the rooms. Finally He asks about the hidden closet, the one that represents our secret sins. All must be turned over to Him.

May we expect that God will work these good changes in our children? Are we going to be disappointed?

God is worthy of our hope. He will do what He said. It is not a vain hope, but one that is based on the solid rock of His Word and the finished work of Jesus.

These days I still attempt to predict the future. The difference is I am no longer reading palms. I am reminding myself of the sure promises of our Father God. I am looking at my children and seeing what they will be by His grace and provision.

—JMT