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Joy and the results of Anne of Green Gables You Tube

Today, August 22, we received a comment on our blog from Sullivan Entertainment. They evidently sent a letter to our P.O. Box also. Over three hundred girls competed in the audition and they thanked all the girls for auditioning, and wished them good luck. Evidently, the youtube voting was not a consideration in their decision. The new movie should be  a fun family show. Good Luck to Sullivan Ent!

However, as I was thinking and praying about how to communicate this information to so many kindred spirits who took time to vote, I want to tell you that Joy had a blast doing the video and then receiving so many wonderful comments. Thanks to each of you who took time to vote. I can’t believe just how many kindred spirits there are out there and how thoughtful so many of you were to vote. Joy received almost 9000 views and so many wonderful comments and ratings because you took time to support her! You are truly wonderful and a blessing to us!

I do want to say, however, that our family has been blessed by literally hundreds of hours of very excellent, high quality entertainment by some of the productions of Sullivan Entertainment. We feel that Anne of Green Gables is practically one of our personal friends. I would also like to thank Sullivan entertainment for taking the time and money to produce such wonderful videos with great morality and good family values in a time when so few people have produced such quality entertainment. The Road to Avonlea is a 7 year series that we first saw many years ago. We have all 7 seasons and almost have them memorized. I would highly encourage any of you who are seeking great productions to try these out. You can find out more information about them by going to Sullivanmovies.com. (or look for more information below) Joy and Clay and I wish the best to Sullivan entertainment and hope that the new movies turns out great!Thanks so much for all of your support!

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Getting Back to Basics

Seems that fall is whizzing toward me, as I try to squeeze every ounce of this beautiful Colorado weather out of each day. For me, our school year begins very soon, as I coop classes start next Tuesday and I begin to teach a speech-leadership course for the children Joy’s age–middle school. So, we will begin our regular schooling, too, as I will be taking a couple of speaking trips this fall and I don’t want to get behind.

I have pondered, lately, what I observe in many of the children that I meet along the way, how they reflect their mother’s philosophy of education and life. If you don’t start with the end in mine–what you want to see produced in your children’s lives, then you won’t build the right things along the way. I see so many sweet young moms going to these homeschooling fairs and piling themselves up with all sorts of colorful curriculum and work books–and even other moms who think they will accomplish their goals by using videos. Yet, the pioneering spirit of homeschooling, seems to be lost and I see the choice of these materials having an ill effect on so many children.

One of the problems of homeschooling today, is that it became big business and so all sorts of companies developed materials to tempt moms, who have so many feelings of inadequacy, to buy. The more of these curriculums a moms buys, the more stress she is putting on herself, because she will surely expand her feelings of inadequacy each month because of all the pages of assignments she will not finish. Multiplying guilt and inadequacy is never a formula for success in my book. More options does not necessarily mean more excellence. Now I do think that there  countless ways to homeschool and I have included many options over the years. I have especially benefited from being in homeschooling support groups and being involved in some of the activities and coop classes offered, especially when my children were older.

Yet, I see that those things that were the best choices, before all the homeschooling choices came, are still the best subject material to choose as the core of educating–great works of literature, classical music and art, original sources of history and animal, and nature stories, with a very basic math curriculum. Good healthy meals, sweet innocent pretend and play time, reading outloud for hours and hours, playing games together–celebrating and enjoying the seasons and moments of normal life, is the essence of life well-lived.  More choices just confuse and complicate our lives and fragment them.

Just because we now have hundreds of channels on television doesn’t mean the quality of shows has improved–more doesn’t always mean better. This is also true of education. Plying your life with myriad activities and opportunities and lessons and classes are costly in time, money, and peace. Choosing wisely a few focussed activities, and choosing the make home the center and priority of a mom’s life is the wisest, most historically and classically soothing way to build peace in the home and godly character in a child. (Do I need to say, don’t answer every phone call and turn off the t.v.?)

Clay and I had dinner with some dear friends the other night, who like us, have raised older children and launched them into the world as well as having young children in our home. Their children are lovely adults, one a nurse at John Hopkin’s Hospital in Baltimore and another, a lawyer working in Los Angelos. Both are outstanding in moral character, both love and serve the Lord and are making a difference in their worlds.

I asked my friend what she thought the difference was in what we were doing on our homes and what was different about most homeschooling moms today. She said that we were, above all, committed to being the personal mentors in our children’s lives–reading along with them, studying scripture together, serving alongside our children in ministry situations, working at chores and life side by side.  I realized how true this was. There is no substitute for a mom diving into great thoughts, with her children, and passionately discussing these together. If one of our primary goals for our children is to inspire them to love learning and to give them a passion about knowing and learning and creating, then this passion is caught when taught by a living, breathing, responsive person. No child or adult can get as much inspiration, personal attention or focussed attention from a video or online school. Now I am not saying that these things cannot be employed for some of the education or for a few subjects in which a mom and child can benefit from the expertise of others (and mainly in the high school years or for math tables or language study).

But, if we replace the love and care and encouragement and passion that comes from a mother’s heart to her children with a machine, we cannot expect to have the same heart and character results. Jesus’ impact on his disciples was because of the personal heart and mind and relationship and life time He had with His disciples. Can you imagine Him putting them on a video and telling them, “At the end of this multimedia course, you will be expected to give up your life for the cause of my Father, who is in heaven.” No, indeed. They gave their lives for His cause because He loved His own and shared His whole life with them. He befriended them, cared for them, instructed them. (This is the foundation of my book, The Ministry of Motherhood, which can be ordered through our website.) Your children are pre-wired to looking to you for love and approval and inspiration and care–they want you most of all. Your heart, your imagination, your joy, your love, your direction. May God so fill your heart, and give rest to your body, so that you will always have the resources from His Holy Spirit, from which your precious ones may have life to draw from.

I have included a year old blog entry from last year below that might be of some encouragement to some of you as you ponder your year. Be sure to look at my article on Itakejoy.wordpress.com for my other article this week about finding joy in the midst of the duties and stress, as therein lies the secret of life!

Focussing on the Essentials

I have spent the last several weeks speaking at conferences. I constantly meet moms who are trying to homeschool the best way and be sure that their children get it “all”. How blessed your children are to have you as their moms. However, I want to encourage each of you to relax. Homes have been the place where genius has been birthed, leaders have been made for thousands of years. It was because of the faithful mothers who have trained their children in character, given them chores to do, had discussions over the dinner meal, and read the Bible to their children. I feel so strongly that parents are so intent on getting the “best” experience in education, while not understanding that the most important aspect in a child’s education is the mentoring and directing of the parents over the personality, influences, peer relationships, and character development.

So many moms have asked me, “Do you know about this or that two day a week school and how it works and if it will help my child educationally?” I have lived through three of my children graduating and I have seen amazing results in their lives even though we didn’t have perfect school days or have consistent schedules. (Seventeen moves, six times internationally, car accidents, illnesses, etc.) Yet, my children have scored at the top on their SAT’s, received scholarships or pursued other areas in the arts and ministry where they were able to excell. What is the most important to me, though, is that, by God’s grace, our children still love us and listen to us and love the Lord and are seeking Him.

I have been to several national and international leadership conferences in the past year and am sick to find out the statistics of the youth culture—79% of children who grew up in Christian homes leave their Christian faith when they go to college. The appalling statistics of youth who are still virgins by the age of 17 is beyond comprehension. These were just statistics to me until they started turning up in my basement–our kids rec room–friends of my children who had grown up in church and some in homeschool groups who were in tears, confessing to my boys that they were sleeping with their Christian girlfriends and didn’t know how to stop and feeling guilty. With the rampant sexuality on tv and on the web and the immoral standards of movies, and the leisure time that children have with other children who are not monitored in their homes–and in your neighborhood, I must say—puts pressure on your children to want to conform and places temptation in their pathway. So the question of schools or not depends on what peers they will become heart connected to–what morals the people in the school have, how emotionally attatched they become to those in the school that could lead their heart astray.

In other words, focussing on educational classes primarily is, as I have said in my conferences, “straightening the picture on a wall of a house that is burning down.”

Your goal in education is reaching their heart, filling their emotional cup, teaching them moral foundations, capturing their vision for life for the kingdom of God, teaching them what it looks like to walk through difficult times while holding tight to the hand of God. May God grant you understanding and faith to follow these paths and to raise up a strong generation for Him.

As you begin this year, take time to get away with the Lord. Ask Him, Lord, what is your overall plan for me as I direct my home life? What attitudes do I need to correct in my own life? What are the deepest needs and issues for each of my children at this stage? What do I want to have as the end product of my life with them when they become young adults? What must I plan this year to build toward those goals.

Blessings!

Sally

Building Foundations

Foundations

“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels, the world is all gone strange… how shall a man judge what to do in such times?” said Eomer.
“As he ever has judged,” said Aragorn. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.” (J.R.R. Tolkien in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)

The feelings of being in a storybook tale filled my soul. Riding on a gently swaying train that wound through a small hallway surrounded by the Austrian Alps made me feel like I was Heidi on my way to untold adventures. The train whistle blew several times, warning of its arrival to a tiny hamlet of a thousand year old, Austrian village that had literally been built on a mountain. The train pulled abruptly to a halt and the conductor pointed in the direction of me and my friend Gwen and said, “Austagen!” “Get off!” This was our destination. The door of our train opened to a tiny eight foot platform that was connected to stairs that slanted downward toward a dock on the crystal clear lake. There waiting for us was a small boat with a captain, white-bearded and jolly, haling us onward.

We struggled down the steps with suitcases and handbags in tow and giggled as we stepped into this small, bouncing boat. It was a part of the railway system and the only way to get to the small town without a car. As we jostled gently in the water put-putting across the lake, we saw the panorama of the village, literally circled about by tall, soaring mountains and this crystal-clear, blue frigid lake. As we approached the shore of the village, we turned back to see from where we had come. Nestled into the side of a mountain was a very old, castle-like rock home standing boldly against the shear incline of the ancient mountain.

Settling in quickly to our small room at a family inn, we chose to have dinner on a porch side restaurant that looked out over the lake. The quiet and beauty of the hidden village, seemed to clothe our spirits with peace. Lingering and soaking in the solitude as we watched the sun set behind the shadow of the far mountain kept us as we were being slowly overcome by the chill evening air.
Anxious to rise early the next day for hiking and exploring, we went to bed early for a good night sleep.
Sometime, in the dark of the night, I was awakened suddenly by a booming rumble of thunder. I remember opening my eyes and trying to grasp what was going on. The room was darker than I remembered and suddenly the room lit up with a close flash of lightening, after which all was pitch dark again. As I slowly came to my senses, I realized that it was pouring down rain, coming sideways in sheets of pounding rain. There were no lights in the whole view out of our window–just torrents of blowing rain. Again the lightening invaded our darkness and we could see down below that the very chairs in which we had been lounging in on the deck of the restaurant, were floating now in the lake and the deck of the restaurant was covered with water, almost up to the doorway of the first floor. As we looked out fearfully toward the lake, the lightening flashed again. In the momentary light, we observed that the rain and the lake seemed almost to join in the frenzied wind and storm blowing and swirling in all directions. Yet there was a dark form, the only thing in our eyesight, that was not moving–that was standing placidly still in one of the fiercest storms I had ever witnessed. It was the small castle that had been built on the rock almost 800 years before.
The next morning, the crisp, clear sky was as though it had been recently washed and set out to dry. Debris from the storm–floating pieces of wood, deck chairs, leaves cluttered the water. As we breakfasted in a small cafe, we asked about the small castle we had observed the night before. “It is the only house that has stayed through hundreds of years of such storms. It is a familiar icon to all of the families who have lived here for generations–a promise that life will go on in our small town, even amidst the mountain storms.
What a picture this became to me over the years of what I wanted our family to portray–strength, soundness, stability–a fortress of all that is beautiful, good, true in the midst of a culture filled with the storms of post-modernism, godlessness, idolatry, immorality, shallowness of commitment, vanity. We have pictured and prayed that our home would be an unmovable fortress of truth and a haven of righteousness for all who would come here.
However, amidst the traveling I have done to so many places, I have observed that many sweet moms are committed to doing the best with their children, and yet flounder in building a foundation. The distraction of school goals get in the way of spiritual and life goals. Yet, since I have three older children who have forayed into life, I have seen that they have been met with challenge after challenge to their faith, morality, beliefs, values with onslaught after onslaught. By God’s grace and prayer, so far they have been able to retain their faith, and grow in their love for God and His ways and they are all standing in the midst of the cultural storms to forge their own messages and stands in their young adulthood. But, i think it is because of the foundations that they, like the little castle on the mountain, have as a secure base from which to withstand the storms. I could write a whole book on the topic, but for the moment, I want to just outline several areas of foundation that I think must be established. Perhaps I will elaborate on these when I have more time. So many times, mothers of teenagers have told me, “I wish I had worked harder on my relationship with my children and on their character and on their convictions, instead of worrying so much about the other stuff. I am so afraid we have lost our child. He is turning away from our beliefs.”

Now, we all need to pray for each other and do our best and resist guilt or legalism. I have suffered through some seasons myself just hoping our children would not fall away. I, like Job, find myself constantly in the presence of God, praying for the souls of my children, lest they be tempted to fall away from pleasing  God. Yet, I just wish, that as a young mother I had realized how very  important it was to really focus above all else on my children’s hearts and souls.  So these are a few priorities I have evaluated for myself as the areas I consider more important than the other goals.

1. The Word of God Psalm 119: 99-101 tells us of a secret that is available to any person who is diligent. “Thy commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditations. I understand more than the aged, because I have observed Thy precepts.”

In this verse, we can understand that our children can be even wiser than those who have written books, than those who have PHD’s. They can be wiser, because the Word of God has the only real truth. Yet, we must love the word of God ourselves and be bathing in it. (I devoted a whole chapter to this in the Mom Walk. You may order it from Whole Heart–if you order ten books for a study this month, you will receive the CD set for free. But you must call in the order 800-311-2146. Please wait a few days to give us time to get back in the office.)
Children need a foundation of the word. Their little minds are much more supple and can memorize chapters and chapters of the Bible. When I was in college, some friends and I committed a lot of scripture to memory and to this day, it is what God uses to speak to me when I need to hear from Him.
2. Foundations of Morality and Righteous living must be established in order for our children to know how to find their way through the maze of lies promoted in our culture. Postmodernism is a contemporary way of thinking that deconstructs the traditional values and ways of living life. My daughter, Sarah, posted the above quotation from the Lord of the Rings, when two of the men of the fellowship of the rings found themselves in a topsy-turvy world where everything was coming apart–fragmented–confusing. Yet, Aragorn rightly said that goodness has not changed since the beginning of time, we must hold onto it–in our homes, in the media we allow ourselves to watch, in the books we read.
Children need to first know what moral law and goodness is before they can choose it when they are young adults. The ten commandments, our base values–like in our Biblical Values Devotions The 24 Family Ways. A child needs to have a secure sense of “what we in our family hold as sacred and will build our lives upon.”
3. Children need a solid foundation of love and healthy relationships. I have been studying Matthew 6-8 in my meditation upon foundations. Jesus profoundly devotes most of His words to our relationship with people and our relationship with Him above all else. He talks about forgiveness, not judging, not being angry or adulterous in our hearts, about being a peace maker, gentle,
trusting, praying seeking. Jesus said, “They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.” I really have seen that though my children have passed through many cultural storms, it is because of the great love and friendship we have cultivated with them–a foundation of deep love and intimacy–that they have come to regard our opinions, our ideas and wisdom about life. In the same way that Jesus gave his life up for the disiciples, we have sought to give up our own lives in service of our children. They are all old enough to see our flaws and to know our weaknesses, but they see Clay and me as the champions for their lives, the ones who believe in them, the ones who serve them and support them. Family is that culture through which God designed such strong ties to be forged, that these relationships would provide strength, comfort, direction for all of life.

As I begin a new year with my children, I am pondering, once again, just how I may continue to build and fortify foundations so that this house, the Clarkson house, may be truly founded upon the rock!

Story–Providing a Pattern for Greatness

Story–The Pattern for Greatness

“In the beginning, …” or “Once upon a time, …” causes us to sit up in anticipation to the promise of an adventure to come, a mystery, a heroic life to walk with down the pathways of destiny. We are pre-wired for story. We love to hear of tales of people who captivate our imagination or touch our hearts, tickle our fancy or inspire out souls, so that we, in turn, can find comfort in our own lives, courage to live life unselfishly and valiantly, models of people who show us how to live, hope that gives us the ability to endure our own darkness with grace. The story of a life well-lived fuels our own deep desire to live well and to be faithful. Because each of us needs to know that our lives matter–that God is paying attention to our prayers, that if we keep choosing to have integrity and sacrificing ourselves for others–that it really will matter. And when we hear the stories of those, who like us, live the majority of our lives in anonymous mundanity, and yet seem to accomplish a semblance of significance through their faithfulness, it lends meaning to our own tedious days. The Bible itself is a whole collection of such stories. The Old Testament gives stories that tie together the thread of man’s creation and rebellion and struggling to learn to walk in relationship with God. First, God’s own story is a true epoch story–The Great King who created the whole world in beauty and majesty and gave it as a gift to two beloved creatures. The creatures rebelled against his mandates and bowed their knee to a wicked ruler, who deceived them and led them and their children into a kingdom of darkness. The King, from the very first, planned on doing whatever it took to redeem them back to His love, His provision and His kingdom–in the end costing Him the life of the one true Prince, His only beloved son. But in the end, the King did indeed conquer and restore all the glory of the previous kingdom and more. He ushered all of His children there, including His son, who showed that true life and light is stronger than any darkness the world could hold. It is a wonderful story, a heart-filling and truly redeeming story.

History leads us to the lives of people who lived, real heroes. These are stories that show us how to have integrity and how to make difficult choices of self-sacrifice, faith, love, service. One of the privileges of my life, during this season, is that I get the opportunity to delight in my children’s souls and in who they have become. For many years, I have idealized, trained, taught, encouraged, corrected, inspired and shared words upon words of what I hoped would be excellence, wisdom, truth. Much of this was given to my children in the form of story. Recently, Sarah, 23, my oldest child, wrote a blog article this week about her thoughts as she was sitting in a great cathedral in England. She was pondering the stories of those lives who were commemorated in the cathedral in which she sat.( itinerantidealist.wordpress.com ). She pondered, “For though silent, the very presence of those countless, waiting faces set a call upon my thought; how, o soul of mine, will you live, when such as we have walked before you? The mere sight of them in their storied forms reminded me of who I was and what I was called to do. I remembered again that I do not walk alone in this thing called faith; that many have gone before me, and some will come behind and they are all of them waiting, watching, to see with what mettle I will live the portion of my days. These witnesses demand of me a goodness that I have at times forgotten. And in their faces, I have found a grace. An extra bit of reason in the living well of these slow days. I carried the faces of those saints and angels with me even as I left the church. They walk with me and call to me. They are, in a way, my witnesses.
As Sarah said, stories remind us of our history, our heritage. They inspire us to live up to the potential we have, of the choices we need to make. Saints and martyrs feed the fuel of my heart to live as well during the short span of my own life–to live faithfully a story that will give others a life to emulate.
Then there are other tales, fiction stories that are fun, winsome, feed our souls with characters who become friends in print. Fiction gives us models for how we want to live life, who open the windows of our lives to other worlds yet unexperienced. Through these tales our brain is required to paint picture of places and events into which we are drawn along with the characters. I have spent many an hour in the company of a book friend, who endeared me to their heart and walked me with them in adventure and story–so much so that when I came to the end of their story or the book that contained them, I would often feel lonely or miss my book friends. One such story for all the girls in our family, was Anne of Green Gables. Sarah and I have read the whole series. I loved seeing this lovely orphan lead us through adventure, sorrow, love, marriage, motherhood, disasters of war and into mellower seasons of perspective. (Rilla of Ingleside is one of our family’s favorite stories about World War I.) I love the Anne stories particularly because she represents to me a spiritual reality–she fosters light and beauty and goodness in her heart on the inside where she retreats–even when she is surrounded by despair, darkness or rejection. Often, she circles those who are cranky or critical around with her love and care and wins them over. What a great picture of graciousness for my daughters who are surrounded by sarcasm and deprecating humor every day. I want my children to learn to bring civilization and order and grace back into their worlds, the grace they learn from such novels.

We have read literally hundreds and hundreds of such stories which I intentionally chose, so that the souls of all of my children would be filled with the treasures of lives lived well. I chose those who lived in excellence, in creativity, service, courage, so that my sweet ones might have the opportunity to engage their minds and imaginations in the lives of such persons as we read together. I knew that that such images would fill their souls with models, patterns of people who they could then follow, as they made personal decisions for their own lives. Reading hundreds of books and stories occupied literally thousands of hours and a commitment on my part to invest in their souls and intellects this way. I knew that I was placing jewels in the treasure-chest of their souls that would provide value for them the rest of their lives.

In today’s culture, however, media occupies so much of the time children spend at home. Television, which is filled with vulgar and immoral commercials; shows with unnecessary violence, people who are broken and model compromise, not only causes their brains to be passive, but validates the values, materialism, appetites and morality of our culture without reservation or explanation. It also provides no heroes to emulate, but rather, many very mediocre lives filled with crassness, humor, crude values and shallow souls. These models have replaced those of the real live heroes who used to call us to a standard of excellence. Game boys, with action packed images, that have the effect of shortening the brain span and portray violence as a norm of the fast action heroes, and further undermine our children’s ability to imagine and pretend the real life people who have lived valiantly throughout history. Instead of self-sacrifice and moral character being the foundation of our children’s lives, teeny-bopper movie stars and wealthy sports heroes fill their hearts with dreams of becoming famous or wealthy. Such unrealistic expectations set up a get rich quick foundation as a hope for life, which seems to further undermine hard work and steadfastness. Immediate gratification is the expected norm–I want what I want now and don’t want anyone to tell me to wait. These values are very unrealistic for most, and yet cultivates more material longings that look for more and more experiences and things to fill their lonely, non-relational lives.

Many moms have asked me how my older children ended up so articulate and creative and filled with passion and conviction. It is because I chose the heroes they would know, I put aside my personal priorities in order to make their life education flourish and grow. I took time to play with them, discuss with them, and read with them. My goal wasn’t a good SAT score, (though that is a natural outcome of excellent education!) My goal was to give them a deep heart and soul filled with a love and passion for all things good. After reading these grand adventures, I provided dressers full of costumes collected from good will, grandmas old clothes, hats, and capes roughly made from my own hands. With swords and dolls and outdoors, my children then pretended to be those great ones about whom we read, further undergirding the reality of these people’s lives deeply in their souls. Often, I would ask them to write a paragraph or two about these heroes–what did you like about them? What kinds of decisions did they have to make? Tell their greatest achievement in your own words.

Just yesterday, I had an overwhelmingly busy day. I had a friend in whose small wedding we are having at our home on Monday, I had to be interviewed in order to teach a class at our local coop, I had phone calls and correspondence to mail, and emails to write. Just all piled up to be done on Friday. Yet, whirling around me, bedecked in old fashioned skirts and shawls and armed with giggle and whispering, were Joy and her darling friend–pretending in worlds far away in history, basking in their innocence and fun, lost in the excitement of their heroic feats–all simmering up from their full souls.

It was only natural for them to grow into intelligent, articulate human beings because the company they kept was with those who had fine minds, great vocabulary and life-changing ideas. This was a grace to my life—reading great stories–that I learned about when my children were little–and a grace that yet feeds our imaginations and souls today. As Galatians reminds us, whatever a man sows, he also reaps. May this summer be a time of sowing those great adventures into the very structure of your children’s thoughts. Reward them for reading. Read around a batch of hot chocolate chip cookies. Read by campfire or at bedtime or Sunday tea times. Read and share and laugh and cry and watch your friendship grow deep and fine as you build your dreams and thoughts on the same pathways of life. And in the end, you will find, with surprise like I did, that you took as much joy in the process of seeing yourself transformed as they did in you sharing these precious moments with them. Good story reading!

Taking Time to show Kindness

Sunday morning found me hiding under my covers. For years and years, as long as I can remember, I have been an early riser, mostly because it is the only way I could write and carry on a full fledged ministry and still keep my family as a priority. With books to be written and deadlines to be met and emails to be answered and radio shows for interviews and conferences to arrange, arising early gave me two to three more hours to my day.

But this day, I didn’t want to get up, feeling weary from the fray. I had thoughts wandering through my head like, “I don’t think I can do this anymore. Why have I been driving myself for ministry? You know I love you, Lord. But for the moment, I can’t think about everything and I don’t want to face this day. I may never get out of bed!” Funny how Satan attacks our thoughts and uses discouragement against us female beings who live and love so much with our emotions.

Now, to give perspective, I was churning inside from the news of a friend’s 6 year old daughter who had been sexually molested by a 15 year old cousin; a close family member of mine is struggling against deathly illness, another friend heavy with the care of a precious child who will have mysterious medical challenges forever, the medical issues of two of my own sweet children looming always; and all the other burdens of life. I thought about the time when Jesus was walking along and a woman who had been bleeding for years and she touched his garment and “the strength went out of him.” That’s how I was feeling–in the midst of my labor with sweet ones, “the strength had gone out of Sally.”

Finally, after hours of staying in bed, (from 6 a.m. to 9–that is very late for me!), my feet mechanically moved to the floor. Joy’s sweet voice yelled up to me from downstairs, “Don’t you dare get up, Mom!” I slipped back in bed, arranged my pillows and waited. She breezed in chattering joyfully about the great morning she was having bearing a tray with a lovely napkin, a steaming hot cup of tea, a glass bowl with freshly cut up cherries, raspberries and blueberries and whip cream on the top, and a small lit candle.

Now, I might have expected this from Sarah, but I wasn’t expecting it from Joy. In that moment, Joy became to me the arms of God as she said, “I think you need a nice hug.” She squeezed me tight and planted a kiss on my cheek. Her love offering to me seemed to say, “I love you, Sally. I am aware of the ragings of your soul. Here is a sweet angel to soothe your spirit with kindness today,” as though it were from God Himself. Joy’s service to me became an act of an angel from God, an unexpected flash of light–a gift to strengthen me.

“I have been working for an hour, Mom. I cleaned up the whole downstairs and the kitchen. It looks so pretty. I figured if you were staying in bed that long, you must be in need of cheer. I love you! Now, enjoy yourself alone for a few minutes, I have a couple of more things to take care of!”

Five minutes later, some sweet friends called from Texas, who rarely ever call, and that even on a Sunday morning. “We just wanted to call and pray for you this morning. Is that ok?” Another angel from the Lord–as though He knew the timing, as though He wanted me to know He was still in the battle with me. After we prayed, I could sense my soul lifting.

The battle lines are familiar to me. I am what one might call an old warrior–familiar with the darkness, the battles raging, the issues at stake. I have learned to put one foot in front of another year after year, because my eyes are on what lies ahead–the reward of being with Jesus in His place that He is preparing for all of us who love Him. I have looked at Him and thought about Him and cherished His sacrificial life and His pattern has given me reason to keep going. But this day, this weary day, He broke into my moments, through two small acts of kindness to assure me of His presence. How thankful I am that two people responded to the promptings of my heavenly Father to pour out His gentle, quiet lovingkindess on my weary soul. Thank you, Joy, thank you, Macy’s.

Fret Not

I love these early mornings. Clay and I sleep with our windows open and in the early morning, cool breezes fill our room, inviting us to snuggle under our covers for a few more delightful moments. (Where we live in Colorado at 7500 feet, no one has air conditioning!) I can’t even remember a summer when I have been home so long or traveled so little, let alone sleep in until 6:30 or 7:00. During these moments, when I am awaken, feeling that I am the only one in the whole house who is awake, I have cherished my alone “in thought” moments. It seems sometimes, these are the moments when the Lord brings verses to mind and speaks to my heart. Yesterday morning, these thoughts sprang to my mind, so I thought I would take a few moments to write them down.

“Fret not, it leads only to evil doing.” Evil doing sounds bad–like robbing a bank, committing adultery or murdering someone. Yet, David clearly exhorts us 3 times in Psalm 37 to fret not! When I am fretting, I am putting lots of effort into worrying about something that might happen–(fear!)–or worrying about a problem that is in my face but doesn’t seem to have a good possible ending or isn’t going away (doubt in God, in His goodness and in His ability to take care of a situation.) Now, I am a practiced fretter–especially in the area of patience. I really wonder at God’s timing. I really often have a lot to tell Him about how I think He should be running my life. Maybe if I fret a little bit more passionately, He will work more quickly! And there are so many things about which to fret–finances–always! The kids’ futures–jobs, spouses, lives, choices. Our ministry–conferences, book deadlines, articles, Clay’s stress and pressure, staffing needs. And on and on.

Fret not–don’t worry–it will lead to evil doing. In what way? Fretting leads me to believe that I have the solution to my problems. Fretting leads me to doubt God and His providence in my life. Fretting can lead to frustration and anger and accusations and distraction and depression—all of which effect our relationships and actions and health.

Is there an example in the life of Christ to show me what David meant about what it looked like to fret not? Peter, Jesus’ friend and disciple, saw Him during His most difficult moment on earth. Jesus had been abandoned by all of His precious disciples–leaders–in whom He had been building faith for three years. He was being mocked by the Roman soldiers and Pharisees—those who were supposed to be most holy and most committed to His reality. He was being beaten, spit upon, unjustly treated and wrongly accused–being prepared to die the worst kind of death. Peter must surely have had these moments cemented into his mind, since it was at these moments he had denied three times that he had even known Jesus. If there was ever a time to fret, to worry, to fear, to wonder about the reality of God’s goodness, (my God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?), it was this time.

Yet, in his first book, Peter tells us, while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but (and here is the secret and the choice He willingly made!) He kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.” I Peter 2:22-23. There it is–Jesus entrusted–gave the whole of His being and well being into God’s hands and trusted Him with the results. It almost insinuates that Jesus hardly noticed the attacks raging around Him. Entrust yourself to God, Sally!

What does David suggest I do instead of fretting? “Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness” Plant seeds of faithfulness, water them, nurture them, build a whole crop of this faithfulness! This indicates a choice of my will–decide to be faithful and then keep working on being faithful!

He goes on, “Delight thyself in the Lord” Make God my joy, my pleasure, my hope. “And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him and He will do it. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him (Ugh–again–wait?!) Seems He makes me practive faithfulness and waiting a lot, like it is an expected action of life for a faithful person.

Did Peter have anything else to say about this concept from his letter that would shed light on my need to fret not, and instead trust God?

“In the same way, you wives be submissive to your own husbands.” (Now, God is getting personal—did he mean this husband? This circumstance? This time?) and then He goes on to say, “Let not your adornment be external, but let it be the hidden person of the heart, (the place where no one but God sees!) with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in the sight of God. So, fretting not, involves the hidden places of my heart where I make a decision about how I will handle my pressures, circumstances and responsibilities. How is a spirit gentle and quiet?–when it has ceased trying to control, manage and take control of the circumstances.

God is transcendent–outside of time–able to see the behind and before–He has already planned to be with me and available to me every step of the way. He has a plan, but I have a choice to make–to rest in that plan, to accept the limitations of this husband, child, family or life circumstance and to rest in the trust that I have of God’s ownership of my life and times–or to rather worry, fret, beg, stew, advise–and finding more strife, emptiness and frustration. This is what is precious in His sight–my loyalty, deep inside every day, when He knows what trusting Him costs me, and how hard it was to trust, but whether I made the decision to abandon it all unto Him or choose to fret about it for a few more days. Let me choose to dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness today—no matter the issue, the relationship or the problem.

So, when I finally rolled out of bed, the Holy Spirit had already initiated a day for me–a day in which I needed rest, entrust, be patient and cultivate faithfulness. He was speaking to me from those very verses I had memorized as a youth–His voice already had a vocabulary built into my heart. Did He already know my computer server would be down for two days, that I couldn’t get letters from Sarah and Joel? (I really am tempted to whine and fret when I don’t get those expected emails from my sweet ones!) Get big bills from the May birthdays and mission trips prep and graduation and, and, and–oh yeah—gentle and quiet spirit–stop fretting, it leads only to evil doing! and so a new day, a new lesson, and a new understanding of just how patient God is with me, His child , who doesn’t always get it right at first, but is learning to listen!

The Recipe approach to Family Culture

The Recipe approach to Family Culture

Many years ago when Clay and I were first living in Vienna, I began an interest in bread making. Though we loved the different choices of bread available in the local bakery, we really missed our American sandwich bread. The Europeon breads available for sandwiches, at the time, were either white-flour wonder type of bread, or very chewy rye or doughy whole grain bread. (I just returned from a trip to Vienna and found the variety to be much wider than when we first lived there many years ago!)We longed for a normal, soft wheat bread for our sandwiches.

The drive for familiar bread sent me to several cook books. I read many articles on bread, tried many recipes and started an adventure that turned me into a full-fledged baker. In our small neighborhood market, I could go and have my wheat ground fresh and then take my flour home to use for my bread. One of my fellow missionary friends had my favorite recipe, but I decided to start experimenting with it and added my own touches to our very own bread recipe. Oats, eggs and milk supposedly added to the bread’s lightness. I incorporated them. Honey was a preferred taste. Our children preferred the golden 86 wheat in recipes.

Over the years, I tried whole kernel breads, but found my family preferred not having seeds get stuck in their teeth! (Sarah and I love whole kernels all through our bread!) So I started another experiment—grinding millet, rye, brown rice, spelt and flax seed into fine powder and putting it into my bread, as well.

So making bread, whole grain rolls, pizza dough, herb-onion bread and dinner rolls and pancakes became our family favorites that evolved after years of experimenting, reading, and copying other good bakers. But in the end, my goal was to come up with what suited us. (Please don’t ask me if I give out my recipe—I get those requests all the time, but since I am an “add a little of this and a little of that” person, I don’t know how to come up with an exact recipe. I also use a Bosch, which not everyone has, so I have promised everyone that by the time my next book is finished (and will hopefully come out next spring,) I would perfect my recipe in such a way that others can try it. Promise!)

However, I have noticed that I have never seen anything like my recipe in the books I have searched. It is uniquely mine! As I was thinking about this, I was also thinking of how much scope there is for all sorts of recipes—spaghetti sauce, chocolate cakes, chile, etc., for a great variety of different things combined together, but still taste good! No one recipe is right—-they are all different, and yet good to the taste to those who prefer them.

Missing My Children

Last weekend marked the end of the hustle and bustle of getting Sarah, 23, and Joel, 20 off to England to begin their missionary journey together for 8 weeks. Last minute shopping for clothes, shoestrings, underwear, shoes, medicine, depositing money, buying snack food for the apartments they will share (no food provided and since the dollar is so low, they thought a few back ups from America would save a few pennies!) and on the list went. Finally, we managed to get to the car, to the bank, onto the freeway and off to a conference convention center in Denver to say goodbye to Clay before the overseas airplane flight.

All of us have been looking forward to this moment. My children are too old to be mommied and have developed ideals, convictions, messages and thoughts that need to be expressed in and through their own lives as adults. It is what we work for as intentional moms–that our children will become whole, healthy adults who are prepared for the great Work of their lives, so to speak. It validates the meaning of so many years of training, reading aloud, discipling, correcting, inspiring and loving them, hopefully, so that they can take the baton from our hands and begin to run their own race.

So, I am ready to release them lest they become over-ripe at home. As we dropped into the book fair, where Clay was speaking, I ran into a sweet friend with Sarah and Joel in tow. “And how is the Mama doing with her two oldest leaving together for two months? Are you crying yet?”

The sincere words that came from my lips were, “No, I am really ready to launch them on this trip and they are really ready to go!” Just to get beyond the busy-ness of the preparation and support raising and letter writing and all the while they all wanted to eat, make messes and wear clean clothes.

But the reality is, Clay and I have not just sent our oldest children out, but also our best friends. No longer two kids sitting up in the den ’till midnight to discuss important issues amidst ice cream or pop corn, no longer someone to admire our blogs or a profound article or song they have written that we can admire or to share a favorite move with; gone is my walking partner of the last 12 years, who kept me entertained and livened in my spirit from our fun and heart-felt talks as we struggled to whip our bodies into shape; it isn’t as fun to make a cup of tea and splurge on dark chocolate all by myself. I was walking around with a hollow feeling, empty and almost couldn’t swallow today as I was cleaning up my bedroom, unpacking a bag from the weekend. Then I realized that glad though I was to have the Lord leading them on, sorry am I to lose those who understand, love and laugh with us the best. I was homesick for my children and knew I would just have to go on! I don’t know when they slipped more into the best friend slot and less in the child slot, but I am grateful to God that when he knew I needed a best friend, besides Clay of course, he gave me several here in my own home. We will miss you Sarah and Joel.

How grateful I am, then, to be able to run Joy around to her many activities (she’s at the pool today swimming with her friends!) and giggle with her in bed at nights, and read to her all the great books that are out favorites. How much I enjoyed making Nathan a lunch this afternoon, at 2:30 when he was home for a short break from work. Fun to share an iced coffee, and to have him be with me to share a memory moment about his work and friends and plans for the future. We moms live to have more time to ourselves and to have a smaller work load, and it is nice to look forward to having a break. But I don’t think I will as easily look so forward to the independence of all of my children, because in sending them to the world, I am sending a part of myself that can never be replaced by anyone else. It is truly illogical–how can I tell those sweet young women who long for excitement, freedom and adventure, that it is not the way to find meaning, satisfaction of soul or the deep knowledge that soul-mates share. Instead, I would have to say that all the cooking and washing clothes and correcting and sacrificing of time in a thousand different ways is the most meaningful way of building intimacy through deep friendship that will truly last a life-time. How much more I understand that “he who loses his life will find it.” In giving up so much, for so long, to my children and husband, I found the meaning in life and the deep relationships I always longed for.

WH Greetings!

Welcome to Whole Heart Moms Blog. We’re still under construction at the moment, but I’ll start posting regularly very soon. Stay tuned. Sally