Category Archives: reading

the challenge: working through it together

Posted on by February 13, 2023

Every year we choose new books to read (do you do this, too?), but last year we started something different – we did a reading challenge. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it?

But it’s not, really. Just search the internet and you’ll find a hundred variations. Iree joined us and the three of us teamed up together to read 104 books. Two books per week seems like a lot, but between all of us, it seemed doable.

But we quickly discovered that it wasn’t, quite.

the challenge: working through it together

It wasn’t the number of books, but the categories that threw us. And I understand that the point of a challenge is to, well, challenge you, but there was only one slot for “a book you have no interest in” and I own too many books that I actually want to read to bother digging around with so many categories that were on there that I don’t.

So, taking a languid approach to it, we crossed the boring/inapplicable categories off as we went and replaced them with creative ones that were less boring (cough) more to our taste. Because seriously, I value theology and Christian living, but there were SO MANY of them on there, and absolutely nothing on writing, crafts, psychology, ancient history, criminology, or any of the other weird stuff we also really like.

And by the end of the year our list was a mess, but it was much more fun, and yes – we were still challenged.

This year we did it again, but started off with a clean list. We made sure the categories were both realistic and interesting right off the bat. We crowded around the kitchen island, just throwing ideas out there.

A book written by someone you know. A book with a character you’d want to be friends with. A book about a disaster. A book about personal growth. A book Shannon quoted in one of her books. A book of 800 pages or more. A memoir or autobiography. A book by Dickens.

“A book on Napoleonic history,” Vin suggested.

“Uhh…” Iree and I looked at each other.

“Only if you’re going to read it,” she said. (He said he would.)

Cham came in and we asked her for suggestions. And if you don’t know her, you will after hearing her ideas:

“A book about biology…a book on dissecting. Ohh! A book on cadavers!”

Yeah. Well…we only added one of those ideas; I’ll let you guess which.

There’s so much that we don’t know. We’ll read hundreds, thousands, of pages this year, and aside from the people we hang out with and the time we spend in prayer, very few things will influence our growth like these pages. So it’s important to choose good ones, and to enjoy the time spent with them.

I’m not kidding myself; I know I won’t remember most of what I read. I won’t like or agree with everything that I read. But even without remembering all the facts and storylines and characters and historical figures, we will be changed. The pages will leave an impression that wasn’t there last year.

Last year I started reading Plutarch’s Lives alongside Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Several months in, I realized my mistake. I thought they would reinforce each other, but usually I just get more confused as I try to untangle them from each other every week.

But I am learning.

I don’t remember all the individual lives in Plutarch, and I couldn’t tell you the exact timeline in Gibbon. But what I can tell you is an impression of these cultures and times. I can tell you that there were leaders who had wisdom for the ages, including ours. And there were also leaders who were so abhorrent in their depravity and disregard for the lives of others that the horrors they committed are hard to believe.

But they are in the history books. We generally don’t argue with them.

So, quick question, because I have to go there – why do people disbelieve or disregard the horrors we hear about today? Why are we so quick to mock and accuse people of being conspiracy theorists when they share information about celebrities and politicians doing abhorrent things?

Is it because they’re not in the history books yet? Is it because we have no interest in those categories?

Is it because those topics challenge us too much?

Or is it because we are their contemporaries, and their proximity to our own lives makes us uncomfortable? Because if these things are happening in the world we live in (and they are – it takes very little research to discover it, though you’ll have to use a search engine that doesn’t censor to do it, and you absolutely should not do so without being prayed up), then either a) we might be somewhat responsible that they exist, or b) we might need to do something about it so they no longer exist.

And those aren’t good, easy, fun options. It’s much more comfortable to shoot the messenger, lump it all as conspiracy theory and applaud the censorship that silences them, and move along with our noses heads held high.

I’ve heard some people disavow information simply because it didn’t match their personal experience. And I’m grateful they haven’t personally experienced anything that horrific, but our personal experiences do not define or limit the reality of other people experiences. It is arrogant, narcissistic, and foolishly ignorant to act like it does.

We still have so much to learn.

Hear me, friend: Children chained to beds and starved was not in my personal experience until we got involved in adoption.

Children who weighed 24 pounds at age four were not in my personal experience until we started our adoption paperwork. We converted kilos to pounds in astonishment; it had to be a miscalculation. But it wasn’t.

Children who were so neglected that they were only nine pounds at nine years old were not in our personal experience until we got involved with the people who were adopting them.

Our lack of personal experience did not prevent their existence or the abuse. It only proved our ignorance.

Our personal experience is not the epitome of reality. It is arrogant to assume that our x amount of years in any field (professional, personal, or otherwise) qualifies us to deny the reality of someone else’s differing experience, especially when it comes in the form of testimony with evidence and witnesses.

Just because something is so devastating that it is hard to believe, doesn’t mean it isn’t actually true.

And just because you don’t find information about fraud, horrific child abuse, or other crimes perpetrated by the elite on mainstream media (which no longer even attempts to hide how blatant their censorship is) doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means they want us to think it doesn’t…and that should lead us to some very important questions about what they have to lose.

There are many things that are hard to believe, but are nevertheless reality, regardless of how uncomfortable they make us feel, or how much we hate those categories.

And coming to understand that – and working through it together, with respect and love – may be the real challenge we all go through this year.

keep it: the only way we maintain good times for future generations

Posted on by January 18, 2021

Over the last week with few exceptions, I’ve posted nothing on social media except scripture. I haven’t wanted to add to the noise. He has good things to say about this season, and that’s what I’ve wanted to focus on and draw attention to.

keep it: the only way we maintain good times for future generations

It’s been an interesting experiment and a good move for me, sort of like a fast.

Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
    be not envious of wrongdoers!
For they will soon fade like the grass
    and wither like the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

– Psalm 37:1-3

It’s been Psalm 37 all week long. But if you’re paying attention (I know many of you are) you know that really, it’s been Psalm 37 for much longer than that. The events over the last few weeks, and even leading up to election week in November, weren’t huge surprises and they’ve been in the making for a long time.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
    fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
    over the man who carries out evil devices!

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
    Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
For the evildoers shall be cut off,
    but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.

– Psalm 37:7-9

On January 6th, we took the day off work and prayed. And then we went to church and prayed. Our pastor talked candidly about the risk of civil war, and I’ve thought many times about how we are facing this blend of civil and revolutionary war – civil because it is among our own countrymen, but revolutionary because of the cause and the nature of it.  But our pastor also talked about the grievous things it could mean for our kids and future grandkids, and I had not fully considered it in that vivid light.

Then one of the elders prayed, and he repented for his generation that allowed so much of this to happen. They were comfortable, he said; things were easy. And they took advantage of it, and the generation that came after took the ease and comfort for granted.

It made me think of this saying that I’ve been hearing a lot over the last year:

Hard times create strong men.

Strong men create good times.

Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times.

And it’s so true, I know it is, but surely we must be able to break the cycle. Because if we can’t, everything seems so hopeless – why should we work to create good times if it only results in weak men who ruin it for our great grandchildren?

Or worse, there’s that other argument we hear all too often: Why bother bringing children into the world at all?

But then, the same week, I also read this:

“What sort of world is this to bring them into? That’s another consideration.”

“A very cowardly consideration, dear. A mere shirking of responsibility. It’s a heavy responsibility, of course, a double one, responsibility for the children themselves and responsibility for the world they must live in. But I know of no better incentive for the building of a decent world than the possession of children who must live in the world you’ve built.”

– Elizabeth Goudge, Pilgrim’s Inn

God creates a beautiful, strategic curriculum for our lives: The warnings and repentance, the prayer and the challenge. And I realized again that we are not headed for war; we are already at war.

We always have been. But we lose ground every time we forget it.

What hasn’t changed is that we are occupying the land of a cleanup operation: We are in the middle of a spiritual war in a physical place, and it manifests itself in both ways. We see the spiritual and physical aftermath all around us.

So even when we get back to “good times” – the corruption is revealed, the fraud is overturned, the guilty go to prison (hashtag: we’re gonna need a bigger Gitmo) – we still need to remember that we are at war. We are always at war. Our hearts and culture are the battleground, and never more so when it looks like things are safe and easy.

We are still occupying and stewarding the land, on mission, until He comes.

There are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it…done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men’s and women’s hearts – any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it, though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law; and that’s a bold word.

– Charles Dickens, The Battle of Life

People’s hearts – ours, and those around us – are always and still the battleground. Hearts and identities and relationships will always need wholeness and fullness, in good times and bad, and that is where God wants to stake His claim. We till the soil regardless of the weather and circumstances because strong men create good times, but strong men can also create strong children. And those strong children will continue to inherit the land.

There were still children in the world, and while there were children, men and women would not abandon the struggle to make safe homes to put them in, and while they so struggled there was hope.

– Elizabeth Goudge, Pilgrim’s Inn

When the Constitutional Convention closed in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall when a woman asked him what kind of government they had just designed. His answer was, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

And that is still our challenge today.

Turn away from evil and do good;
    so shall you dwell forever.
For the Lord loves justice;
    he will not forsake his saints.
They are preserved forever,
    but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
The righteous shall inherit the land
    and dwell upon it forever.

– Psalm 37:27-29

In good times or hard times, we are still loving our kids and teaching them. We are still learning more and growing. We are still passing on values and standards and true education. We are still in the Word and abiding in prayer. We cannot let up and grow soft when times are easy, and we cannot let go and become calloused when times are hard.

The only way we do that is to remember that the war is never over – it is always raging in the spiritual battleground. We are not only meant to inherit the land, but to keep it.

the story is in there

Posted on by October 5, 2023

“I want to make that. And I want to make that.”

Finn is flipping pages in one of the Irish cookbooks Grandma gave me years ago, pointing to the pictures like it’s his favorite story: barm brack, shortbread, scones, seafood pie, game pie. He’s next to me on the crowded couch while I eat a late breakfast, sharing my fried banana cookie with Kav.

the story is in there: finding God in the midst of the overwhelm

He flips to the desserts and I’m glad I’m already having a sweet breakfast (sugar-free, thankyouverymuch) because now Finn’s saying I want to make that, and that, and that about blackberry crumble, autumn pudding, barley flummery, burnt cream, and carrageen pudding. I don’t know what some of those are but the language speaks to something deep within me, and the pictures are drool-worthy.

“I want to make that,” he says again, and whoops, he’s already made it to the drinks section and is pointing at a layered cocktail. The pictures look festive and innocent – sloe gin, blas meala, Gaelic coffee. But mulled cider and driver’s special notwithstanding, the main ingredient in several of them is whiskey. Slainté.

I’ve never made most of the recipes in this book – though I do love a wee splash of whiskey in a mug of decaf late at night on occasion – but maybe someday I will, if I have the right ingredients.

And also, maybe someday I will when there’s more time.

Or, when there’s different time. In a different season. Because this season is so full, I don’t have the time (or at least, the inclination) to scour the Matanuska Valley for a source of Irish moss – and while I’ve accidentally substituted daisy leaves for dill before (more about that in a sec), I don’t trust any Alaskan moss as a substitute for it in pudding.

Because this is often a season of overwhelm. Vin just ran most of the kids to a piano lesson and errands, and left me at home to get some undisturbed work in, because usually, work is disturbed. Or, not disturbed, because the kids are still and always the main work – but it is nice to be able to type my own thoughts in quiet every once in a while, without checking math problems and correcting behavior and spelling words like “celery” because someone wants to borrow my phone to look up whether or not the cats are allergic to it.

(They’re not, in case you were wondering.)

And sometimes, given enough of those moments to type in peace, a book comes out of them.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

Which brings me back to the daisy-accidentally-substituted-as-dill. That story is in there.

Also, the story about when I almost drove into a snowy ditch because little Chamberlain was yelling at me from the backseat about that one time Wendy came over for all the beer. I have a good reason for that, and it’s in there.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

Also, one or two stories about trying to complete purchases from the unmentionables department unscathed by physical injury, emotional remorse, or other trauma.

Also, the story of how Grandma taught me (but obviously not Vince) how to fold fitted sheets.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

And also, because dads also do the work that God sees, the story of Vince pickle-forking. (In his words, it’s not as fun as it sounds.)

But also, there are the stories of God teaching me to slow down.

Of God showing me how He sees me when it feels like no one notices the work I’ve done.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

Of me learning to widen my circle after years of isolation, and learning to find light in dark places.

Of us learning to redraw new lines from old, unhealthy patterns, and find redemption in the process of starting over.

Of God teaching me to keep my eyes on Him so my kids will want to see Who I’m looking at.

Those are all in there, and they will speak to something deep within you.

And also, if you, like Finn, are in a phase of “wanting to make that,” there are knitting patterns, a crafty project or two, and several extremely quirky, non-technical recipes for you to try, including the fried banana cookie. (There’s no whiskey in any of them, I promise.)

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

If you are in this season of doing it all and still never feeling like enough is getting done, of wanting to do more but often feel a little (or a lot) hopeless about ever being able to it, and sometimes you wonder if there’s any purpose to the mundane repetition of all the work that is never finished, this book is for you.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

If you are trying to hear God in the middle of the mayhem, this book is for you.

If you want to know how seen and loved and strong you are in this season of meeting everyone else’s needs and just trying to find time to squeeze in a shower, this book is for you.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)

Our oldest just turned twenty, and our youngest turns two next month. Friends, I have been in this season for a long, loooong time. I know how dark and frustrating and ridiculous it can be.

But I also know how faithful He is to meet us right there, in the midst of the overwhelm.

And that story is in there, too.

_______

Work That God Sees: Complete Edition is available now on our site and in bookstores.

Work That God Sees: prayerful motherhood in the midst of the overwhelm (complete edition)