Dare to Care (about what you wear)

 

 

“Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control.” 1 Timothy 2:9

Ever since I was a little girl (so I am told), I’ve always been a lover of fashion. I remember piecing together those 80’s outfits like it was nobody’s business. Now, as a grown woman, wife and mom, I still love fashion and have an appreciation for expressing my creativity through style. As a Christian, thisshould look very different from the way the world expresses themselves. I can remember several years ago, sitting in my little apartment in Louisville, Kentucky with a neighbor-friend of mine who was a very avid Muslim from the country of Jordan. She and I would often get our kids together for playdates while our husbands were in school and working a handful of part-time jobs to keep us fed. She wore complete covering with only a slit for her eyes when she was out in public. She would unveil her beautiful face if it was just she and I and the children. One day, we somehow got on the subject of why she dressed the way she did and why those Muslim rules were so strict. I remember her staring me straight in the face, very “innocent” and with respect and saying “Why wouldn’t I want to save my body for only my husband?” Although I think the Muslim law she was under isn’t Biblical, she had a point. Too many  Christian women dress in such a way so as to give away that which belongs to their husbands/future husbands. And even some, while married, continue to draw undue attention to themselves by the way they dress. They give up a precious gift for the world to see dis-regarding what God’s Word says about it.

I can remember nearly 13 years ago , while I was dating Kevin and home from college and living with my parents…I came downstairs in a “cute” outfit that was revealing of my shape. I will never forget my mom, who lovingly took me aside, and told me how beautiful I was with the body God gifted me with, and who encouraged me to  not fall to the lie that I had to win Kevin over with what I wore. She was right. And her wisdom helped me to think beyond just looking cute, to actually honoring the Lord and my future husband (and all other men out there for that matter) with what I wore.

Fashion must never come before honoring the Lord. Here are a few good questions from some of my living heroes that you can ask yourself when going through your wardrobe. May we be Godly, Christian women who are in this culture but not of it…

 

For my heart:

In choosing what clothes to wear, whose attention do I desire and whose approval do I crave? Am I seeking to please God or impress others?
Is what I wear consistent with biblical values of modesty, self-control and respectable apparel, or does my dress reveal an inordinate identification and fascination with sinful cultural values?
Who am I trying to identify with through my dress? Is the Word of God my standard or the latest fashion?
Does my clothing reveal an allegiance to the gospel or is there any contradiction between my profession of faith and my practice of godliness?
What do my clothes say about my heart?
For my wardrobe (adapted from Nancy DeMoss):

With my dress, am I guilty of…
…exposing intimate parts of the body?
or
…emphasizing private or alluring parts of the body?

 

Weary World

 

“A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices…”

Ah, a weary world. Today, we experienced its’ weariness – handing a local prostitute a hot cup of coffee and a granola bar, witnessing a drug deal in our front yard, hearing the ever-familiar “street story” of a woman begging for money to get to a hotel, a phone call from our homeless friend wanting a place to come for Christmas. Oh, weary world – a true need for Christmas is felt in our hearts this eve of Christmas day. The brokenness of mankind, the sting of sin watching those around us desperately cling to tradition, feed their want for more ,ordering a day around their own desires. We watch the hurting cry out around us for a thrill of hope – some light to lift their trodden feet from the darkness. It’s ok if it’s not a wonderful life ( a must-read today, if you can make time). But a thrill of hope, just a thrill to cause a weary world to rejoice! A weary mother birthing the Christ-child. The thrill that comes not from gifts or things or family – but from the hope of a Savior, come to deliver the weary world of something gone terribly wrong.

May you know and feel and bleed the thrill of hope as you plod on this common eve of Christmas, that a weary world my sing with hope and loose its’ chains soon and very soon. Come Lord Jesus!

 

How To Raise Boys Who Read

Here is my first ever “boy” post in honor of baby Malachi. For all of you who have boys, it’s a great read!

By THOMAS SPENCE

When I was a young boy, America’s elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can’t read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Everyone agrees that if boys don’t read well, it’s because they don’t read enough. But why don’t they read? A considerable number of teachers and librarians believe that boys are simply bored by the “stuffy” literature they encounter in school. According to a revealing Associated Press story in July these experts insist that we must “meet them where they are”—that is, pander to boys’ untutored tastes.

For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means “books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor.” AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to “grossology” parties. “Just get ‘em reading,” she counsels cheerily. “Worry about what they’re reading later.”

There certainly is no shortage of publishers ready to meet boys where they are. Scholastic has profitably catered to the gross-out market for years with its “Goosebumps” and “Captain Underpants” series. Its latest bestsellers are the “Butt Books,” a series that began with “The Day My Butt Went Psycho.”

The more venerable houses are just as willing to aim low. Penguin, which once used the slogan, “the library of every educated person,” has its own “Gross Out” line for boys, including such new classics as “Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger.”

Workman Publishing made its name telling women “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” How many of them expected they’d be buying “Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty” a few years later from the same publisher? Even a self-published author like Raymond Bean—nom de plume of the fourth-grade teacher who wrote “SweetFarts”—can make it big in this genre. His flatulence-themed opus hit no. 3 in children’s humor on Amazon. The sequel debuts this fall.

Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised “so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education.”

“Plato before him,” writes C. S. Lewis, “had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful.”

This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are.

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.

The other problem is that pandering doesn’t address the real reason boys won’t read. My own experience with six sons is that even the squirmiest boy does not require lurid or vulgar material to sustain his interest in a book.

So why won’t boys read? The AP story drops a clue when it describes the efforts of one frustrated couple with their 13-year-old unlettered son: “They’ve tried bribing him with new video games.” Good grief.

The appearance of the boy-girl literacy gap happens to coincide with the proliferation of video games and other electronic forms of entertainment over the last decade or two. Boys spend far more time “plugged in” than girls do. Could the reading gap have more to do with competition for boys’ attention than with their supposed inability to focus on anything other than outhouse humor?

Dr. Robert Weis, a psychology professor at Denison University, confirmed this suspicion in a randomized controlled trial of the effect of video games on academic ability. Boys with video games at home, he found, spend more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffers substantially. Hard to believe, isn’t it, but Science has spoken.

The secret to raising boys who read, I submit, is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

People who think that a book—even R.L. Stine’s grossest masterpiece—can compete with the powerful stimulation of an electronic screen are kidding themselves. But on the level playing field of a quiet den or bedroom, a good book like “Treasure Island” will hold a boy’s attention quite as well as “Zombie Butts from Uranus.” Who knows—a boy deprived of electronic stimulation might even become desperate enough to read Jane Austen.

Most importantly, a boy raised on great literature is more likely to grow up to think, to speak, and to write like a civilized man. Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter’s husband—Raymond Bean or Robert Louis Stevenson?

I offer a final piece of evidence that is perhaps unanswerable: There is no literacy gap between home-schooled boys and girls. How many of these families, do you suppose, have thrown grossology parties?

Mr. Spence is president of Spence Publishing Company in Dallas.

 

Schedules Are For Serving

I’ve been making my way through Steve and Teri Maxwell’s “Manager’s of Their Homes” and have been challenged to think more biblically about the subject of routine and schedules. I’ve tended, until more recently, to think that schedules were associated with personality and those “Type A” people. But if you look close enough, the Bible is pretty clear about how our lives are to be ordered. Even in studying God’s very nature, we see that He is a God of order rather than chaos. He is a God who makes the sun rise and fall routinely every day. He gives us seasons in consistent pattern and He even had an order to how He created things from the beginning.

The Maxwell’s write,

” Not managing our homes is one reason the enemy would have opportunity to slander us and our ministry. It is a poor testimony to always be sinking under the burden of our home workload. Have you known mothers who looked tired and worn when you saw them? Their faces did not indicate they were joyful mothers of children or tell of Jesus. Scheduling is a key to gaining victory over our circumstances and time usage.  It is within the ability and grasp of every woman who would decide to follow this path. As mother’s, we want to learn to be home managers versus victims of circumstances.”

It seems so many mother’s live their lives as “victims of their own circumstances.”  I know I’ve found myself in this place before. Whether it’s having children close together, having them in “less than ideal” seasons of your life – or even playing the victim by trying to be overly in control of when and how many etc., it’s is ever-so-easy to fall prey to living as a victim rather than confidently claiming God’s call on us each individually in our own unique circumstances and living out a joyful example to a watching world.

As our girls get older (and with another baby on the way), I see the need more and more for routine. Of course a balance is necessary (as with all things in life) but there is beautiful purpose in implementing schedule into our home lives when done with love and grace.

“The Lord has given us each the same number of hours in our day and responsibilities which we must fulfill during this time.  We can always be driven by the urgent, or we can take control of our days. We can set aside time for not only the responsibilities but also those God-given “heart desires.” Scheduling allows for all of these to happen. Our time is our most valuable asset, but we must take charge of how it is used.”

I realize that this Biblical view is highly controversial to the culture we live in. It seems “the thing to do” now a days (and even decades ago!) was to follow your child’s lead, also known as “child directed parenting.” We know many Christian families that are struggling from the consequences of this theology of parenting. They live frazzled lives, tired, worn and excusing the sin of their children for “stages” and personalities and the like. While these things should be taken into consideration, sin is still sin and we try to steer clear of the “terrible two” mindset that allows for our little ones to thrown temper tantrums on the floor without being corrected. Believe it or not, scheduling can be a beautiful way to allow children to feel secure in their homes and to help reduce bad behavior that is often associated with boredom and lack of lead and direction on the parent’s part. I’ve seen this in our own family life – where I haven’t been wise and led my children well into routine, and I take responsibility for their sin, as a result.

Successful scheduling can be implemented from the very beginning – with babies in their first weeks of life. Schedules aren’t just for home school families either. They can be beautifully written into families with small children all the way up to families with teenagers.  I’m still learning what works best for us and it can feel a little overwhelming to consider the responsibilities God has given me with 3 little girls.  I know for sure, if I don’t begin to get even more intentional than I have been in the past – precious opportunities will pass me by, because some of them already have. I want to be faithful with the time I’ve been given to manage my home and trust the Lord to do the rest.

I encourage you, my friends, to humbly consider this as well. This can be a touchy subject. But it’s not about you or me and “methods.” It’s about redeeming our time and reflecting a God of order and peace in the process…

 

Nurture In Your Nature?

Mothering is at the essence of womanhood, writes Barbara Hughes,  author of Disciplines of a Godly Woman. It’s in our very nature, isn’t it? You can see it in the little girl who cradles a baby doll, in the pre-teen who longs for a puppy or a kitten to cherish and care for, in the college girl who dreams of getting married and having children one day, in the barren woman who sheds thousands of tears in anguish over the thought of never being able to hold a newborn of her own flesh and blood, in the middle-aged woman who takes in her sick mother and cares for her,  and in the grand-mother whose heart bleeds a deep and nurturing love for the generations poured out from the seed of nurture she first bore.

Women’s God-given nurturing nature is not limited too bearing children. In fact, it is so much more. We as women are to cultivate nurturing spirits whether married or single in a world where that cultivation is almost a lost art.  Mrs. Hughes reminds us that “Nurturing is my responsibility before God as a human being and in particular because I am a female. The context for where and how I will care for others will be dictated by where God places me- in a home, in a school, in a hospital, in the inner-city, wherever. Someday I will answer to God for how I nurtured life on this planet.”

Living as nurturing women is definitely no easy feat. Our feminist drenched culture tells us otherwise. And surprisingly enough, this isn’t apparently anything new to our culture. In 1970 , Germaine Greer , icon of 20th century feminism,  wrote that “women should view motherhood as a handicap and pregnancy as an illness.” She urged women to be “deliberately promiscuous” and to be certain not to conceive children. Turns out, Greer later confessed “ waiting with vast joy and confidence for something that will never happen” (speaking of not being able to have a baby) and after caring for the infant daughter of a friend she later wrote, “Ruby lit up my life in a way that nobody, certainly no lover, has ever done. I was not prepared for the incandescent sensuality of this small child, the generosity of her innocent love.”

Germaine Greer couldn’t run from the nurturing nature God placed deep within her. If we are not careful, we, too, can let the lies of culture creep in our hearts and dull the intense fire of the nature of nurture God has designed us with. Whether it is staying at home, adopting, teaching, practicing nursing – whatever it is that God has called us women to, single or married – we must be careful to cultivate the nature of nurture in our lives and to pass it on to the next generation of women to come.

 

More than just green beer?

Don’t get me wrong, we like a good can of beer every now and then but really, is this what we’ve boiled St. Patrick’s day down too? A glass of green beer?

St. Patricks day is actually a Christian holiday(shocking I know!). Blows my mind how it’s become nothing more than another opportunity to hit the bars. I’ll be honest, for many years growing up, I really had no idea what it meant other then you wore green to school. But it’s truly been captivating and heart-pricking to discover the true meaning to a holiday that we celebrate year after year. And, rightly so. Celebrated it should be!

We plan on wearing green (Ashtyn already has her green outfit picked out for tomorrow), and eating Irish Soda bread, and maybe even hitting a parade downtown….but we also plan on spending the morning reading a biography on St. Patrick, stopping to thank God for the person he was and HIS work in this man’s life. We will do a couple of picture studies of St. Patrick and maybe even some copy work revolving around him.  Here’s a little something to stir your mind and hopefully to help you gain a true appreciation for a man who was more than a leprechaun but, instead,  who is said to be “the greatest missionary of all time.”

The Real St. Patrick
By Charles Mack, Campus Crusade for Christ
Lansing, Michigan

Most American Christians are unaware of the true story of St. Patrick. He was one of
the greatest missionaries of all time, evangelizing all of Ireland, and then training up
leaders who went to a Europe that had fallen into the Dark Ages after the collapse of the
Roman Empire. Patrick’s disciples re-evangelized all of Europe. This certainly gives us
a REAL reason to celebrate this Saturday.

Born in 389 in England, Magonus Sucatus Patricius expressed little interest in God as a
child. God, however, had big plans for this son of a deacon and grandson of a priest. In
405 Irish raiders attacked Wales, searching for plunder and captives. Sixteen-year-old
Patrick and hundreds of others were dragged aboard ships. Once in port in Ireland, the
marauders herded the captives off the boats to the slave market. A man named Milchu
bought Patrick. While other boys his age learned Latin, he tended sheep.

During his captivity, Patrick embraced a personal faith. “And there the Lord opened the
sense of my unbelief,” he said, “that I might at last remember my sins and be converted
with all my heart to the Lord my God.” After six years of slavery, Patrick dreamt that a
ship lay waiting in port to take him home. Now 22, he ran away from Milchu, made his
way to the ship and eventually returned to Britain.

Soon after his reunion with his family, Patrick had his most famous vision. He saw a man
walking toward him over a sea. The man held out a letter, the first words of which were,
“The voice of the Irish.” Then, as if from all around, Patrick heard the cries of those he
had come to know during his Irish captivity. “We beseech thee holy youth,” they
pleaded, “to come and walk once more amongst us.” Taking this as a call from God to
bring the gospel to his former captors, Patrick left Britain-this time of his own volition-to
start the process that ultimately resulted in appointment as Bishop to Ireland.

Around 432 Patrick again set foot on Irish soil. “He gathered people around him in the
open fields and preached Christ to them,” writes biographer Elgin Moyer. “His burning
zeal, deep sincerity and gentleness of manner won peasants and nobility alike.” Milchu,
his former slave master, was one of his first converts. Patrick knew from his years of
slavery that if he could win tribal chieftains to Christ, the rest of the tribe would follow.
Through there is no proof of this, legend says that Patrick used a shamrock to explain
the Trinity to one of these local lords. Not surprisingly, he met with substantial
opposition from the druid magician-priests of Celtic Ireland. Legend says that Patrick
battled them using what we would now call “power encounters.” There are stories of him
raising the dead and causing the earth to swallow up his enemies.
Although he was painfully aware of his poor Latin and rusticity, tradition has it that
Patrick founded hundreds of churches, monasteries, and schools, and baptized 100,000
converts. After nearly 30 years of ministry, he retired to the Irish village of Saul where
he wrote his Confession and, on March 17th, 461, died.

When the dust settled from the collapse of the Roman Empire, one of the few Christian
communities in the world with any vitality was the Irish church, founded by Patrick. The
task of re-evangelizing England and parts of continental Europe fell to the Christians of Ireland. David Burnett, author of Dawning of the Pagan Moon writes that “while Europe was entering its Dark Ages the Celtic church began to send out its most adventurous as missionaries.” The most famous of these,
Columba, settled on the small island of Iona with twelve companions. The monastery
they founded became the center of missions to Scotland. These missions eventually moved south to the rest of England.

Patrick is no leprechaun. He stands in history as the apostle to Ireland, just as Paul was
an apostle. This March 17th, let’s not forget the real Patrick. Kidnapped from his home
and sold as a slave. He was called by God to take the name of Jesus and a hearty dose
of forgiveness to his former captors. Used of God to start hundreds of churches and
lead thousands of people to Christ. “Is it my own doing that I have holy mercy on the
people who once took me captive?” said Patrick. “What I am I have received from God.
And so I live among barbarians a stranger and exile for the love of God.”

© Living Books Curriculum, all rights reserved.

 

If i had it all

If I had it all, I would be a mess. Because having it all, means leaving a Savior behind. “In all your music and dancing and wine and luxury, is there nothing?” (Charles Spurgeon) You can take it all away, but you can’t take away Jesus.

Some call us foolish, even crazy, because our family of 5 lives in a 1300 sq. ft. rental house, we raise support for some of our income and drive 2 cars that are not our own. We are living against the grain of culture. Opposite of the “American Dream.” Yes, foolish to the world but oh, the world doesn’t know the blessing found in not having it all… and,sadly, even many Christians in our own circles have not yet experienced this enormous gift.

If I had it all, I’m afraid I would be lost. Lost in my own selfishness. The awareness that I don’t have it all is like the perfect medicine. A salve for an aching soul. In it there is great freedom and hope.

Dear reader, you needn’t try other forms of life in order to see whether they are better than the Christian’s: if you roam the world over, you will see no sights like a sight of the Savior’s face; even if you were to have all the comforts of life, you would be wretched if you lost your Savior; but if you win Christ, then even if you were to rot in prison, you would find it a paradise; if you were to live in obscurity or die with famine, you still would be satisfied with favor and full of the goodness of the Lord.

If I had it all, I’d miss out indeed. So I make the choice to not want it all. And I make the even greater, more difficult choice to not have it all. I choose to say no. I choose to deny myself of feeding the wanting within. And as we approach this Christmas season, I find beauty not in things, but in the person of my Lord who has given me all – all that I need or could ever hope for…

yes, I have found it ALL!

 

Battle Reminder

What I love most about the homeschooling lifestyle is that we are all together, in all our glorious mess, day in and day out. We are not time-torn or fragmented. We are gathered. There is no dichotomy between God and secular: we are making a one-piece life. We are real, transparent, and growing –sometimes painfully– with each other, season upon season, and God is in the center, bathing us sin-scraped ones with His Grace. That’s rich. (Ann Voskamp)

Home Education.  It’s a way of life we have chosen to live. I battle often those negative reminders of a vast majority of people in our lives and culture who perceive it as such a foreign thing.  We often have to sacrifice being mis-understood and mis-judged in a culture where there will always remain the battle reminder that schooling at home is the odd choice.  Nevertheless, our arrows go forth in the conviction that we are doing for our precious little ones what we feel is best at this moment as we walk a life living worthy of the Gospel.

I’ve mentioned before that Charlotte Mason is one of my heroes. She isn’t alive today but there is another woman whom I believe resembles a modern-day Charlotte Mason. We share a similar heart and vision. And when I often ponder that battle reminder in my heart, I remember why we have chosen the lesser path,

Because homeschooling is this magnificent crucible, to reveal impurities and sinfulness and brokenness. It keeps us on our knees. Homeschooling often hurts and disappoints. You cry and wonder if you are insane to try to educate these children, to disciple these little hearts, while laundering, cooking, cleaning, managing a household, and still being a wife, a sister, a daughter, a missionary in your community, a servant to Christ and in your faith community. And He smiles and say that He walks with you, has grand and glorious purposes, and He understands radical and crazy!

Homeschooling is about going higher up and deeper in, for you learn to sacrificially love in ways you have never loved before. You come to know your own heart in ways you never imagined, the souls of your children in intimate, very real ways.
For you will be together, making memories together, laughing together, crying together, praying together, and asking forgiveness together. Throughout your day, you worship God, together. And you learn to die-to-self together. It’s about doing hard things… together. And there will be no fragmented scraps of learning, home-life, friends, work, God.

And so I find deep and abiding joy in that which God has called us to and I’ve known no other greater joy – even as we go against the sandy grain of culture. It’s a battle reminder worth battling…

 

The why of schooling at home

I’ll be honest. I’ve dreaded this post. I promised it a long time ago and I’ve been avoiding it in fear of being mis-judged, mis-understood and viewed as the person who shakes a finger at those who have chosen a different path for their child’s education. This is going to be short and sweet and it is my prayer that you know our family does not stand in judgement of you or anyone else who chooses something different. But we do stand before a God who expects us to obey Him and to “go against the grain” of our culture at times in order to be a voice for the children who are the next generation.

The reason why we chose to home school is simple. For this moment in time, we believe God has called us to it. And just as God has called the missionary to take the Gospel to the native in the jungle, He has called us in this season of our lives to walk alongside the little people He has blessed us with- education and all. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay say’s it best in her book “For The Children’s Sake,”

If Christianity is indeed true, then every last little child matters. Bright to dull, privileged or from any variety of troubled background, each is valuable. Persons Matter. Let us really and truely be courageous. Much of what follows goes against the daily pattern of most lives. It’s interesting to read about, but it will remain as so many words on a page if we cannot do what we know is right. One day we will stand before the Creator. Were we willing to give, serve, and sacrifice ‘for the children’s sake?’

And this, my friends, is why we’ve chosen to school at home. We don’t know the way, but we know our Guide. And He’s faithful, O so faithful…

 

A Word from Jay Smooth

I heard this guy on NPR’s All Things Considered on the way home from work  today and decided to check out his site ill doctrine.  ill Doctrine is a hip-hop video blog hosted by Jay Smooth, creator of the hip hop music blog and founder of New York’s longest running hip-hop radio show, WBAI’s Underground Railroad.

I may not agree with everything that is on his blog but he does have some good words to say about understanding folks we want to reach with the Gospel.  Check out the 3 minute video here titled “iphones and churches (Part 2).”

By the way, I think his first suggestion is the best.  Kev