Category Archives: homeschooling

the party of deep and wide: nurturing an atmosphere of growth

Posted on by August 11, 2022

My friends, here’s what I’ve learned over the last month or so:

The key to overcoming a fear of public speaking is to do it early in the morning, before you’re lucid enough to know you shouldn’t be standing in front of a bunch of people. Inhibitions are pretty low when you’re semi-conscious.

the party of deep and wide: nurturing an atmosphere of growth

It seems to be working. When I first heard about this class, I was torn between two gut urges.

One: God has been nudging me about speaking for the last couple of years, and this is an amazing opportunity to pursue it.

But also, two: Speaking in front of people and getting up early are equally miserable endeavors, akin to eating octopus while listening to terrible 80s music. Why would I put myself through that?

I almost didn’t. Too much work, too many things already going on, way the heck too early. I wasn’t sure I could operate a blinker that early in the morning, much less speak coherently in front of people.

But I knew I needed to. And when I argued with God about waiting until next year when the class was (maybe) offered again, He shot back, Hey Love, do you want to wait until next year for breakthrough, too? Oh yes, He did. So I stopped whining about it and signed up.

It’s something He’s told me to grow in. And growth is what we’re called to.

It’s a crazy vulnerable thing, though, standing in front of people, giving them your voice and your content, offering your perspective. It’s similar to writing here, but different in its aloud-ness – our very presence, standing in front of others, hoping they will be kind and gentle as we try not to make an idiot of ourselves.

But it’s a safe place. The people in there with me are old friends and new friends, and we all need encouragement, feedback, and grace. We’re not competing; we all want to do this better. Because none of us wants to look like an idiot when the time comes to be vulnerable.

We do the same thing with our social media, our relationship with people, our attendance in church, our efforts toward some Big Thing, or our approach to Jesus:

We clean up a little first. Not everything, of course, but just enough to look better than we are at the moment when inspiration strikes.

I should post that picture on Instagram…but I’ll straighten up the couch first.

I should go to church next Sunday…but I should try to stop swearing by Friday, first.

I want to invite those people over to dinner…but first, I need to rearrange the living room.

I want to write a book, but first I should brush up on grammar and spelling.

I’d love to reach out to that group…but they are more fill-in-the-blank (spiritual, educated, attractive, funny, gifted, whatever) than I am, so I want to be a little more fill-in-the-blank, too, first.

So I can fit in. So I don’t disappoint. So I’m good enough.

The internet is currently loaded with trendy articles about how ridiculous our culture is, haranguing the insincerity of a superficial society that merely puts up a good front. And to some degree, they’re right. Some of it is ridiculous.

But, you know what else? It’s normal. And…it’s also moderately healthy.

Record scratch. Yep, I heard it, too.

Hear me out. It’s not the insecurity or the desire to inflate our ego that is healthy. It’s the desire to grow, to be better than we currently are, to always pursue improvement. If our efforts are sincere and genuine, and not simply a façade to impress others, we are on the right track.

Do we only clean our house for our Instagram photos, or are we genuinely trying to be a better homekeeper, and this is part of our efforts?

Do we recognize we should behave better on a day-to-day basis, or are we just putting on a show around certain people?

Are we trying to prepare for a big new step, or are we just putting it off?

Are we inspired by others, or just trying to impress them?

Are we compelled to greater things by our friends, or are we just competing with them?

The articles and media try to fit us into one of two opposing camps: the unpretentious hot messes versus the polished, have-it-all-together types. But none of us are that black and white – we all excel in certain areas while faltering in others. We are pushing through challenges and learning.

I propose we draw a new party line.

We are the party of deep and wide: Growing. Leaning further in our giftings, and stretching into unfamiliar territory. Looking at ourselves with a holy discontent, grateful for our progress but not satisfied with the status quo. Humble, genuine, imperfect, and refining daily.

This is the camp most of us actually fit in. The culture can try to pit us in factions against each other, but we don’t have to step into the ring. We’re too aware of our own growth to point fingers at the lady who has spit up on her pants – or to raise our eyebrows at the lady who ironed perfect creases into hers.

We’ve heard that Jesus loves us as we are, but He’s not content to leave us there. Our own desire to do more, be more, know more, grow more, is something we’ve inherited from Him. It’s what He wants for us, too.

So we fumble our way through, hoping those who see us will be kind and gentle as we try not to make an idiot of ourselves. There is so much to learn.

The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous – that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! Science! To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.

– Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Let’s be the people who cheer the efforts of others instead of projecting our insecurities onto them. Show us the amazing meal you cooked, and tell us how it took you four times before you managed to get the cornstarch to thicken correctly. Tell us how great your kids are, and also the ridiculous way you had to remind them not to suck their underwear up the vacuum hose. Give us your church notes with messy handwriting, your gorgeous living room with imperfect furniture, your efforts at reading classic lit and your struggle to follow the intricate plot.

Show me your artwork, your craftsmanship, the amazing new technique you’ve been trying to perfect. No shame, no apologies to the peanut gallery. No internet lectures for showing off because you’re more gifted in this one area than most of us.

I want to see that project you nailed, and how you killed it at your last performance. I want to see your victories because they kindle more of mine.

It’s only our insecurity blending with resentment and jealousy – expressing itself in the disdain of judgement – that keeps us from cheering others on, just as it inhibits us from growing more in our own deep and wide.

On a bad day when my own struggle boils to the top, frustrated beyond sanity at fighting special needs behaviors and broken pasts, I admit that I probably won’t want to see your child’s perfect certificate of achievement when one of mine spent the morning feigning confusion between the letters L and J (and he is confused, but not about the letters). I promise the madness will pass and I’ll be in my right mind again shortly, soon enough to praise your victory. Because when we’re not in competition with each other, it’s my victory, too.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

– Ephesians 4:15-16, ESV

We can be genuine while still inspiring each other to press on and be greater as we grow through this together.

So post your mess-in-progress. Don’t apologize for where you’ve pulled it together. Show us where you’re still stumbling, trying and fumbling, stretching out in your deep and your wide. We’re called to growth, and this is your party.

______

This is an excerpt from Work That God Sees: Prayerful Motherhood in the Midst of the Overwhelm.

the year of deeper and wider

Posted on by February 16, 2023

I first encountered one of my favorite books in sixth grade. I was pulled out of class for a gifted program, walked down the hall to an unfamiliar, sterile classroom, and listened to a teacher whom I did not know read The Wind in the Willows to us.

I hated it. If this was being “gifted,” I wanted no part of it.

the year of deeper and wider

Several years ago it showed up in Mattie’s curriculum. I approached it with doubt and suspicion, unsure about subjecting my kid to the same misery I’d experienced twenty years earlier.

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home.

We dove in, and within the first pages I was in love. Surely it was the same book from before – but this time it was beautiful and alive and magical, so it must be that I wasn’t the same person reading it. I’d grown deeper and wider. I’ve read it all the way through three times now, not counting that first go-round that almost inoculated me from it entirely. I’m so glad it didn’t.

The kids ate lunch while I stood in the living room and read the first chapter to them. This is the first time Cham, Andrey, and Reagan have heard it and I want their memories of it to be warm and filling, sticking with them.

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said “Bother!” and “O blow!” and also “Hang spring cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously…

This is Mole, who has lived below in seclusion, discovering the world above for the first time. It’s also me, and probably you. I know what the spirit of divine discontent feels like. I, too, have flung work to the floor while yelling mostly printable expletives.

I came to this passage and stopped to look for a pencil. None were within reach, so I tore the cushion off the couch to check my stash and found five pens, a set of nail clippers, a broken animal cracker and, hallelujah, one mechanical pencil. I started marking sentences.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again.

The story is fitting for all seasons – summer and winter, and especially those spiritual ones when you long for a river that runs deeper and wider than what you’ve been splashing in, and when you find yourself free of old barriers and able to test new waters that were out of reach not too long ago.

Testing new waters is impossible when you’re drowning in the deep end. We’ve spent a ton of time flailing and splashing there, but I’m thrilled to say that for the first time in four and a half years, it’s not where we are anymore.

Or, more accurately, it’s not that we’re no longer in the deep end, but that we’re no longer drowning in it – we come up for air sometimes, and can finally venture out into other waters a little.

Four and a half years.

By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

A big part of it is that one of our kids who needed his world (and therefore, our world) to be as small as possible is starting to experience victory like never before. I mentioned here a few months ago that choices are unsparing things. Sometimes we need the spirit of divine discontent to propel change, and over recent weeks his choices have been markedly and consistently different, by the grace of God.

He is experiencing the joy of a river that is deeper and wider. It’s a marvelous miracle. Most days (not all, I won’t lie) are warm and filling, and we hope it sticks.

The Kingdom is always of increase; our deep and wide is an insatiable sea.

This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind sent whispering so constantly among them.

– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Physically it is winter around us, but we are approaching a spiritual summer like a fast-moving train. There is running water, a full-bodied river; we are learning and growing and anticipating fullness that overflows the banks and spills into thirsty places everywhere.

Wind in the Willows, and Bingley

#highlights: just the funnies from 2016

Posted on by January 17, 2017

We’re starting off the year with a serious dose of silliness. Grab your coffee and enjoy.

hashtag highlights: just the funnies from 2016 at Copperlight Wood

a summary of our 2016 

I’m no real estate expert, but never once in the last two years of avid househunting have I thought, “Wow, this is what we’ve been dreaming of!” by listings that include a reference to “great location for a marijuana business” or a close-up photo of moose nuggets.

Super productive night: Finished edits on Upside Down to send back to the publisher, and moved on to researching Han Solo’s Myers-Briggs personality type. #intjsarenerds #sendhelp

Been sick for a week. It started at the Cannot Operate Heavy Machinery level but rapidly declined to Cannot Operate Paper Clips. Urgent Care has informed me that the fancy name for this is pneumonia.

Turns out that if you’re sick for a month and never leave the house, your garden bed magically transforms into a chia pet.

I just heard a pastor promise his new congregation that he will never make them turn to their neighbor to tell them something. And this, my friends, is how you win elections.  #campaignpromises #hankiewave

Many emails and phone calls back and forth with the publisher today. We established the keywords for the book: adoption, parenting, foster care, special needs, and attachment. Also established the keywords for marketing it: arm & leg, lifeblood, second mortgage, mainstream media, longterm counseling, and prozac. #fixitJesus

cats

kids are brilliant

Cat reproduction according to Chamberlain, age six: “Mama cats never have just one baby. They always have giblets.”

Finn lets loose ten seconds of ear-splitting happy squeals. Afton leans over and murmurs, “Those are the shrieking eels…”

fetch me another ninja turtle

 

Cham: I wish I could just SEE him instead of talking about him all the time. I wish we could have him over to our house.

Me: Who, Jesus?

Cham: No! TobyMac.

(This is the same girl who asked if her new dress could be considered an ugly Christmas sweater. She also thinks Wesley wears a manbun in The Princess Bride.)

kids

My son brings me the magnesium supplement and reads the label. “Contains no yeast, dairy, soy, egg, wheat, sugar, fructose, preservatives, starch, or artificial color or flavor. Cruelty-free.” He pauses. “Cruelty-free? What does that mean? That it doesn’t taste bad?”

Two hours after the kids bedtime. Or, as they see it, the perfect time to go to the bathroom, take a shower, ask how babies are made, tell about a bad dream they had last week, show off a drawing they made this afternoon, floss their teeth, ask you to check the spelling in their journal, and share a prophetic word of knowledge.

We saw a sweet hospital photo of a mama and her wee bitty premature babies. Cham yells, “Oh! Did she have giblets?!”

boys

 

#momlife

[insert quiet narrator’s voice, preferably with British accent] In today’s episode of ridiculous parenting, a child makes a craft project and bursts into sobs immediately following its completion: “It’s SO ugly! And I was going to give it to my FRIEND! But now it’s too ugly and I CAN’T give it to my friend, so I’ll JUST have to give it to YOU!!”
#ohthanks #itslovely

The hero-husband painted an old ugly dresser white for me, then asked if I wanted to distress it. I reminded him that we have seven kids. We decided to just let nature take its course.

Dear Matanuska Electric Association: I’m sorry, but I cannot vote in the upcoming election because I used your ballot to smash a spider into oblivion. Our family truly appreciates this service you have performed for our community.

Afton just caught Finnegan dipping his toast in my 3-shot Americano, eating it, and liking it. Let the mutant superpowers commence. #avengersassemble

Child is disrespectful. Child earns a bazillion extra chores. Child is sent outside to wash all the windows. Child refuses and prefers to sulk instead. After several minutes, child complies and goes outside. It immediately commences to rain buckets, because God loves me.

The kids are practicing Spanish on the computer, and one of them keeps saying “Buenas nachos” instead of “Buenas noches.” Same thing though, right? #soundsgoodtome #muybien

Don’t tell my tomato-haters, but I’m not above chopping up a red bell pepper in front of them while cooking dinner and letting them jump to conclusions about the pasta sauce.

…and speaking of food…

10:32pm: We decide to live on the edge and fry cheese in the waffle iron. What could go wrong? We need to buy a new waffle iron anyway.

10:33pm: Sizzling. So far so good.

10:34pm: I lift the lid to check and behold utter chaos of every dairy nightmare imaginable. Goo everywhere, burning, running over the sides, and Vince has mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the vicinity of the garage. I yell “Pat Sajak!” so the kids who are still awake don’t know I’m swearing and mentally write hatemail to the foodie blogger while scraping cheese off the griddle.

10:36pm: We try it. Not too bad. Recommence frying cheese now that the waffle iron is “properly seasoned.”

10:39pm: Round two is iffy. A little better but still not nearly what the foodie blogger’s perfect photography promised. We try one more time.

10:40pm: Vince decides the cheese slices need to be a little thicker. He slices, breads them, and inserts them into the waffle iron. While my back is turned, HE LEAVES THE ROOM. Quietly.

10:42pm: Round three explodes out the sides of the waffle iron and Vince is nowhere to be found. We assume he is driving to Sears to see if there are any waffle irons on sale that come packaged with Ghiradelli chocolate and flowers.

bingley apron

The recipe for these brownies says, “Cut them into quite small pieces, almost like fudge.” Whatever. I just blew through these like a hobbit with elvish waybread. #chocolatelembas

Daydreaming while chopping mushrooms, garlic, and onions.
Pondering cooking shows while adding chicken thighs to skillet.
Considering taking a photo of dinner-in-progress (in spite of Vin’s disdain of such photos) while adding tomatoes and coconut milk.
Wondering why the chicken is so slow to brown.
Checking the burner to turn up the heat only to realize that the burner is still off.
And this, friends, is why I do not write a foodie blog.

P1000427

#wecandohardthings

God calls us to do things we’re not naturally qualified for. This is why we have to do things like change diapers, which is an aerobic activity akin to chasing down a baby kangaroo after it’s had an espresso.

Feeling super Alaskan today; sharpened my eyeliner with a pocketknife. #geterdone

You think it’s hopeless, it can’t be done – but then you do it. I’m not talking about life goals or big dreams; I’m talking about nine people and three cats going the whole day with less than two rolls of toilet paper. Oh, yes we did.