Category Archives: homeschooling

mapping our territory: how we gain ground when we read deep & wide

Posted on by June 21, 2024

It’s what I’ve always wanted to do here – I’m about to go all crazy bookish on you. In all fairness, you might’ve seen it coming. So stand back (or kick back on the couch), and maybe arm yourself with a fresh notebook and your favorite clicker pencil.

I spent most of the last weekend immersed in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. If that’s unfamiliar territory to you – and it is to many, I never even heard of it until a year ago – it’s by Anne Bronte, probably the least known of the famous Brontes. It wasn’t an easier read than her sisters’ more famous works. But I flew through it, probably for a couple of reasons.

mapping our territory: how we gain ground when we read deep and wide

First, I gave it a fair shot – which means when I sat down with it the first time, I read at least 15-20 pages, enough to get a little ways in and scope out the territory. And then I made sure to pick it up again before letting too many days pass, so I could get a little farther in and get familiar with what was going on before book entropy set in.

Don’t know what “book entropy” is? I made it up. But you’ve probably experienced it – you open a book, read a few pages, then set it down for a week or more, then try a few more pages, and abandon it again with the best of intentions. Before you know it, six months have passed and you’re only at page fifty, and you have no idea who Lizzie Hexam is, what her father is doing in the river retrieving corpses, or whether or not it’s important that he found that one body that one time. (It is. Of course it is.)

It’s the worst way to read anything. (Dickens, especially. Ask me how I know.) Might as well quit and start over later.

Second, I’ve gotten used to reading classics and don’t struggle through them so much anymore. In high school we read very few classics, and I used to be so intimidated by the unfamiliar territory, struggling with the language, customs, cultures, and terms. But as a young adult I started dipping my toes in, and muddled my way through a few on my own.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

We were in our early 20s, in our first apartment, and started our library with a bookshelf we bought from Fred Meyers for about $75 in quarters that we’d saved in a blue Arizona Iced Tea bottle. We sat on opposite ends of our hand-me-down couch and read quietly to ourselves and out loud to each other, eating our dinner of boxed PastaRoni because these were also the days before we learned how to cook.

In Sense and Sensibility, I had no idea why one daughter was “Miss Dashwood” and the other daughter was called by her first name. In Anna Karenina, I barely managed to untangle each character’s three separate names. (Really, are the nicknames that necessary? Tolstoy couldn’t have made it a little simpler?) I spent two years slogging through The Hunchback of Notre Dame and I don’t need to read about Parisian architecture or flying buttresses ever again. Please.

But then I started building on that scaffolding. And it started getting easier.

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.

— Charles Spurgeon

(Yikes. Spurgeon is a little harsh…but he’s not wrong.)

I moved over to Pride and Prejudice and things started to make sense. I tried Sense and Sensibility again, and this time things fell into place. And then I found Gone With the Wind, The Lord of the Rings, and Jane Eyre, and fell in love.

I was hooked. This was the deep part of my ocean. This is where I could keep exploring and never get tired.

But I hit bottom pretty quickly in other areas. I read three books by Kipling that convinced me we probably aren’t kindred spirits. I endured months of Dostoevsky’s rascally Karamazov brothers and hustled my way through Crime and Punishment, and those weren’t my favorites, either. Not too long ago I went back to Hugo and it still took me over two years to finish Les Mis. But I had to spend some time with them – a fair shot’s worth – to hold an opinion in the first place.

And this is where we go wide: we stretch out into the shallows, where we dip our toes in and maybe find the water isn’t to our liking. But at least it gives us an idea of what the terrain around that edge of the ocean looks like. The fog is lifted a little; we can draw in some curves on the map instead of leaving the entire area shrouded in mist. We gain ground.

I love, love, love, finding new territory. I love helping others grow deep and wide and find new territory, too. So I started Gaining Ground for those who want to expand their territory in literature, writing, and wholeness – you know, for the slightly nerdy deep thinkers, or those who want to be slightly nerdier, deeper thinkers. You guys are my people.

Contrary to general belief, writing isn’t something that only “writers” do; writing is a basic skill for getting through life. Yet most American adults are terrified of the prospect – ask a middle-aged engineer to write a report and you’ll see something close to panic. Writing, however, isn’t a special language that belongs to English teachers and a few other sensitive souls who have a “gift for words.” Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly – about any subject at all.

― William Zinsser, Writing to Learn

Life is different now, but Vin and I still sit on opposite ends of the couch, and we still read quietly to ourselves and out loud to each other. Somewhere along the way we learned to cook from scratch, and now we can make a mean chicken curry, homemade enchiladas, and bacon-wrapped jalapeños. I’m hoping this helps us live long enough to read all those books.

Because we’re still learning. We often read a book and tell the other person they absolutely must read this one next – and sometimes we actually follow those recommendations.

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

And sometimes it works. But other times, book entropy sets in, and Anna Karenina sits on Vin’s shelf for about two years.

The bookmark is on page 111. Or, eleventy-one, for you Middle Earth fans. It might be time for him to ditch it.

So if anyone wants to borrow a beautiful old copy of Anna Karenina and struggle through all the different Russian names, I’ve got one for you. He probably won’t even notice it’s gone – and if he does, I’ll let you know.

resilient: the trait that covers a multitude of sins

Posted on by February 16, 2024

Friends, this is an excerpt from Work That God Sees. Enjoy!

We avoided ER visits at least three times that spring day: Once, a sibling left her baby brother alone on the couch (but he didn’t fall on his head), and twice, another child was caught carrying a knife the entirely wrong way (but no one was stabbed). The dryer was busted, so we were channeling our inner Little House on the Prairie and clothes were hanging everywhere to dry. Also, our ice maker was on the blink because it didn’t like the glitter that fell into it.

resilient: the trait that covers a multitude of sins

We had tears during math, so I grabbed a file full of stickers – big stickers, little stickers, one sticker for every problem, I didn’t care how many stickers it took as long as she found joy in it – and suddenly I realized that I need the same thing sometimes, too. Not stickers, but whatever will bring a little more joy to the day and its drama: a fresh cup of tea, a few minutes with the cat, or an hour of outside time for the kids so I can read for a while in a quiet house.

I came across this verse, and in a moment of homeschool rebellion, wrote it in our math textbook:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

– 1 Peter 4:8

This verse was good news because we had a multitude of sins that day on top of the chaos already mentioned: broken dishes, tantrums, yelling, an almost-ruined camera, blaming…I’ll stop there. But if we could love each other earnestly at the end of the day, those loud memories might quiet a little under His covering, and we might have a little less chaos tomorrow. 

I won’t pretend it’s easy, though.

We moved on from math to science, and my oldest son was reading about the discovery of protein structure. It was a hard process; scientists had already figured out how to find the structure of a molecule, but proteins were so much smaller and more complex that it made discovering their structure that much harder.

And I think it’s sort of like how I can understand how love covers a multitude of sins, but I am still trying to learn how to consistently stay loving in the midst of the chaos. Not everything is solved by a handful of sticker sheets or a fresh cup of tea. So many small humans, so many complex behaviors, and I am so often out of answers, out of energy, and out of patience.

Some days are full of life-changing events that threaten to devastate us: A diagnosis. A confession. An announcement. An event that happens so fast, we don’t have a chance to prepare for how it is going to shake our reality in the days to come. A multitude of sins.

Sometimes facing tomorrow is more than we think we can handle after the day we’ve just walked through.

“But,” as my son’s science book said, “some people have dozens of times more perseverance than the rest of us.”

And that’s what I want to be: Persevering. Steadfast. But also, resilient.

If steadfastness is pushing through to breakthrough, resilience is rising again after devastation or loss. They both move forward and they often go together. We are steadfast when we have survived the waiting; we are resilient when we have survived the breaking. And there are many days when motherhood breaks us wide open.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

– 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

We moved on to a Bible lesson, and the kids and I talked about Jericho: The marching, the yelling, and the walls falling down. The obedience, the declaration, and the miracle.

“It doesn’t make sense!” Chamberlain said. And she was right; it never makes sense. Marching around a city can’t make walls fall down, right?

But it did, because God told them to. Obedience is powerful. Especially when it doesn’t make sense.

Forgiveness doesn’t always make sense. Reconciliation doesn’t always make sense. Most big moves – starting a business, a mission, a family – don’t always make sense. Mothering in the midst of the overwhelm, in the clutter and the mayhem and the mess, and then getting up to do it all again the next morning in spite of how the day before attempted to break us, doesn’t make sense.

But here we are, you and I, doing it. Over and over again.

We can do whatever He’s calling us to: Adopt, give birth, defend the helpless, write the book, heal the breach, comfort the hurting. Cover the multitude of sins, earnestly love the sinner. We can survive the breaking, and rise from ashes. We can do whatever He says.

When school was done, we got in the car. And I don’t remember where we went that day, but I do remember that the trees were budding and it was in the sixties, and we drove with the windows down so everyone could hear our Alaskan kids complain about how hot it was in the Stagecoach. 

But all those tiny green leaves had a sermon, and they still preach to us: In case you ever think your story is over, God has given us nature to show us that a season of bleak winter is never forever. 

Go pray circles around that next step and kick up some dust, because this is how we cover the multitude of sins, and how we rise from the ashes. The Lord has given us the city.

You can find Work That God Sees here, and if you’d like future posts sent directly to your inbox, you can subscribe here.

what we know: tools for adoptive and foster families

Posted on by August 15, 2022

How hard is it to read the word “graph” when you know all the sounds? On a good day, not hard at all. But on a rough day when you’re operating from fear and control, impossible.

“What do the letters ‘ph’ say together?” I ask. He knows this.

what we know: tools for adoptive and foster families

Not only does he know this, but I just coached his sister through reading the word “sphere” two minutes earlier, so he just had a refresher course in the “ph” sound. And that might be the very reason he’s choosing this hill to die on – it makes it all the more obvious that he does know, but You Can’t Make Me Tell You.

“Ape,” he says.

We both know it’s wrong. He does a quick extra chore to regroup while I work with someone else.

I ask again. “Ape,” he says, knowing it’s still wrong, it will always be wrong, never in a million years will “ph” ever say “ape,” but if I asked him what his name is right now, he’s just as likely to answer “Hippo.” Or, you know, “Ape.”

Another chore. Wash some windows. Specifically, “Wash the two windows behind you,” I tell him.

He starts doing a third window, though. So I say, “Go ahead and finish that one. You can do three.”

He stops half way through the last one.

“I’m done,” he says. We both know it’s not true.

“How many windows did I tell you to do?”

“Three.” Okay, kind of. I’ll give him that.

“How many did you wash?”

“Four.”

“Really? How’s that?”

He counts the panes, two on each window – one, two, three, four.

“So how many did you wash?”

“Three.”

Because two plus two is three. Because what he’s really saying is, Ef you. You can’t make me.

And I can’t. We both know that’s true. But what he doesn’t understand yet, is I don’t want to make him.

I want him to do it himself. For himself. Because he is loved, and he is valuable, and his days are valuable. I know it’s true. Some days, I think he might finally believe it’s true, also. But not today.

Not all days are like this. It used to be, for years, that every day was like this and worse (so much worse), but now he goes in phases – good days and bad days, great weeks and terrible weeks.

But it’s Christmas time, and right now he’s having some really hard days, Because festivities and gatherings and events, oh my. The turmoil this brings up for kids with a background of trauma can be immense, sometimes catastrophic.

But it’s nothing like it used to be.

It used to be, we had to avoid almost everything that involved people because people didn’t know how much their well-intentioned interactions with our kids cost our family.

It was easier to just avoid them. We could at least avoid those triggers…but isolation also cost our family.  

Eventually we learned how to communicate what our kids’ needs were to the people around us – family, friends, our church, our school, our medical professionals. And that quickly helped us discover who “our people” were – they were the ones who respected the boundaries our kids needed. The ones who didn’t, weren’t.  

If this sounds familiar to you, I have some quick resources for you to help the holiday season be more fun than a root canal without anesthesia. Been there, hated that. Some days, as you can tell, we’re still there. But it’s nothing like it used to be.

This post explains the Why Behind the Weird Limits to our people. It helps family, friends, teachers, and other professionals understand exactly why it is such a no no to overstep attachment boundaries with kiddos who have a background of trauma. It’s chapter 2 from Upside Down: Understanding and Supporting Attachment in Adoptive and Foster Families.

Or there’s this: The Upside Down Cheat Sheet is a quick, one-sheet reference. Don’t be afraid to click on it; it’s a free download, no signup required, with a few basic principles to remember. Print it out and give it away as much as you want. If you charge people for it (good luck with that), I will find you…and I’ll ask you to share your savvy marketing skills with me.

And, need the whole book? It’s just 100 (ish) pages – a quick, easy read, and it’s funny. Because I’m funny. At least, my friends think so. You can buy it here on Amazon or get it directly from us and take advantage of our discounted prices for buying multiple copies. It’s also now available in audio here. Everyone needs this information and we want to make it easy for you to have it, because adoptive and foster families need real support and understanding from their people. If our community can learn, yours can, too.

So that is a look into our fishbowl, seven years into this. At least the windows are clean.

May your gatherings be filled with joy, and your home be filled with peace and as little aftermath as possible. What you’re doing is hard, but you’re doing a good job. And that’s the truth.