Category Archives: mothering

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.

making it: we rise above fear by changing our minds

Posted on by September 25, 2024

It seems like when you live with boys, your immune system has the choice to either toughen up and be stronger than average, or to keel over and just let you die. So far, five boys later, I think we’re making it.

making it: we rise above fear by changing our minds | Shannon Guerra

But here’s why it’s such a miracle: Boys do things – all kinds of things – except for washing their hands. Did you scrub the toilet? Check. Clean the catbox? Yes, ma’am. Scoop out the chicken coop? Uh huh.

And we, silly parents, ask these questions as we are watching them in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter on a tortilla. And then – and only then – do we remember to ask the obvious question, which should have been the first question, even though it’s too late anyway, the damage is done:

Did you wash your hands?

“Ummmmm….” Stalling is always a bad sign. Especially when it’s followed by an almost silently whispered, “nope.”

Serenity now, Lord Jesus.

Vince and I sit on the couch dumbfounded as the boy drops the lunch implements on the counter and runs to the bathroom. I consider donating the entire container of peanut butter to the chickens, and Vin quietly but dramatically pleads the blood of Jesus over our entire home, asking for a special consecration over the fridge and silverware drawer.

(Side note: This post might prevent any dinner guests from accepting invitations for the next three months.)

There are so many things that could go wrong, and it’s best not to think of them. It’s best just to be grateful for grace, for strong immune systems, for a life that allows for such activity, and for healthy boys who are (please God) learning good habits.

And this is good to remember at night, or more accurately, at 3 or 4 am, when panicked thoughts about chickens and homeschool and kids’ behavior and inflation and taxes and paperwork and vehicle woes and world events and a million other valid concerns start crowding in as you lay there, wide awake, wondering if you’re going to make it. There are so many things that could go wrong, and it’s best not to think of them.

But we do think of them. Many of them require action on our part – like making an appointment, or paying a bill, or filling out forms, or disciplining children, or disciplining ourselves, or being more frugal…and all these actions require thinking.

But what is not required is worrying, or partnering with fear, or expecting the worst. None of those have to be in our thinking, though they tend to be our default.

So we need to be rewired. We need to forge new pathways for better thoughts.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

– 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Have you ever considered that agreeing with fear – which is what worry is – is making a “lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God?” It is.

God is not worried or fearful. And we have the mind of Christ, and we can trust God…so we need to agree with Him. (Listen, self.)

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

– Ephesians 4:17-19

This isn’t usually how we apply this scripture, but roll with me here: If we have a belief that truly sets us apart from our old ways, our thinking should demonstrate that. But worry is futile, a darkened understanding. Worries are ignorant of God’s love and trust; when we worry we are hardened in our old paths and ways of thinking.

And we wouldn’t normally associate it with making us callous or greedy, but consider…when we indulge in fretting and fears, are we not giving ourselves up to a sort of sensuality? Isn’t the distrust of God’s goodness and love an act of impurity?

Huh. Still thinking on this. It goes on:

But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,

and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,

and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

– Ephesians 4:20-24

We have lain there awake in seasons of waiting and waiting, crying out for breakthrough, telling God, “I know You’re good and faithful, but this is still so hard, so it must be that I’m not good and faithful.”

And He reminds us that victory is not a pass/fail test or a zero sum game because things are much more complicated than what we are seeing. We are seeing “if not this, then this” but reality is “not this or this or this, but all these other things in varying degrees and intensities.”

Many, many things are actively in the process of working out. Together. All at the same time, and all at different times. And in the meantime, it looks like a mess.

Will we make it, though? we ask in desperation.

Did you make it in 2004? He asks, turning the question around. Did you make it in 2007, and 2008, and 2011, and 2012, 2013, and every year since then? Did you make it when you didn’t know where you’d go in 2017? Did you make it when the rug was pulled out from under you in 2018? Did you make it through the chaos and stupidity of 2020, and the upheaval in 2022?

Did you make it last year, Love?

Yes. Over and over, in every crisis, real or perceived – we made it.

So we have something still to do:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

Wait, this is me interrupting again. Is our mind – our brain – part of our bodies? Yes? So our thoughts also should be presented as a living sacrifice. This is where we make the sacrifice of praise even when it still doesn’t feel praiseworthy yet. We lay there in the midst of the flying fears and whisper Thank You because we know He’s in control and He loves us and He has this all covered, even when we don’t know what to do. (He knows how dumb we are, remember. And that is a huge comfort.)

Okay, carry on:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

– Romans 12:1-2

If agreeing with fear is an example of being conformed to this world (and it is, I’ll fight you over it) then rising above the fear and thanking God that we can trust Him while we let go of our regrets and insecurities and assumptions and negative imaginings…is one way we are transformed by the renewal of our mind.

We choose the thoughts that get to play. Fear wants us to just keel over and die, but God has made us to be stronger than average.

Has everything always turned out the way we wanted? No. It’s still a fallen world, a clean-up operation.

But so much has turned out better than we could’ve imagined. We’re all making it. And as we’re grateful to God and trusting Him, renewing our minds and offering the sacrifice of praise, we’ll continue to do so.

After car accidents and miscarriage and illness and grief and bank failures and huge expenses and big risks and unexpected pregnancies and medical corruption and corporate gaslighting and global deception and financial loss and leaving the familiar and starting over when it seemed like the most foolish thing to do… we made it. And you did, too.

We all made it. And here we are, by the mercies of God.