Author Archives: Amy Jane

Can We Show Them More Evil, Please?

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This is going to be a odd ramble since I recently wrote that “Sheltering” post, but perhaps it acknowledges some of the issues of Sheltering’s opponents.

I’m hoping someone will converse with me over the latest story I posted. I picked “The Snake’s Savior” to start this conversation because of the reaction of some boys when I told it once. There were several variations on,

“I would have saved him until he was almost warm, then tossed him away from me reallyquick!”

And I began to wonder if we (our culture’s) storytellers, in our admirable efforts to teach our children to be accepting of many different peoples, we are somehow teaching them to be “as innocent as doves” and leaving out the “wise as serpents” part.

So this enlightened generation automatically assumes the best of anyone who acts sincere, but what happens when these poor, molded children (heaven forbid!) meet real evil?

Call me cold and unfeeling, but I believe there are times when people simply are evil.

I am one who believes there are enough people that overcome (say) rejection and isolation without (say) shooting up a classroom, that those who act that way shouldn’t be excused or their evil be explained away because of the way they were treated.

Those who pretend it’s possible (or even necessary) are reversing the already faulty “the end justifies the means” to say “the means justify the end.”

It doesn’t become more right when turned on it’s head.

~

My quote on the side bar (about dragons and witches— and yes, it was inspired by a similar but different quote of Chesterton’s) is what made me first think about this problem.

I’ve come across very few stories about scary dragons or evil witches.

The majority of stories I see describe how misunderstood are peaceful dinosaurs and old women.

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Um, about that early-rising thing…

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I just noticed that How I Started Rising Early is now one of my most-visited posts, and I felt, in the interests of “full disclosure” (or, at least, not desiring to mislead anyone), I wanted to add that I haven’t been consistently “rising early” all the months since I wrote that.

Not even most of them.

When I quit going to bed as I needed to (Important Item #3 on the how-to), I grew too tired to continue rising early, and I went back to my old habits.

I also realize, looking back now, that I went through a mild depression when my youngest weaned.

I don’t think I’ll ever know if it was because I got “off hormones” for the first time in over five years (I’ve been either pregnant or nursing a baby since April of ’02) or if it was my version of SAD with the diminishing light complicating things, but basic-level functioning was a challenge, and even thinking of early rising was merely masochistic; not at all helpful.

I definitely believe there are some seasons better than others for starting this if you’re not naturally inclined this way.

It’s only been in my latest re-ordering of activities and (I suppose) priorities that I’ve begun rising early again.

Again, I have to wonder how much this is related to the light returning after a dark-winter season– but I don’t know how much it can affect things when I’m still not getting much daylight till almost 9 a.m.

In 23 years I can’t remember light leaving being detrimental, but I celebrate its return with great notice. I love how it seems to grow faster than it left– like the sun is just as glad to be back as we are to have it.

But, again, the early rising “thing” being successful is through the provision of our good God.

I woke coherent (despite bedtime) at 5 a.m. for almost a week before I figured it out. I think God was suggesting I start my early mornings again.

So for several days now I’ve considered my early mornings a gift. Sometimes I lie awake enjoying the quiet, but usually I get up and spend an hour or more to myself.

My only must-do is three chapters from the bible, then I can just glaze- over or do whatever. I love the freedom of knowing I’m not “robbing” anyone (including myself) to do “nothing” during these hours.

So long as you don’t mind a little dying…

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The Kingfisher
Mary Oliver

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
Like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a single silver leaf. I think this is
The prettiest world— so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn’t born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water— hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don’t say that he’s right. Neither
do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

~

This poem I read last night fit (for me) so well with Jen’s post today.

Thank you, Jen, for that story. I laughed so hard I cried! And I’m sorry that series of moments was such a challenge, but I bet you earned the top-anything brag from it. :)

This is the line from that poem describes things perfectly for me just now:

I think this is
The prettiest world— so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?

Blessings on your day! I hope your splash of happiness is flood today. ;)

The Wailin’ Jennys

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This is the song the ladies opened with last night.

I love the sound, but I think it’s a funny/odd song because I hear “there’s only one way to mend a broken heart” over and over without being sure what they think that one-way is. ;)

Live music is, just. wonderful.

Sometimes I’m surprised to be reminded how much it affects me, and it makes me think again about how I believe we humans are designed for community and to be steeped in music.

A few more videos to show the group’s variety:

Their website is here if you want to see if their latest tour brings them near you (sounds like they have a weird-crazy itinerary this time). You should go listen if you get the chance.

Absolutely worth it.

Why is “Sheltering” a Bad Word?

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“Clearly there is an appropriate kind of sheltering. When those who are opposed to homeschooling accuse me of sheltering my children, my reply is always, ‘What are you going to accuse me of next, feeding and clothing them?”
— R.C. Sproul Jr.

I was at my moms’-group yesterday, and heard a pair of women exclaiming incredulously over a young lady who realized much later than most that sex happens outside of marriage.

“I don’t know how in the world she missed it that long,” said one. “I mean, it’s even in the Bible.” The tone hovered somewhere between scorn and pity for this poor girl, and I (with my latest thoughts and feelings) couldn’t help saying, “Maybe it was a mercy.”

I had no opportunity to expand on this, because at that point I accidentally knocked over a cup of juice and spent the next five minutes dealing with that.

But I have been frustrated hearing this sort of talk before.

Talking with my uncle late last year, I endured his monologue about how worried he’d been for us kids because we were homeschooled and sheltered from the real world. I didn’t think at the time to say I was grateful for my ignorance.

~

Via e-mail this week I got a little article by By Gena Suarez, one of the owner/publishers of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, that articulated perfectly the way I feel about this.

Do you “shelter” your children?

We’re finding that’s a bad word in some circles. Something is creeping into the church (and even the homeschooling community), and it isn’t biblical. It is an “anti-sheltering campaign” of sorts, and it’s full of holes. Think about it. What does it mean to shelter? Protect. Defend. Guard. Preserve. Watch over. Shield. Safeguard.

Hmmmm, so far so good, right? Sure, until “pop psychology” comes in and tells us we should allow our children to taste a little of the world in order to understand it or pray for it – that we should not “over-shelter” them. Nonsense.

What’s the opposite of shelter? Expose. Endanger.

I’ve observed the arguments against sheltering typically fall under one of two categories:

First, the warning that the poor child will suffer culture-shock upon entering the “real world,” and the second, that his/her uninitiated palette will irresistibly succumb to these new and tantalizing flavors.

Leaving aside that these two possibilities seem a little contradictory, lets look at them.

First, the second (I love writing that): never having seen an actual study, I can’t even stay whether this theory is statistically true, but I don’t think it is.

My educated opinion is that when children leave the faith or are “led into sin” there are more factors than just sheltering involved.

I would blame, for example, a controlling environment where independent thought is not taught or encouraged. This lack of preparation for making choices would leave anyone vulnerable.

As to “culture shock,” I think that the majority of Americans are more “sheltered” than all but the most sheltered of children.

If they ever got the culture shock of abject poverty, of the continual fear and violence common in other parts of the world, would they be more or less likely to be thankful for the security of the familiar?

This is how I felt upon my greater acquaintance with “the real world:”

Thankful it hadn’t been foisted on me sooner.

And why the implication that culture shock is inherently negitive? (But that’s another post. Moving on.)

~

Ultimately, I think we have to look at what our goals are. Sure, perfect children would be the ideal, but as they will make their own choices that we cannot control, we have to eventually accept that.

People who do not shelter their children will make the same discovery, and I wonder if they will have more questions about whether they left out something important.

My goal is to give my children enough of a “boost” toward Truth that their own leap toward faith may not have to be into the perilous unknown.

It’s a well-established fact that humans both fear the unknown and resist starting things they don’t know will succeed.

As a parent I want to remove what stumbling blocks are in my power to remove, and one of those stumbling blocks is the outside influences that can distract from Truth or skew a developing perspective towards a more hardened heart than God intended.

Sheltering is part of meeting this goal.

Funny (to me)…

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A little old. Sorry, I’m behind. It made me laugh.

This is a list my friend made about the things she was learning about life and becoming a mom, when her baby was just a month old.

A few of my favorites:

  • Eating is a difficult but necessary evil
  • Everything is better when Daddy is home
  • It is impossible to be caught up on laundry

Why Differences are Threatening

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In expressing our opinions and describing what we do, we are expressing our values and describing what is important to us.

When we encounter people who do things differently, we can see the simple fact of those differences as attacks on our values, and, therefore, on us.

When desiring to keep the peace, I think we must remain carefully aware of this.

Just yesterday I was at a baby shower and got off on a rant about potty-training (so sue me. It’s the season I’m parenting).

The camp I’m in (if I may call it a camp) is that once the kid knows what to do, when she’s ready, she will. I refuse to force the issue because I don’t see it as important enough to initiate a battle of wills.

The camp of my listener is the early-is-better camp, having (mostly) trained all her children before they could talk.

She listened patiently, with a slightly concerned look on her face, and said carefully, “Well, that’s one way to do it.”

Gracious lady.

“I prefer to start before they develop a will,” she added, explaining her position. “Then it never becomes a battle, it’s just part of what you do.”

She is also a Suzuki-mama, so this seems totally in-line with other parts of her life.

Afterwards I was thinking about how differently we saw this and approached her to verify I hadn’t sounded rude or something, and she took the moment to both say no and express how thankful she was that we could disagree and still be friends.

“It seems like so many people can’t be friends when they don’t agree.”

And she’s right. I like to think we’d still be this gracious even if we didn’t have five years of history together, but that commonality has just got to make peace easier.

Maybe when it is established that there is much love; when we have enough shared experiences, and the proof of good-faith that grows through years, we better understand that “love covers a multitude” of differences.

This is something precious in our transient modern society: to have relationships in addition to marriage that are built over years.

I am extremely thankful for that handful of friends that, despite our dissimilitude, continue to share their lives with me.

Mom Was Right

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I’m not a person who usually minds that.

But hearing “You’ll figure it out eventually,” can sound very empty and frustrating when you don’t know if it’s true.

You know, one of those “Mom’s being encouraging” lines you never know if you can trust. Like, “Of course you’re beautiful.”

I used to fight rolling my eyes when I heard that one.

Some months ago I was describing to her my various attempts at differing systems of getting home-things done.

Systems that work in theory, and maybe even in real life before old habits resume control, but die pathetically as I run out of energy trying to maintain someone else’s personality.

Some of those systems, looking at them now, seem like having another woman running things in your house. She knows what she’s doing and has proven she’s better at it.

But, doggone it, it’s my house. This just isn’t going to work unless I change or they change.

So I changed. To something altogether different, even from them.

I’ve been two or three weeks in this new person’s body and mind, and I’m starting to get a little tense.

I sort of like this new me. I find myself wondering if this is a change God has made that will become my new normal, or whether I’ll suddenly get tired and it’ll all fall apart.

This is (in a weird way) fun to write down, because I actually feel more confident having aired that.

~

Right before I got engaged, I was so relieved to hear my mom balance out the twitterpated sighs of all my newlywed friends:

“You’ll just know!“

I didn’t, so it was validating that my mother (still happily married to my father) didn’t either.

~

So I was quite disappointed to hear the homemaking version of the same line:

“You’ll figure it out.”

I didn’t want to figure it out. I wanted it to be a logical formula someone else had figured out and could hand me. That doable time-table that would bring peace and order to my life.

But it didn’t work that way.

The almost disappointing thing is that I don’t have any better advice to offer anyone coming after me (You know how I love to give advice…).

Sure I was seeking God, but— in theory at least— I’ve been seeking him about this for years. So this may be my first experience with seeing the fruition of years of prayer. Who knows?

But one of the biggest (and ineffable) lessons I have been learning lately is how different every family is. And just as each of us have to learn individually how to deal with (say) temptation, there are some things we are just never going to get except by doing and living.

So Mom was right. (Hi, Mom! Are you reading this?) I finally feel like I am figuring this out.

There’s been no “glory and trumpets,” and I’ve wondered a few times lately when this change began (it’s been pretty quick– happening in days/ weeks, not months).

No giddy excitement or *boom* of God’s presence.

But there is sweet warm oatmeal with strawberries, and children who delight in music, who ask me to snuggle with them while we watch their cartoons.

And peace and contentment.

God does give us the desires of our hearts. He planted in me the want for peaceful home and He is bringing that desire to fruition.

And I praise him for it.

Cool— almost.

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I suppose I should take this as some sort of complement, but the children’s book manuscript I sent out last April earned one final rejection letter.

The reason it took so long is it lived through two editors before being shot down.

That’s some sort of endorsement, right? That one (or two) wanted to show it to someone else instead of rejecting it outright?

Anyway, I already went through all of the SCBWI publisher options for the last round of multiple submissions, so I don’t know if I have any more options.

Just sit on it a while, I guess. Maybe I’ll sing it at the local folk festival someday.

*I* think it’s a hoot, but maybe too much in an inside-joke way.