Category Archives: mothering

language of freedom: how we end the hostilities

Posted on by November 14, 2024

Like many of you, we’ve felt relief and encouragement over the last week or so of events…on the national scale, at least. At the state level, Alaska’s elections are still a dumpster fire of delay and obvious corruption. And we’re not alone. *friendly wave and fist bump to Arizona*

language of freedom: how we end the hostilities | Shannon Guerra

So it’s a relief, but it’s not over. And the following day, when nationwide results were confirmed, Vin said, “It’s like we’ve made it through Dunkirk, or Brooklyn Heights, or the Battle of Antietam.”

I looked at him and shook my head. He’s a nerd who’s read books on all the major wars and lots of the minor ones, but history isn’t my wheelhouse.

I have, however, read The Lord of the Rings…five times.

“Tell me in a language I understand,” I said. “You mean it’s like after the battle of Helm’s Deep, but Pelennor Fields and the Black Gate are still ahead.”

“Exactly.”

See? It helps to have a common language.

So we’ve won a really important battle, but not the whole war. The work is just beginning. All the cliches.

Because even when you get the results you want in an election, it’s not the end of the fight.

Even if four years brings amazing promises fulfilled, it doesn’t do much good if at the end of them we don’t have a culture that values life and truth, because it will swing back again into another morph of madness, trying to legislate and control lives rather than maintaining minimal government and protecting freedom.

At the root of it, the battle for freedom takes place in hearts – because hearts that don’t value purity, sanity, wisdom, and wholeness will never be free, and they will never really care about the freedom of others, either.

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

– JFK (January 14, 1963, State of the Union Address)

Great men make good times; good times create weak men; weak men create hard times; hard times create great men. There are exceptions, of course. Patterns are important because they can serve as warnings to watch for, but they are not destiny.

If we want to break the cycle, we have to stop creating weak men, and I don’t think the way to do that is to intentionally shoot ourselves in the foot by creating failure and hard times.

We have to create Kingdom culture, deep and wide.

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. 

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

– 2 Corinthians 3:14-17

We move wide, laterally and in the present, by healing the generations who don’t really know who they are, who are fear-filled and enraged as a result of their own ignorance, deceived by everything spoon-fed to them in the media.

Many of them have had just enough religion and churchianity to swing far to one side, hating God and anything that smacks of Him, or to the other side, checking off boxes and claiming to be Christian without bearing any fruit that indicates a relationship with Jesus. Some of them film their mental breakdowns on TikTok (what level of broken narcissism thinks people will be interested in that?) and demand acceptance from everyone while refusing to treat others with basic respect. These are the adults who haven’t grown up, many of whom experienced trauma in their childhood and instead of healing through it, stopped maturing at that age. This is why we have middle-aged and older people who still act like six-year-olds.

But also we move deep, vertically and into the future, by intentionally raising great children who become great men and women, regardless of their circumstances. We teach them the language of freedom. And this means we need to nurture our families and marriages and communities, and be better spouses and parents and friends, and humbly work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

– 2 Corinthians 3:5-6

We need to raise kids who are aware of issues because we took the time to talk to them about them, rather than relegating hard discussions to someone else. That means spending time with them, talking with them, explaining why we do the things we do (and why we don’t do the things we don’t). It means taking responsibility for our kids’ education – and thus their values – rather than abdicating such a vital mission to vague institutions with minimal accountability and transparency. No matter what, we are the primary teacher, caregiver, attention-giver, and disciplinarian of our kids. At the end of the day – and preferably, throughout the day – we are the ones they come to, answer to, and seek refuge in.

I admit this isn’t the easiest thing in the world. As I type this, a kid is doing a chore a few feet behind me. And if she tells me one more time that she’s done when she’s not done, she’s just tired of doing it, I might throw this copy of The Fourth Turning out the window.

(Or down the hallway. Windows are expensive and it’s nine degrees outside. And also, it might scare the chickens.)

Many of our daily conversations with our kids center around food – growing it, raising it, buying it, eating it – and other choices we make about our health; these topics were never discussed in our own childhoods rife with dye-saturated sugar cereals that were thought to be canceled out by Flintstone vitamins. So to be honest, I’m probably more excited about the “MAHA” aspect of this recent victory than anything else, because we’ve prayed about this stuff for years and wondered if anything would ever be done about them. The economy and borders and “health services” have always been on the forefront, but true healthy living, not so much.

Not to lessen the importance of other spheres, but if everything else is addressed while our food supply is still tainted and healthy farming is still under attack and Big Pharma still profits from perpetuating sickness rather than healing people, we haven’t accomplished much. If our food and water are still allowed to be poisoned, are we really free at all?

Purity in food, purity in the gospel…I know, they don’t really seem related, but haven’t we seen enough corruption in both, and the debilitating effects of compromise? Impurity in any sphere does not produce a free people. It breeds slavery.

And that could be said for many facets of culture – for example, it doesn’t do any good to shift a society toward more constitutional beliefs if those who claim to be conservative are still addicted to porn and misogyny, if our civilization is still a dumpster fire of moral corruption. We need holistic solutions, not pet projects. We need Kingdom culture – because freedom is the common language, though we’ve been confused, distracted, and dissuaded by many counterfeits.

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

– Proverbs 14:34

No matter how good our intentions, our message will be poisoned if we compromise to the fear of man and the obsession of ourselves. If we’re centered on ourselves, whether in shame or insecurity or self pity on the one side or in arrogance and pride and presumption on the other, it’s vanity. If we’re consumed with the image in the mirror, what people will think of us…it doesn’t matter if we’re staring at ourselves out of things to complain about or things to be proud of; either way, it’s vanity. And vanity, like fear of man (are they really that different?) is idolatry.

And that’s slavery, too. We create a multitude of problems when we read someone else’s actions and words through the lens of our own insecurities.

But a truly free people, unhindered by the idolatry of vanity and fear of man, speak a language of boldness and authenticity that can’t help but draw people to freedom. Insecurities are disarmed; fearful control loses its grip. We don’t need the phony attractions of red dye or smoke machines or pretend identities when Holy Spirit is given reign to move through us.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

– 2 Corinthians 3:18

As I’m praying about this, I realize there’s good news in the midst of insanity: People who will film their screaming breakdowns for anyone to see are also people who, once redeemed, will not be hindered by fear of man when it comes to worshiping Jesus.

And in that sense, those of us who have been following Jesus have something to consider.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

– Ephesians 2:13-18

Our current culture looks at us and shakes their heads because we’ve known something they don’t, but we haven’t always communicated it in the best way. Freedom is not portrayed in tiny increments as we attempt (and fail) to make truth palatable to the masses by compromise. So it’s not that we need to water things down to become more relevant; it’s that we need to purify our message so it reveals freedom.

And freedom is its own draw. If we can give people a taste of it, we’ll win the next battle, too – and we’ll win it together.

pages & shelves: what we learn from all those books

Posted on by October 31, 2024

An epiphany this week: I just realized that I’ve been homeschooling for twenty years.

pages and shelves: what we learn from all those books

Twenty yeeeears. It’s a milestone made all the more significant by the fact that I have never owned a denim jumper and just recently had to be reminded what a “scope and sequence” is.

(“Wait wait wait, you mean the stuffy instructor’s material that I always throw in the bin so I can get to the good stuff? Oh…yeah, I knew that…” *nervous laughter*)

So hey, twenty years, eight kids, three down, five to go. Craziness. But it explains why my mind is often in fourteen literary directions and experiencing bookish spasms of attention deficit disorder. It’s just an occupational hazard of being a homeschool mom; we’re always reading great books.

I don’t ask the kids to analyze or dissect them. We don’t dig around for meanings and implications that were never intended by authors and only planted by dry language arts classes. Books are fun and fascinating and stand on their own without any picking apart, so we enjoy them and the stories they tell.

Rather than leaving us cold, education should produce the warmth of interest and pleasure in the knowledge we meet.

– Karen Glass, In Vital Harmony

But still, reading takes time. How do we justify all the hours put into reading pages and volumes and shelves full of great books – especially classic literature?

Here’s how.

We learn about bravery, and cowardice, and consequences, and human nature, and relationships, and responsibility, and maturity. We get to know heroes we want to emulate, and we are repulsed by villains who sometimes remind us a little too much of ourselves. In complex characters we see bits of our own tendencies, and we don’t usually even realize it’s happening, but as we read, we’re confronted with questions about if we want to keep those tendencies.

We learn about the world around us, and the world far away from us that we’ll never experience otherwise.

We think we’re reading the story of an epic disaster but we learn about Indian culture and the British Empire. We grab a fun mystery and end up learning about the tradition of bell ringing in churches. We open a novel from the 1800s and think we’re in for, maybe, an old-fashioned romance and dusty glimpse of village life – but no, by the time you’re halfway through you’ve learned to translate a bit of Scottish and you know that “I dinna ken whaur I cam frae” means “I don’t know where I came from” and you don’t even have to think about it.

We learn how to communicate and articulate, and how to attend and listen. We learn the nuance of different phrases and vocabulary so we can express how we really feel and what we really think without resorting to vague generalizations. We use language that demands a response from those who might otherwise blow us off, and we get our point across to a society who needs better content to think on. We lengthen our attention span and expand our understanding, and we’re not tuned out by complex language. And we are saved a multitude of misunderstandings, conflicts, inconveniences, and embarrassments by doing so.

We preserve culture and strengthen our communities by acquainting ourselves with great classics. Why have scholars and writers been persecuted in “cultural cleansings” by tyrants throughout history? Because they know and figure out things.

Those who read classics have a common language filled with short phrases that have complex, full meanings that are shared in just a few words. We say, “There is a tide,” just four words, and those who have ears to hear know the time has come to act before the opportunity is gone. We quote, “War is peace” and the sarcasm is understood by everyone who’s read 1984. We quote, “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done” and to anyone who’s read A Tale of Two Cities, we’ve distilled the 374 pages of repentance, sacrifice, restoration, and victory in just fourteen words, because readers have their own code.

On the writing side, though, I have been the writer-mama who tutors other people’s kids and coaches adults but still, at wit’s end, signed one of my own kids up for an online program with an outside company just to have someone else drill the same concepts into him. And that course was…meh…but still worth it to remove the extra conflict out from between us. So there’s no shame in needing help because of time, expertise, or just needing reinforcements.

So I did a thing to hopefully help lift a little burden from homeschooling parents of high schoolers.

(And yes, “to hopefully help” is a split infinitive, but we don’t really care about those anymore. I’m actually more aggrieved by the tacky alliteration in it.)

I put in some overtime – in our house, this means I stayed up too late after putting the kids to bed, and often let my littlest stay up too late by letting him do atrocious things to my hair – and I made an 18-week long British Lit course for homeschooling parents who don’t have several hours a week to keep up with all of their high schooler’s literature readings and evaluate their papers.

A second Brit lit course is in progress and it will be followed by American Lit, as long as we don’t run out of bobby pins.

The 30-page course booklet is $10 for those who want to do it on their own; it includes the schedule, suggested writing topics and questions, graphics, and memes. Alternatively, for those who need one less conflict between themselves and their high schooler and a few dozen less things to do, for $200 they can send me all of their weekly assignments and papers for constructive feedback and coaching over the duration of the course to save you from having to be on your kid’s case about those things. You’re on your own if you have to nag them about chores though.

You can check out the course here.

Not all of the books are your standard high school choices. Some are…and some are better. And some are considered by many to be children’s books, even though the language in them is far more advanced than the [redacted] [redacted] stuff that passes for modern YA lit sometimes.

Great children’s books are enriching for all ages, and many of us missed them when we were younger anyway. And even if we already read them (or they were read to us), we get new experiences and insights out of them years later – and many of those insights lead to maturity and perspective that we want our kids to have.

Life is too short to learn from only our own mistakes, so we need to learn from Frodo and Scarlett and Jane Eyre and Tom Sawyer and Mr. Darcy and Robinson Crusoe and thousands of others. We see multiple facets of human nature and learn how people respond to their circumstances, and how those responses do and don’t work. As we read about struggles and triumphs and flaws and heroism, we learn compassion and wisdom and bravery and self control.

Or at least, the seeds are planted. What we do with them afterward, when we are tested, is up to us.

P.S. Want to join us for our next book in Gaining Ground? It’s a biggie and will last us a while…we’re starting Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell on October 28 and we’ll be reading about 50 pages a week through the end of March. Join us on Telegram anytime as we wrap up Emma.

rebuild: how we heal, protect, and recover

Posted on by October 31, 2024

We never need someone’s permission to do the right thing. Seems like that should be obvious, but apathy and cowardice and destruction hide behind many doors, and “I’m not allowed to” is sometimes one of them.

rebuild: how we heal, protect, and recover | Shannon Guerra

Years ago when the Matanuska River was flooding its banks and the local government was dinking around with bureaucratic red tape, we watched a house a few doors down from my grandma’s tip into the river as the water ate up the ground underneath it and then proceeded to slowly swallow the house as it floated toward the Knik Arm.

It was 1991. The edge of the river moved closer to her house every day, and if nothing happened by the time it got to her property line it would be too late, because that was a mere hundred feet from the foundation of her house. So while those “in power” did nothing (and does that mean they’re really in power at all?) my dad and uncles dropped concrete slabs down the embankment to shore up the side, deterring the rapid erosion. They saved her house, and probably several others downriver, before a series of dykes were installed to keep the Matanuska in check.

So now it’s 33 years later, and in another rural part of the country we have a much bigger problem:

People are stranded in disaster areas without food, water, or fuel, and institutions and government blowhards who are supposed to help are confiscating supplies, and clearly up to something else.

[Warning: Many of these videos I’ve linked have language and other details you will not want to play around your kids. But adults need to hear it – we’re not sugar; we won’t melt.]

Citizens try to help but are blocked by government officials and threatened with arrest. Government resources are grounded instead of helping…but that doesn’t stop them from taking credit for what civilians are doing on their own.

People were dying as a senile “president” flew over, blocking air traffic from those trying to deliver supplies, undoubtedly causing more deaths from the delay.

If all this sounds unbelievable to you and you think things are fine, you need to turn off your TV and stop listening to people who are paid to lie to you, and start listening to real people. Like here. And here. And here.

A government who sent billions of dollars across the world to foreign nations now says there’s nothing left to give to citizens, but then releases a meager $750 via the flick of a middle finger to Americans who’ve lost everything.

What is happening?

If you were paying attention to what happened in Maui, you probably already know.

So…abhorrent, dire conditions in our own country. I sit here, far away in Southcentral Alaska, at my desk and on the couch and at the kitchen table with my family, remote from it all and yet hyperaware that Alaska has its own vulnerabilities and enemies, foreign and domestic. Wherever you are in America, you do, too.

But what can we do?

With such need, and corruption, and distance, what can we do that goes beyond mailing a check? How do we help, how do we resist, and how do we protect our own communities?

And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

– Nehemiah 4:14

We create a life out of slow, single days, tiny beads on a string, and one event can wipe it all out. I look around, and everything I do is slow work: Growing food is slow, raising poultry is slow, writing is slow. Parenting and teaching and healing is slow. Supporting small businesses and strengthening families is slow.

It is easy to get bogged down looking too close at my own inabilities, and despair. The needs are immediate, relief needed right now. And we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But we must not capitulate to the enemy’s ploy to make us feel powerless and helpless.

Prayer is fast. Miracles are fast, and they’re needed right now.

Prayer reaches across the distance and touches people at the speed of thought, bringing supernatural protection and favor and wisdom and guidance. We don’t know the details and most of us can’t get there, but God does and can, and is there.

Prayer doesn’t care about the mocking, scoffing, spitting, disbelieving. Let them berate and see how much peace they find from their ignorant faithlessness. It doesn’t care about permission or blowhards or red tape; it soars right over, blasts right through, the agreement with God’s goodness releasing His power to change situations, to create something out of nothing, to lead those who don’t know where to go or where to look, to draw water from the rock.

So there’s that, and it’s definitely something.

I had a long conversation with one of our kids about all these events, and why we do what we do – why we shop certain places and avoid others, why we spend time learning and teaching things that aren’t on a curriculum. You can’t go wrong in learning about prayer, healing, security, and food, I told her. All we can do is the thing God’s telling us to right now, today, in this moment.

For example, when you learn about healing, you learn that there are four stages to it: hemostasis (stopping the bleeding), inflammation (scabbing over), rebuilding, and strengthening.

What strikes me about this is that none of it is done in isolation: At first, the closest blood cells come together to clot and protect the wound. But then, white blood cells and oxygen come in. Then red blood cells come in, helping to rebuild new tissue.

We have a huge gash in our Southeastern states right now, and the process of stopping the bleeding, clotting, and protection is in full force thanks to those who didn’t wait for permission to do the right thing. Meanwhile, those of us holding down the fort in other areas do well to strengthen our immediate surroundings, to fight against the attempts to obliterate our communities and culture. We don’t know when our own tissue could be injured, or our red blood cells called in to reinforce healing needed nearby.

When all else fails and you are overwhelmed, unsure of what to do or prioritize, look at the core strengthening things. What foundations need shored up? What relationship needs some extra time, or just an extra hug? What small task is going to bolster your day tomorrow? Do you need an extra hour of sleep, an extra glass of water? We can get so focused on the big things that we forget the little things until they turn into big things we could’ve prevented.

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.

— Isaiah 32:17-18

There are so many voices out there. Many of them are good and true. But we still need to be quiet, to stop scrolling for a while, and listen for Him to speak specifically to us, just to us, in the quiet.

It’s important to starve the voices that aren’t true. We have to prioritize who we give the microphone to in our lives. We can turn the volume down on the excess noise in our society by trimming the amount of time we scroll.

We can’t go wrong in reaching out, making stronger connections, hugging the prickly kid, texting the distant kid, feeding more broth and tea to the sick kid. We can read good books, pray for our neighbors, grow and cook real food, memorize Scripture, learn new skills. We can repair rather than replace, create more and consume less. We can smile and talk with the person in line at the grocery store or post office. We can filter our media consumption, and prioritize what gives life, beauty, joy, and wisdom.

We will probably never regret doing things like deep cleaning our kitchen, taking flowers to a friend, or spending an extra few minutes talking with our kids at bedtime.

These are the things that bring oxygen, that create healing, that prevent injury and sickness, that declare to the world, We are building Kingdom culture and we have no intention of stopping. Where it’s damaged and hurting, we will rebuild and reinforce and strengthen, and as many times as it is wounded, we will keep rebuilding, and won’t wait for paperwork to go through or for bureaucrats to finish dinking around or for a government blowhard to give us the green light.

We are Kingdom people; we live in the green light, and we will keep moving forward.

We don’t need anyone’s permission to love our neighbor. We don’t need the government’s permission to protect our families or build and strengthen our culture. We just need to do it.