Mourning to Dancing

She turned to the dark window, pain in every line of the motion. "Right. I know I need to wait...But everyone else will be gone...I'll be so old." In her wavering reflection, tears sparkled down her cheek.

Though her best friends were at least a year older, she grieved their moving on without her in graduation. She had completed her academic requirements. Wouldn't she just be marking time? Growing older without fruit?

One year later
She turns under the sparkling tree, inviting new friends and old out of the dark to dance at her graduation. In wonder, they learn to celebrate.

She is handing out choice portions: a chance to make a real movie with professional equipment and experienced film mentors - all discovered and assembled during her internship in the last year. Her sister, struggling with overuse injuries while practicing her violin, has recovered her joy in music and her hope of being able to participate in it in the future, because of that invitation to compose the sound track. A band of brothers have discovered her subversive storytelling methods and resolve to join the network to capture imaginations.

She laughs, fearless. Her college expenses will be completely covered until she takes up both B.A. and M.A. in an accelerated 5-year program. The fruit of her scholarship pursuit over the last long, lonely year. Over half a million dollars.

Her mother turns to the dark window. In the glowing reflections, the young people are toasting the future with fizzy punch. "So God will not always chasten," she thinks, "Weeping may endure for a night, but morning comes. There will be joy. That, too, is His will."

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'"~ C.S. Lewis ~ May I and mine always be in the first group.

Notes from Underground - Light

In the mine, the only light is the light you bring with you. Except occasionally, there is a fissure above that allows a tiny shaft of light to finger some glittering crystal, as if God says, "See here!" You have time to gasp in wonder. But the world turns, and the light fades.

The glitterati of the homeschool speech and debate world were there as the graduating debaters from across the country halted down the aisle to the first ever NCFCA graduation ceremony. A trio of sisters serenaded us with Pachelbel's Canon in D, and my daughter sang of being changed "For Good" by knowing her family and these friends. No less a man than Michael Farris exhorted the graduates not to despise the day of small beginnings nor the small decisions to walk in God's ways that put us in the way of His later great blessing. The young lady who had just won the policy debate crown exhorted the graduates to strive not to be the "Greatest Generation" but the "Faithful Generation".

One by one the graduates received their diplomas from their parents with words of praise and encouragement. And in the gracious liturgy of such things, the students responded with tearful thanks to parents, sibs and mentors.

One, however, began, "Wherever God calls us in the future, whether to halls of justice, fame or hidden service, we rarely get to see the whole picture. But it is there. And it is beautiful. And in our lives we will be called to be broken - and willingly or not - we will be broken. Broken from friends, and dreams. Broken from family and even everything we thought was ourselves. But it is that shattering that makes the difference between being a clear piece of glass - flat, invisible and unnoticed - and becoming a sparkling rainbow mosaic of life that is a wonder to all who pass by. And no one will be able to pass without asking, "who has done this?" And then it will be our privilege to tell them of the reason for the hope that is within us. "

"And we will fly on wings like eagles above the vaulted ceilings of the possible. Higher than we thought possible because it is another's strength on which we rely."

And that one is mine. And she has understood the secrets I whispered to her as she slept. She has deciphered the stories I told her as she played at my knee in her innocence. And she has waited patiently at the Master Glazier's feet, as He has lifted her broken heart, piece by piece, to His mosaic.

Oh yes! Here's to defying gravity...

Losing our Heads

"Off with her head!" cried the Red Queen. Dear Alice ran for her life, but she was only pursued by a pack of cards. So often the threats we flee are only a pack of cards.

But there are plenty of ways to lose our heads for real. And for Christians, this has some unusual consequences. You see, for us, it's not always fatal. For us, "When life whacks you so hard your head flies off, sew it back on and keep going."~ Mary Pierce ~ It's a possibility.

The Headless Horseman

The thing about being headless, is that it gives you a unique perspective. A little lower, humbler than everybody else. Sometimes it's the backward perspective, you know, from under the arm. Then there is the advantage of being able to actually throw your head at your attacker/pursuer/quarry. The anticipation of the satisfying "thwack" as new ideas hit the other guy is really worth the disadvantage of having to retrieve the head with the eyes actually disconnected from the hands. And of course, there is this supreme advantage: next time life aims at your head, it won't be where life expects it to be!

The Velveteen Rabbit
We all remember the story of the toy rabbit who mourned alone in the closet, pristine and perfect until the Boy lost his favorite cuddly and substituted the rabbit. The Boy's love for the rabbit cost him his glossy coat, his wiskers, an eye. Finally, the rabbit was the Boy's comfort through a bout of Scarlet Fever, and was tossed on the trash heap to be burned.

Loving people will cost you your ability to look good all the time. It will cost you your comfort. It will finally cost you your life, if you are faithful. But you, like the rabbit, will not be utterly consumed. You will become Real.

Hot Moms Play It Cool

No, I don't mean sweaty. It's now official. Moms can be "hot". The Today Show says so. Homeschool moms have known this for years. So today, I thought it would be fun to see how homeschool moms stack up against this newly-discovered hotness.

The Today Show was promoting a new book called The Hot Moms' Handbook, which was a witty exposition of the joys of motherhood - with fashion advice. "Motherhood gives us depth, compassion, and a level of love and awareness so heartfelt it is indescribable..." (Are you feeling the resonance yet?)

What makes a hot Mom? Well, she plays! She spends time having fun with her kids, surprizing them with new ideas and creative play. (Isn't that the definition of a homeschool mom? Haven't you made cookie-dough topographical maps of the ocean floor, dressed up like Eleanor of Aquitaine and gone on Crusade, stalked through the backyard searching for the Northwest Passage while picking botanical samples to preserve for posterity, roused your kids at 2am with hot cocoa to catalog a meteor shower, laid out a garden using only ancient Roman surveying methods, gone without running water for a day to illustrate the soul's thirst for Living Water, conquered the Spanish Armada on a giant world map with a pocket-sized punch-out British Navy, and such like?)

Hot Moms keep current and make time to enjoy grown-up conversation with their husbands and their friends. (Ummm! Let's see...my homeschool mom friends are current enough to be actively involved in local-to-national politics - with their husbands. And many of them maintain a regular date night. Does that count?)

Hot Moms ditch the sweats and wear practical, stylish outfits even if they are just taking the kids to Little League (OK, maybe they've got us there. Homeschool moms spend way too much time in denim jumpers and prairie skirts. Still, that's got to beat sweats - ewwww! Play day for my girls and I: Have coffee at a bookstore, perusing the fashion magazines (we employ the mommy-censor for those unbelievable ads), then hit the mall to window shop. Finally, we take our wallets to the thrift store, where you wouldn't believe what current looks you can put together for the price of a retail blouse. Nobody believes that our favorite clothing store is the DAV.)

Now, something that the Today Show didn't mention, but that homeschool moms employ to ensure that life can continue to produce joy, even when the baby projectile-vomits all over that stylish outfit, hubby loses his job, and grammar, long-division and dirty floors crowd out playtime for a week...a long-term time horizon. Homeschool moms are sure that what they are doing will have eternal consequences in the hearts, minds and characters of these little people, who are in our care. And most of us rely on the unbounded energy and care of the God who will receive us and our children at the end of all the troubles.

This hope allows a playful spirit. It is light and air. Life's difficulties take on a more manageable size.

I think that makes the score: Hot Moms - 3. Homeschool Moms - 5
Play on! It doesn't get hotter than this.

Creating Homeschool Traditions

As homeschoolers, we tend to be rugged individualists pioneering (mostly alone) through academic and relational terra incognita. So much so, in fact, that we tend to forget that some things do take a community. Marking milestones and applauding achievements are two of those things that simply shouldn't be done alone.

My eldest graduated in May - and in June. The first time, we crafted a ceremony for our tiny homeschool co-op and for a shy young man who was new to our group. The graduates were led in by our daughter's menfolk dressed in full Highland regalia, bagpipes blaring. The graduates' remarks focused on thanks to those who have made possible their achievements. And the fathers presented diplomas with words of encouragement and inspiration. We finished off with cake, hors d'ovres and a Scottish country-dance ball for the whole local speech & debate community (Think Jane Austen at Bath). And when the musicians tired, we roasted and toasted the graduates.

It was simple and heartfelt. I felt sorry for the non-Christians in the crowd, because the graduates' remarks and the fathers' charges had so many references to the faith that it surely amounted to mission work. However, one of those nons told me at the punchbowl that he had really enjoyed himself. Most other graduations, he said, were all about how hard the graduates had worked and what heights they had achieved. This one, he mused, was about gratitude rather than self-aggrandizement. It was about families working together and enjoying each other, having a part in the successes each member accomplishes.

Others went home rubbing their hands with glee, because "now we have a tradition to look forward to when it's our turn. This IS going to be a tradition, isn't it?" Yes, it must become a tradition. We need them. They provide us a way to enjoy the fruits of our hard work, and to realize how much it means to us to have companions in the field hoeing alongside us.

Even if it means that I'm not left alone to revel in decorating the hall and preparing gourmet goodies. Even if I have to do the (shudder) admin.

Lunch Break in the Salt Mines

"Once in a while you have to take a break and visit yourself ." - Audrey Giorgi

I am an artist. Blood and bones. I am never so happy as when I have paint and canvas, ink and paper, or photos and scrapbook pages in hand and an empty afternoon at my disposal. It is meat and drink to me to re-arrange the furniture and wall decor to celebrate the next phase of the church calendar and to welcome visitors. Or to light candles, turn off all the lights (because there's a whopping good thunderstorm that will likely turn them off anyway) and play some thundery Beethoven or Chopin or accompany my family singing hymns until the storm subsides (or we get tired of squinting).

I am an artist. That is difficult to remember amidst the rockslides and sluices of administration that the Lord has served me this spring and summer. I am making it possible for other people to exercise their arts, while I'm stuck with the pick and axe work. Is this really me? Why am I good at what I hate to do? Will I ever get to do art again (melodramatic sob)? Will I ever even get to blog regularly?

When my husband and I were first married, we moved half-way across the continent in our first week. No friends. No church. No family. No piano. No paints. No funiture to speak of. My husband's new job was fairly all-consuming.

What I did have to work with was chicken, well, and vegetables. I came to view these as my canvas. Those veggies had to be delicious, nutritious AND beautiful. It got to be a game: how many ways to serve chicken can I find or invent? Aristotle says that tangible matter resists the forms of perfection imposed upon them. I found it so with chicken - even the occasional hamburger defied the forms. My game was called 'taming the stubborn tangibles'. Eventually, I realized it was art.

Perhaps all I really need is to be able to view administration as art. The institutions are my canvas and people are my paints. Yes, and paperwork is my brush (heavy sigh!). These tangibles resist form more than any other media I have ever worked with. They have to be persuaded to stay on the canvas. They mix with the yellow instead of the blue. Regular paint doesn't have to want to be purple, but people have to want to be in the painting.

Is it art? I'll let you know, but maybe it's the end of the tunnel.

Notes from Underground

Administration! It really is the pits! My salt-mine has a lot more extensive galleries than I ever suspected. I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just a ventilation shaft.

Well, since I'm not getting out any time soon, I'll try to enjoy the scenery.

My middle daughter, Anne visited the salt mines for which Salzburg is named. She said it was incredible not only what God had wrought, but what men have done. The walls sparkled, and wherever they were thin between chambers, light could penetrate so that the walls shone like pink hurricane glasses around a candle.

The miners of salt have an absolutely amazing method of extracting and purifying the salt that they mine. They dig drainage tunnels between the galleries to the outside world, where an enormous holding tank awaits. Then they pump the gallery full of water. Salt dissolves! Remember? When the water has reached its saturation point, they pump the water out into the holding tank and allow it to evaporate. What is left is pure salt. Water, air and gravity have done the heavy lifting.

What's more, the miners ride an enormous slide down to work every day. Picture one of those mountain slides you ride for hundreds of feet under the summer sky - only underground.

I gotta figure out how to make my salt mine work like this...

Lurn 2 Blogggg

Did you see the 7 Days of Blogging over at She Lives? Carol quizzed readers about some very practical blogging issues and ended up with a mini-manual on both the technical and literary aspects of blogging.

Hurry on over...

Furrowed

I'm tired. I'm so tired, I'm numb. Nothing sounds interesting. Everything's a chore.

But I'm planting the garden anyway. The seeds rustle dryly out of their envelopes and disappear into the soil, invisible in their dirt camoflage (how do the birds find them?). It looks pretty pitiful, really. Nothing but rock-hard pellets and broken earth. An apt reflection of the gardener: prostrate, broken, leafless.

But I'm planting the garden anyway. Under the furrowed dust, I am longing for a taste of those vivid tomatoes that only come out of one's own backyard. I believe there will be a salad that is as much a feast for the eye as for the palate - violets, nasturtiums and pale pansies crowded between the spinach and cranberries. The pungent basil will be worth its weight in gold, and the bees will use it to flavor our honey with a minty perfume. I am counting on roasting chilis this fall, and being able to put up quarts and quarts of salsa, paprikas sauce and green chili.

I am counting on renewal. On resurrection.

Weaving

This week I am hemming and fringing a silk tartan shawl for Elizabeth's graduation. A symbol of our covering care for her even as she steps out into her terra incognita after high school. The blues and reds intersect and overlap creating a shifting, shimmering play of unexpected colors that evoke the surprizing beauties in the interwoven relationships in our family.

But under my hands the cloth shifts again, and the hands are my mother's, too. We are altering thrift store suits to make uniforms for the imaginary army in my sister's Shakespeare production. Every summer, Elizabeth (for whom my graduate was named) puts on a side-splitting Shakespearean comedy to give all the cousins and their friends an extended time to delight in each other and to accomplish something real. We donate the profits to the local crisis pregnancy center. Mother is always there, making fast those behind-the-scenes necessities. But the threads stretch farther back.

Mother was the original actress, making literature come to life for us with voices and accents, teaching us to tell Bible stories to enthrall the listener, clothing us with poetry...clothing us with prayer.

In this light, the cloth is shining white. It is my wedding dress. Mother crafted it based on a photograph in Bride's magazine. And the crocheted lace bedspread she wove for us is still heavy with the prayers she brocaded into each motif, as she prepared to include this new son in the fabric of the family.

She never was simply sewing chiffon or twisting out lace. Mother was always weaving this tapestry of relationships, the patterns of history. She never refused any skein God handed her. She weaves with bitter blacks and weeping silver with nearly the same serenity as she does with the heartsblood reds and the singing azures. She is certain that God is the only one who weilds shears, and that someday she will see the whole tapestry - from the front side.

I am hemming this silken shawl; but I am learning the master-weaving, Mother's hand on mine as I throw the shuttle. My first daughter whirls out through the tensed warps, singing.

Mother-of-All*

O blessed we for her in whom God knit our tissue forms
So tenuous, yet over-rich 'round all-implicit selves
Still tight wound scarlet, mere designs, and Spirit-warm
Dropped. distaff, shuttle, shears then hers to wave us whole,

Our very lives spinning pendant from her hand. Kinetic skills
Teased out, drawn strong and fine - some dull unbreakables,
Some rainbow-wound with music, magit lit from childhood still,
Some golden virtues prayer spun (Athena's competent).

This living weft laced twixt ancestral warp she deftly looms,
Herself the webster, woven too; her thread maternal hands
Spin out still. So distaff to distaff, daughter to daughter, Heaven looms
The ancient, cosmic web be-gemmed with Earth-won spoil,

God's tapestry through woman's seed redeemed, reclaimed, renewed,
Til Christ, in this His glory robes His Bride, and Life begins in truth.

(This sonnet was my Mother's Day gift to Mother in 1978.)

*The Mother-of-All is the part of a spinning wheel upon which all the other parts depend.

This post All Rights Reserved.

Professional Mothers: Renee 2

As promised, my interview with Renee...

Here's my attempt at reflection on a peaceful night in the eye of the hurricane (where I've always chosen to live). My path did not lead to marriage and motherhood directly but took a decade of running the carreer track, more and more frenetically. Don't mistake me, I loved the teaching career I was given: the students, the discipline, the opportunities to grow my skills in a real world application that college never prepared me to do. I loved the class discussion and travel with students, the missions opportunities, the theatre program I cultivated single handedly. But with this career came thousands of papers to grade, seven classes a day with six different preps, an inner drive to do the next production bigger and better than the last, and a passion to never repeat anything I'd ever done before. The single life was a place to focus heart, mind and strength on the sole job of pleasing the Lord...no distractions, no breaks, no excuses. I also began to add more and more to my plate until I was teaching full time, directing a musical with 200+students, grading 75 research papers, performing in a play in which I had to memorize 125 pages, co-leading a singles Sunday school class of 300, and directing three one-act plays for a competition. That was the month I discovered there was a reason I had been drinking 36 oz. of water every 45 minute class period... I was a type I diabetic and my health was broken. It was from this hurricane that the Lord rescued me and gave me a husband who introduced me to grace, and rest. We married and moved to teach in China where I went from teaching/directing 14 -17 hours a day to teaching 15 hours a week. Then came children.
Mother-Lode: Did you purpose to become a mother? Why or why not?
Again and again I had resigned myself to the single life since I was 29 with no man on the horizon. But after marriage, the thought of children was a welcome delight and I never realized just how important all the teaching I had done would be to my confidence as I looked my own children in the face and knew I wanted to pour the wow of learning into them.


Mother-Lode: When and how did you begin to prepare yourself for this life's work?
I never prepared myself for this work. Fortunately God did. Shaping, winning and disciplining the belligerent, the dear, the talented and the devious student every day in class molded my pedagogy. All along I took mental note of successes and struggles of my siblings and the parents of great kids at school. When our first girl came along, I found Mike and Debbie Pearl's books, George MacDonald, and scriptures set to music all refreshing resources.


Mother-Lode: If you went to college, do you find that your college degree has been a help to you in your work as a mother? What would have been lacking in your home if you had not pursued college?
College was the necessary means to the end (a piece of paper so I could teach) but no help in and of itself unless the discipline of study counts. Most of what I learned, I gladly dropped as useless or worse. What it gave me were books, records and resources for my own study and a love of Shakespeare.
Mother-Lode: In the course of your work as a mother, what kinds of things have you done?
Things I never dreamed existed. I've floated polymers in water, alcohol, vinegar and oil; examined lip and teeth prints, and experimented on mystery powders all to get one girl ready for a crime lab competition. I've critiqued a brief for one daughter (using her competitive speech skills) to give to the state congress opposing a bill. I've taught all three girls to speak the Gospel in Spanish for the yearly family mission trip to Mexico. I've planned and executed a six month study abroad for our family through 12 countries in Europe visiting professors in Scotland and gypsies in Slovakia making all the history, literature, art and music live. For the last five years I've run a two week Shakespeare Camp for kids age 3-18 with a full blown play at the end to benefit a local crisis pregnancy center that last year raised $2000.00. And I've made a gingerbread castle cake with my three year old.


Mother-Lode: Have you found your work as a mother narrows your opportunities or confounds your work for and in the community?
Hardly! (See above)


Mother-Lode: How have you dealt with the feminists' view that a career is all-important for the full development of women, and with the pull of careerism in your own life?
Career was an intensely wonderful, awful slave master. How's that for an oxymoron? It was not until I met my husband who is to me "grace on legs" that I began to measure myself NOT by my productivity but by the quality of my relationships. And it was not until recently that I've begun to see that rest in the One Relationship means that all my work is a joyful reflection of His creativity...redeemed and full of purpose ...Not a frenetic attempt to be super-woman.


Mother-Lode: How would you advise a young woman about to graduate from high school?
Get a degree in something. It opens doors of credibility and opportunity you would not otherwise have. Be careful where you choose to go if you want to be able to hold what you learned as valuable.


Mother-Lode: What have been the returns of your labors as a mother?
The sweet smell of soft baby hair cuddled under my chin; the gleam in the eye of our youngest with every creative engineering project done to ease someone's load; the courage and cheerfulness of our middle girl who overcomes her physical pains of hydrocephalus shunt failure and a broken back that brought her ballet to a halt but her spirit to a place of humble care for others; the awe of watching our oldest make serving her glory on the volleyball team, the babysitting job, the mission trip, or counseling peers to make right choices in the context of abstinence; the excitement of launching educated, entertaining, engagingly articulate and caring girls into the culture with a positive visions for changing it.


Mother-Lode: If you had it to do over again, would you make the choice to be a professional mother?
It's the best of joys! It's the "break your heart beautiful" reason to pour myself out! It's the reward behind every effort. It's purpose behind so many questions. It's the best pay I've ever had.

Professional Mothers: Renee

Today, I'd like you to meet one of Linda Hirschmann's most dangerous "threats to civilization", my friend Renee. She is a real "team drop-out", leaving a ten-year teaching career to become a wife and mother. Instead, she's just slouching around raising three lovely daughters,
administering & teaching in a metropolitan educational cooperative,
spending her vacations working in Mexican orphanages,
training young lobbyists and reproductive responsibility advocates,
helping to run a national-level debate tournament for 200+ high school students,
directing a summer stock theater company for homeschoolers,
while keeping a gracious house and entertaining weekly.

But perish the thought that Renee is just a collection of jobs and accomplishments! She will be the one in the group to whom everyone will tell their troubles. Her determined cheerfulness has bouyed many a sinking heart. Her faith and courage has been an inspiration to those who know her personally, for one of her daughters has hydro-encephalitis.

When Renee was pregnant, her doctors assured her that this child would probably only live a few hours, if "it" could survive to birth at all. They showed her the ultrasounds revealing a sac protruding from the base of the baby's skull, where they speculated the baby's brain tissue would be - if there were any at all. They told her that death would be a mercy for this child, who should be a vegetable if "it" lived. They told her to abort.

But Renee and her husband refused to be the instrument of their own child's death, whatever the cost. They reasoned that as God had given, it was His prerogative to determine when and how their baby would be taken back to Him.

When Hope was born, God's miraculous Providence became evident. The sac at the base of her skull had filled with the extra brain fluid, so that her brain had developed normally inside her skull. Stunned doctors were able to drain the fluid and install a permanent shunt to protect Hope's brain from future damamge. They remained pessimistic about Hope's development. "She'll never sit up. She'll never walk. She'll never talk. She'll never read," they said. Renee never gave up.

Today, Hope is twelve. Not only does she sit up and walk, she dances the Nutcracker with a local ballet company. Not only does she talk, she just smoked the competition at this weekend's NCFCA National Open tournament, taking first place overall in her age category (Jr. Sweepstakes), and qualifying to the National Finals in three events. Not only does she read, she writes movingly, and she makes Shakespeare come to life in Renee's summer stock theater productions - which benefit the local crisis pregnancy center.

Not bad for a vegetable. Next time, Renee's interview.

Building a Mother's Tribute

Speaking of great ideas, Heather over at Mom2Mom has proposed a writing contest as a Mothers' Day celebration. See her blog before May 1 to submit your tribute to your mother's love.

Let's See...

Creation is supposed to speak to us of its Creator, but mostly it doesn't. A sunrise doesn't remind us of the joy of Christ hastening to claim His Bride (Ps 19). Mostly, a sunrise simply means that we went to bed too late, and now we're up too early (groan!). The fault does not lie in Creation but in its observers.

Often, it takes a work of art to bring Creation's message into focus for us dullards. The framed close-up of water rushing over brook stones makes us take note of its beauty and reflect upon the swiftness of time, and the permanence of our Rock. Bach's counterpoint gives us heart-breaking insight into the freedom, beauty, independence and harmony among the persons of the Trinity. Sunday dinner with its aromas, its crystal and candles on white tablecloths reminds us that worship isn't merely propositional. It is a feast. We aren't simply invited to an intellectual exercise. We are invited to a party.

Art lets us see into the depths and dimensions of what seems at first to be opaque material. But we don't need to go to the art museum to catch a glimpse of these undergirding realities. Just consider for a moment, why you arrange your schedule the way that you do, and how it might reflect God's work. Would consciously arranging your work to imitate His patterns actually be more productive as well as more beautiful? When you discipline your children, aren't you sculpting a human soul? And doesn't that open new horizons on God's dealings with you?

The beauty of Art is that it is a way of seeing as much as anything else. It is a habit of the heart. Perhaps the only thing that changes us more deeply is suffering.

Metamorphoses

Would that men had words and minds and songs enough
To honor that magnificent, unspeakable One
Whose love transforms us more surely than time,
More deeply than grief,
More gloriously than a thousand dying suns;
Who pours Himself out for us in scarlet richness
From the dark wound of womb-wrenching
Separation
Who breathes into our sterile spirits new-birthed Life,
By that Breath-born Prince and that ancient Breath
That still makes dust
Live!

Kim Anderson
Copyright 1979
All rights reserved

The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Gentle Readers, I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I am simply feeling the pinch of my busy season. With two regional debate tournaments behind me now, and only the national open to organize, I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I will still be mostly taken up with administration duties until that tournament is over and its results properly registered, but I will post as I am able, and will return to my regularly scheduled programming about the first week of May.

Thank you for checking up on me. Your friendship is a real wonder, maintained as it is over such distances by such ethereal means. Nevertheless, it is a strong support.

Food for Thought

Robert Capon, in his book, The Supper of the Lamb, considers a perfectly excrable bottle of synthetic Kirsch.

"Every now and then, I take another sip, partly to remind myself of what a
paragon of awfulness it is, but partly to prove that for all its faults, it is
still not undrinkable. In a real world, nothing is infinitely bad. My bottle of
bogus Kirsch bears witness that there is no bottomless pit in any earthly
subject ... The Kirsch in my closet is a little hell..."

Interesting take on hell. All its pains are closed in there - like that bottle of Kirsch. And when you taste it, you realize that nothing else could be quite as bad as this.

Surely, God leaves us all little reminders like this one, that though this is a fallen world, it is not ultimately as bad as it could be. Time closes in its pains, and one sip of Heaven will wash away even the memory of that insecticide that passes here for Kirsch.

Professional Mothers: Charissa

You might be interested to know that The Washington Times is declaring a victory in the "Mommy Wars". According to their editorial page, children are winning!

Last time, in our series of introductions to real-life 'Professional Mothers', we met a woman whose wisdom and energy are impacting both the present and future generations across the nation as a result of her work with her own children. Today's Professional Mother is one of the principal organizers of an annual speech tournament which is open to homeschoolers from the entire nation. This tournament is held at one of our country's most respected and most liberal college campuses - Charissa's alma mater. Charissa does it to give her own children opportunities for skill-building and networking, but an unexpected fruit of her labor is that the highly feminized young women from the college are forced to "re-evaluate their negative ideas about stay-at-home wives."

Charissa is a stay-at-home mother of four, who lives in a mountain community in rural Colorado with the requisite chickens, etc. From home she not only administers a lively homeschool for her own children, but coaches speech and debate, and teaches a rotation of in-depth literature courses for other homeschoolers from several isolated communities. Annually, her family organizes and directs theatrical productions for their town through their church.

Mother-Lode: Did you purpose to become a mother? Why or why not?
Not to begin with. I grew up in a feminist-leaning home and was groomed to go on to career. I intended to work in the foreign service and then changed my mind and planned on law school. It wasn't until after I'd met my husband, who brought me to faith in Christ, that I considered motherhood as an option. As the idea of staying home to care for babies, and subsequently to homeschool grew, I had a difficult time overcoming the societal and family expectations that I go on to do something bigger than JUST raising kids. I struggled with competing ideas of who I was and was to be. I was a Truman Scholar, and as such was encouraged--no, expected--to go on into something significant in government service. Each year, I received a questionnaire from the scholarship foundation about what boards I was a member of and what public service positions I held. Finally one year I wrote them a dissertation explaining that I had a greater influence on the lives of my four children than I could ever have on the lives of anyone if I were out working in any of the fields they expected me to be in--that raising responsible citizens was, in fact, public service in its strongest form. They quit sending me the questionnaires.

Mother-Lode: When and how did you begin to prepare yourself for this life's work?
I don't know that I was prepared when I went into it. Rather, God has been faithful to send me people who gave good advice and who were good examples at each step along the way. My husband have made a number of somewhat counter-cultural decisions in the raising of our children without really knowing what we were doing, but later have been able to see the benefits of our choices and been grateful for God's leading in these directions.

Mother-Lode: If you went to college, do you find that your college degree has been a help to you in your work as a mother? What would have been lacking in your home if you had not pursued college?
Though I have never actually worked in my degree field, college was a time of growing up for me. It was a time of learning how to think clearly, find information I needed, and move forward even when I wasn't sure how to do something. All of these have been a huge part of my handling of my home and my children. Mother-Lode: In the course of your work as a mother, what kinds of things have you done? How can such a question be answered in less than 100,000 words? I have changed diapers, gone for walks, looked at bugs, read thousands of stories, cooked tens of thousands of meals. I have planned school, revised the plan for school, adjusted the plans for school, and taught by the seat of my pants. I have encouraged, corrected, scolded, hugged and loved. I have tickled, laughed hysterically, cried for hours, regretted, and tried again. I have learned that no two children are alike and what works with one will be an utter failure with another. I have planned programs for many children because I wanted them to happen for my own. I have grown up as they have grown. I have seen them move on to things that I can no longer help them with. And one day soon, I will watch them leave.

Mother-Lode: Have you found your work as a mother narrows your opportunities or confounds your work for and in the community?
NO! A narrowing of my opportunities might be welcome! Rather motherhood has led me into forms of service that I would never have found, nor considered if it weren't for my children. I have met many people because of something my children were involved in and had many opportunities both to share and learn from these people.

Mother-Lode: How would you advise a young woman about to graduate from high school?
I would advise her to think carefully about where she is going and ask God constantly for His guidance. No two of us have the same path before us, and we have to listen for direction. I would suggest that she consider marriage carefully--and know beyond a doubt that it is a permanent decision.

Mother-Lode: What have been the returns of your labors as a mother?
I have grown and learned more than they have. I hope that each of my daughters has the opportunity to be a mother, as I doubt anything else can possibly mature and grow them as much. The only problem with this job is that it’s a little low on vacation days and sick leave.

Mother-Lode: If you had it to do over again, would you make the choice to be a professional mother?
Absolutely. But I might do a few things differently along the way. One hard thing about this job is that it takes 20 years or more to find out if you've got it right or not.

Spring Break Reading

Spring Break at our house isn't actually a lazy experience. It usually involves a lot of digging in the garden, new business initiatives and debate tournament excitement. But we do manage to get in a bit of extra fun reading. (Well, actually that goes along with the digging; we task one laborer to read to the rest while we do the drudge-work.)

So, what are we reading? Starting indoors, we will be reading Regenerate Our Culture, the teen-run webzine that launched yesterday. William Buckley's New Republic should watch out, Regenerate Our Culture is literate, engaging and well-researched.

Next, an e-book, Secrets of Successful Homeschooling. Who are you and why are you thinking of homeschooling? A single parent? An organizationally challenged mom? A mother of dozens who is tired of answering the “do you know what causes this?” question? An experienced teacher looking for fresh ideas? Secrets of Successful Homeschooling lets you hear from a chorus of different lifestyles and even different countries on the hot topics in the how-to’s of homeschooling.

In Part One you’ll read the stories of several homeschools with different challenges, and glean innovative ideas about how to handle the bumps in your road. For instance, though I am not a single mom trying to do everything for my household, I still use Teri Camp’s idea of making my children part of the team every day.

Part Two gives you an insider’s look at learning styles, homeschool categories and a translation of all those buzz-words: the Principle Approach, the Classical Method, Un-schooling, Unit-studies…Many of the chapters link you to resources and research.

So hurry on over to Spunky Homeschooler and order Secrets of Successful Homeschooling. Since it is an e-book, you won’t even have to wait for the postman. You could be reading it tonight!

And what will we drag out to the garden? We'll take a cookbook. No, really! But SUCH a cookbook! The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Capon, uses reflections on food, hospitality and the Old Testament sacrificial system to expound the Divine banquet to which our God invites us. We'll undoubtedly skip the 100+ actual recipes, and opt for the meditations on beauty, love and Divine purpose.

And when we get too hungry, we'll revisit Christopher Wren's Beau Geste series: Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal. They are all out of print, but well worth the hunt. You'll laugh and cry at the self-deprecting self-sacrifice of the Geste brothers and their French Foreign Legion cohorts, the elegant Major Henri de Beaujolais and Texas Rangers Hank and Buddy. Mystery! Intrigue! Romance! Sand! and more than their share of desert cafard (madness).

Happy reading!

Professional Mother: Jeannette

Last time, we met Lucy, a professional mother who focused on training her high school daughters to impact local charities and local politics, while remaining firmly in touch with the urge to bake cookies for the little ones. Clearly an "unimportant and uninteresting" pursuit, not worthy of a highly-educated woman, according to Linda Hirschmann's feminist standards.

Today, I'd like you to meet Jeannette, one of the poster-moms for professional motherhood. A Truman Scholar with a B.S. in Family Relations and Child Development/Home Economics Education and Community Services and an M.S. in Family Resource Management, Jeannette had been one of those highly successful "I'm going to have it all" career moms. But when she saw that her children were paying for her success, she came home.

Now, years later, she has just launched her first (incredible) young offspring as the top National Merit Scholar of his graduating year, and is guiding her daughter toward graduation. Her teaching efforts were even recognized by the College Board, when they named her last year's Presidential Distinguished Teacher. Her outside interests may have decreased since her career-mom days (this is actually doubtful), but now she only takes on projects that directly benefit her children and their relationships together. For instance, she is on the board of Oklahoma Christian Home Educator's Consociation; she is the principal advisor for her daughter's project: the International Debate Society; she was her husband's campaign manager for state office, and continues to be his business partner. And, together with her son, she shares what they have learned in their successful bid for scholarships and college entrance, as conference speakers and college consultants in their new business venture, Aiming Higher Consultants.

Mother-Lode: Did you purpose to become a mother? Why or why not?

I honestly did purpose to be a mother at a very young age. I saw in my own mother a quiet dignity and a manifestation of the high calling of motherhood. She was an educated woman, who valued me enough to give up a career to nurture my siblings and I. I saw her sacrifice and realized as a young child that I was who I was because of it. When my friends were struggling, I was safe and secure in my mother's constant care.

Mother-Lode: When and how did you begin to prepare yourself for this life's work?

In junior high and high school I continually asked my parents questions about parenting. When I finally went to college, I remember the day of enrollment when I presented myself to the Department of Family Relations and Child Development. When asked what I wanted to study, I replied, "I want to understand what makes people tick." The woman smiled and said, "Well, that should take at least a Ph.D." I spent the next four years studying the dynamics of development and human relationships. I also conducted research dealing with adolescent television viewing that radically shaped my current parenting beliefs. After graduating with my masters degree, I spent 10 years with the Cooperative Extension Service teaching classes across the state emphasizing the importance of family. During that time, I was constantly watching the parenting style of the 4-H parents I worked with and learning from them. I also read voraciously about child development from the time I conceived my first child up to the present. I never did get the Ph.D. Instead, I started a family which ultimately taught me more than a dissertation ever could.

Mother-Lode: How do you find that your college degree has been a help to you in your work as a mother?

My degree, college experience, and early career experience trained me in many areas such as leadership, writing and speaking skills, the dynamics of group relationships, etc. that has helped me to better equip my children to enter the world. I believe it gave me the confidence to choose an ususual path in the rearing and educating of my children. The obstacles did not frighten me, just made me more determined to suceed.

Mother-Lode: What would have been lacking in your home if you had not pursued college?"

College definitely broadened my horizons, opened up possibilities to me that I never knew existed. Because of that, I had a vision for my children\'s future that far exceeded my own experiences. I am not by personality or temperament a visionary, but because I was stretched outside my comfort zone during my college and career years, I have developed the ability to speak vision into their lives and have the skills and courage to do battle when necessary to keep their dreams alive.


Mother-Lode: In the course of your work as a mother, what kinds of things have you done?

I have honestly gloried in baking cookies with my children and spending hours reading out loud. I have designed unit studies, set up scientific experiences, run political campaigns, founded speech and debate clubs, taught public speaking, run homeschool support groups, taught boy scouts, been a homeschool conference speaker, started a consulting company, and helped run a farm and construction business.


Mother-Lode: Have you found your work as a mother narrows your opportunities or confounds your work for and in the community?

Suprisingly, my work as a mother has opened up many experiences to me that I would never have sought out for myself. I am naturally an introvert, but because I know my children need certain experiences to stretch them, I walk alongside them and am stretched myself. Being a good mother routinely calls you outside yourself. In my drive to make my children better people, I become a better person as well.


Mother-Lode: How have you dealt with the feminists' view that a career is all-important for the full development of women, and with the pull of careerism in your own life?

Even though my degree was in a traditional field, I found that the feminist viewpoint was more pervasive there than most fields. They did acknolwdge that cookies needed to be baked, but maintained that you could hire someone to do it for you so the children would have homemade treats! It was pretty incredible. In total, I spent 15 years working with and for such women and had many friendships there. But there was something unspoken in their stories, a deep seated pain that would flash out occassionally in their eyes. I began to see through the ruse. I saw the fatigue, the marital strain, the children suffering. By the time I left the professional world years later, my health was shot, my marriage in trouble, and my children struggling. It was a horrible time.

But the Lord, in his mercy redeemed the years the locust had eaten. He renewed my marriage and restored my children. Life is good again. Not easy, but good. We have paid a high price financially for me to be home to minister to my family, but my husband and I both know now that life becomes hopeless when someone is not there to keep the home fires burning.

I can now look feminism straight in the eye and not flinch because I've been there, done that. I know without a doubt that the grass is not greener on the other side. Some of my acquaintances, who were denied that opportunity for growth as young women, have entered middle age with dreams of a glamorous career and all they've missed. I've seen them leave husband and children in pursuit of a lie and I grieve for them.

After my experiences, careerism holds absolutely no allure for me. There have been moments when a friend is recognized professionally and there is a catch in my throat for what I could have been, but then I look at my children and what they are because of my choices. And it is a choice. You cannot have it all. And then the dust clears and I take an analytical look at what I have become after leaving the career world and realize that my experiences have shaped me into something far more than the narrow confines of a professional career could have done. My skills are more highly developed, my experiences much more varied, my world much larger. It is then I pity my friends who settle for the straight jacket of professional recognition.

So, as I enter middle age, I do not feel the call of careerism, but do feel the call of creativity. I am almost finished with the creative aspect of teaching my children and something new is forming in the depths of my being. I know the Lord is not finished with me yet. The sacrifices have been doing a refining work in me in preparation for the next phase of life.


Mother-Lode: How would you advise a young woman about to graduate from high school?

I advise all young woman just as I advise my daughter. Give yourself time to mature. Dare to be stretched. Follow your dreams. Being a woman, wife, and mother will take incredible intellectual, spiritual, and physical reserves. We need to press hard to learn all we can, to develop a deeper walk with our Lord, to exercise and take care of our bodies.

I have encouraged my daughter to continue her education in a field that she loves that could support her well if she never marries or is widowed some day. I feel it is very important to be realistic about potential salary and, if you have the ability, choose a field that will pay you well. She is exploring career fields that could provide part-time employment or would be easy to re-enter. Through all her searching, she is looking for practical training that is realistic. For example, training to be an astronaut, a foreign diplomat, or an international consultant does not fit in her paradigm of valuing family. They may be exciting fields, but could not nurture those she hopes to care for someday. There is not a "right answer" for young women, but too often they limit themselves and their futures (or parents limit their daughters) by not taking rigorous classes in high school and pursing college in challenging fields.

Mother-Lode: What have been the returns of your labors as a mother?

Certainly better than any stock-market transaction! I have personally grown and been blessed, but the real joy is to see my almost-adult children approach the future with much more maturity and wisdom than I had when I launched out on my own. I believe the real rewards (while I am living) will come as I watch them parenting my grandchildren. But the true return on my labors will hopefully reach out across the generations to bless my lineage.


Mother-Lode: If you had it to do over again, would you make the choice to be a professional mother?

YES!!! Only I would have chosen it sooner. The one regret I have in my life is that my children ever knew what it was like to have a career mom. We all suffered from it.

Carnivals - even though it's Lent

Settle down! These carnivals will help you in your Lenten contemplations.

The Christian Carnival is hosted this week at Adam's blog.
The Carnival of Homeschooling is at Palm Tree Pundit. Caution! Anne has spring fever.
The Carnival of Beauty, featuring the Beauty of Order this week, is at Scribblings by Blair.

So many blogs. So little time.