Category Archives: Random

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.

April Rain Song

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by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain

~ ~ ~

It’s interesting to me how much context can affect content.

I started a diary of sorts when I was 13. By the time I was 19 I had only filled one book, but was working concurrently on three others.

Without setting out this way, I had categorized my ideas and designated which book was appropriate for which thoughts.

The reason I was just thinking of this today was I was playing my Rainsong guitar and thought that would make a fun blog name, had anybody snatched it up yet?

The funny thing is that my mind immediately began to form what I would write under that heading. It felt just like a new journal always did.

~

Hughes’s poem was the first thing I thought of. My girls and I love it. The funny thing is that since song is in the title, they always stop me if I try just to read it.

The name is already taken, of course, which was probably a good thing. I need to remember what I’ve got now is enough. ;)

Character Songs

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One thing that always seems “magical” to me is when I hear a song (usually on the radio, but it’s also happened in a store) with a message, sound or single line that perfectly encapsulates a personality, action beat or relationship.

I initially noticed this when I was working on my first novel, and heard a line from “For the Longest Time” by Billy Joel:

And the greatest miracle of all
Is how I need you
And how you needed me too
That hasn’t happened for the longest time

It was the heart of the first part of the novel and their interaction.

So here are some highlights for my current work (don’t read anything into the videos– I never saw them before I did a search for the song itself. YouTube is an *awesome* substitute for iTunes– I just don’t watch while I’m listening if it’s for the sound, like here).

I guess I’m more auditory than visual, because if I’m going to be imagining for a while, it’s with music rather than images. I think these examples hint at the individual conflicts of interest that arise in my novel.

Includes the lines,

“…I feel so small and bewildered…
Tell me that you love me, tell me that you want me
Even if I’m not all you thought I would be.
Tell me that … you’ll catch me when I fall.”

Cecilia is the bride arranged for the crown prince Torbjorn, and I love this sweet wistful song for her. Torb doesn’t have a song of his own yet, but (jokingly) I’ve assigned him “I knew I loved you before I met you,” as his relationship song, because he’s that kind of guy— one who makes up his mind and that’s the way it is.

“My Desk” meme

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So I caved and did it here rather than there.

I think it’s because I just cleaned it two days ago so I could follow the “don’t mess with it” rule and still not feel ashamed ;o)

desk.jpg

You can click that if you need a bigger pix to analyze me ;)

But since it’s still hard to “read” I’ll give you the tour (of the un-obvious stuff):

  • Recipes (from yesterday’s meal-planning)
  • an Alaskan wedding invite (the red thing)
  • homeschool books (I’m currently trying to decide if NJ should be taught Kindergarten or 1st grade, come fall)
  • my topical notebook (I’ll have to do a post about this sometime)
    • has different sections for my kids, husband, guitar, novel and homeschool stuff– keeps me from being totally scattered
  • Lindorm folder with my research/plotting notes or questions and the current manuscript (that I still need to start rereading)
  • Lamp I was reading by during a power-out last week
  • two tea pots (can you find #2?) because of my growing re-interest in tea
  • two card-files I’m trying to re-integrate in my life: one for recipes and one to codify chore frequency.
  • hard to see behind the cup and plant: the insert for the Broadway Lion King CD.

One thing you can’t see is the legs of the desk— this was a “scavenged” surface my husband brought home and crafted legs to be just the right hight for me. It the only surface I’ve ever sat at properly in an ordinary chair. It’s the perfect hight whether I’m sewing or typing.

So the desk does say a lot about me– what I’m doing, what I want to be important to me. Even relationship, and how well I’m taken care of (though that part had to be explained).

Anybody else want to play (or give me the link to where you’ve played before)?

The Offense of the Gospel

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I was thinking this weekend about how passionately I’ve heard some bloggers (and especially their commenters) discuss children and birth control. Generally polite, these people– myself included— still feel strongly enough about the topic that we’re not afraid to risk offending someone.

But when was the last time I stuck my neck out, risking offending someone, in order to talk about Truth, or speak Hope? Introducing the name of Jesus and his power over sin?

The fact we can even have these discussions (I am thinking specifically of birth control here) is evidence that our conversation is being spent with other Christians. Where are the unbelievers? Where is our risk-taking with them?

Wouldn’t you know, God planted this idea the day a family member would call and challenge me to take that risk at once.

I used to think that rejection of the Gospel– the power of Jesus to save us from everything wrong we’ve done– just came out of ignorance or blindness.

I was convinced that if someone could just grasp the magnitude of what Jesus did, how much God loves him or her, how much He is already involved in our daily life, I thought, surely s/he would welcome this worthy Savior with open arms.

But now that naiveté has been swept sadly away.

Because now I’ve seen, even knowing all this, clearly hearing and recognizing the call of God, one may still choose to reject it: living nakedly in one’s own righteousness; morbidly content in filthy rags.

It seems all that’s left to me is to pray he grows disgusted of them before he runs out of time, as he himself has agreed he is utterly without excuse.

So I got a painful chance to “offend” with the Gospel someone I can’t scare away. And I am still praying about finding the right words for the next opportunity God gives me.

In a sense my faith has been shaken, and that just proves my faith was in the wrong thing. I have too strongly relied on persuasion: words, stories; feeling the right one would *finally* make the difference, seal the deal.

But it’s not about me getting it right. It’s about God and that person. Only those two: the Holy Spirit drawing, and the human spirit responding. The human must want to believe.

And as helpless as that makes me feel, I still have the responsibility to speak out and take risks. I still need to be driven to my knees, believing that in God’s economy faithfulness will somehow make a difference.

God grant me the courage to take up this quest.

Different Kinds of Chaos

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Not all chaos is created equal.

Take, for example, my current chaos.

Right now my chaos is one of abundance. We spent almost three hours shopping yesterday (and I am an efficient shopper– even with littles along) and replenished our supplies that have been lagging since the anticipation of our trip over Thanksgiving week.

First big shopping trip in about a month. And it was big.

I now have produce in the the house again. Scratch-meals on the mind and *options* for dinner!

I also have two young chickens to cut up and steaks I got a great deal on to learn how to cook. (Sorry, don’t mean to hijack the blog to domesticity for long.)

This chaos is exciting and stirs my energy and creativity.

The Chaos of three days ago– a chaos of scarcity– sapped my mind and made me tired, even though I knew what to do with myself (which is not always the case).

With a moratorium on movies until the girls lifted their own strike, little clean laundry, and little in the refrigerator (coming on the heels of three days without milk– a bizarre experience that threw us all off-balance), I felt as much *lack* as maybe a middle-class home can feel.

Which, admittedly, isn’t much, but was still hard for me to function under.

But contrasting today with that day is intriguing. That day I didn’t even have the energy to blog or play EQ2 with my husband (we just re-started, and usually play over his lunch-hour while the kids nap). Today I’m writing while I brace myself to dive in. My lovely family’s actually getting a three-course meal today.

At least, I think that’s what it’s called (not really my realm, so I’m not sure). The steaks (I’ll figure something out), cream-of-cauliflower soup, and biscuits. There will be some green stuff too, but since I don’t do anything with it, it hardly counts as a “course,” right?

And the kids were adorable when I picked up the on-sale cauliflower. “What’s that?” (distrustful) “What do you do with it?” I explained it by saying you can do anything with it you do with broccoli. One of the girls gushed, “You can make soup with it!”

So that’s where dinner came from.

Risks

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I imagine this argument between worried moms:

“If you tell a young lady to stop seeing a fellow, it will just make her sneak around behind your back, instead.”

“Or if may alert her to a genuine concern you have about the guy, and she may realize she has nothing invested in the relationship and stop spending time alone with him.”

Okay, that was a cheesy introduction, but the second reaction was mine.

There was this friend of a friend that I once had out to where I house-sat. When my mother met him a few days later (she works on the same campus I attended, so it was really easy for her to meet all my friends) she told me straight out, “Amy, I don’t see anything in ‘Bob’ to make him safe, and I don’t want you being alone with him any more.”

Naturally I thought she was being a little over-protective, but between my own sense of the guy and my trust of my mother, I never was alone with him again.

~

When I was in college (and probably high school) I was a hitter. Not a flirt. I just smacked people when I thought they were being stupid/funny/clever/ornery, whatever. I was very hands-on and didn’t think anything of it or how it made me look. I did it to everyone.

My first or second evening with Bob (he was always around because he was a “Jack’s” childhood buddy and current roommate) I play-slapped him for something, he looked me right in the eye and said, “I will hit a girl who hit me first.”

I am not easily intimidated– it doesn’t usually occur to me– but after that look I never touched him again. We had an understanding after that, but it was the first thing that leapt to mind when my mother said she didn’t trust him, and my mom’s opinion was the vote (if you will) that swung me against trusting him.

I had trusted Jack’s knowledge of Bob more than my own instinct, because, hey, they grew up together. But having my mom say right out  (basically) that her instinct lined up with mine– strengthened me. It made me confident enough to stop making it important to be “nice” to him.

~ ~ ~

A friend of mine mentioned last week that she wants to teach her daughters that they don’t have to be nice to everyone. In the course of our conversation we realized that neither one of us got the message (well, I guess I got in it college) from our Christian parents that it’s not our job to be everyone’s friend.

Being too friendly really isn’t (especially for young ladies) a safe mindset. This guy, Bob, was a friend of my friend Jack, and I felt it meant I should trust him too. My mother was much more practical.

“Jack is a man, and it’s not *his* job to keep you safe,” were her two points of departure from that connection.

Up to that point I had not considered either of these things. I just thought we all looked out for everybody we were around and as I (crazy now, I realize) assumed we were at similar risk, I figured anyone might recognize it first, averting it or warning the rest of us if possible.

It was part of my education, you might say, to learn that there really are different risks for different people, and different senses of responsibility to others, even. I needed to develop my own instincts and awareness for these things if I was going to survive on my own.

~

As my girls approach that age I know I’ll be praying more and more for wisdom to communicate this importance to them, and I hope that my (even oblivious) experience will create enough teaching-stories that I’ll never have to directly lecture.

For what it’s worth (mostly as a reminder to me), there is a very interesting retelling of Vasalisa— that I may eventually try– that emphasizes the role of intuition in keeping us safe.

I am more thankful than I can say for the intercession of my family on my behalf (both then and now). I am Exhibit-A of the fact one doesn’t need to be rebellious to be in danger, or in need of faithful prayer.

Especially considering the wisdom I had still to gather, I had an amazingly uneventful youth.

Parental Involvement

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It is a sad commentary on our modern culture that the only place where parents are still expected (I almost said allowed) to “impose their personal views” on their children is in nutrition.

The 9th Circuit Court has asserted that parents have no right to input in their children’s learning: this, apparently, is the essence of a public school; courts also have shot down efforts for parents to be involved in important health-care decisions of their children; and many moderns nod over the wisdom of waiting on the introduction of a specific religion, so children can decide what they want to believe when they grow up.

You really ought to stop imposing your own, narrow, religious views on your children. They’re just children, for mercy-sake! They are vulnerable and susceptible to ideas from those they love and trust. If you start pumping just one religion into them before they’re old enough to critically evaluate it, they’ll never have the chance to think for themselves.

Do the mature thing and leave them out of it for now. Instead, cultivate a respectful attitude toward all beliefs– you know that can’t happen if they think only one is “true”. (The common side-effect of no adult faith is really not scary enough to make this bad advice. Really.)

And it’s none of our business– or yours– if that child is “active” sexually, collecting diseases or exposing herself to un-safe situations. Keep your nose out of it while your daughter decides how to deal with the unexpected results of that “natural” behavior.

As a parent you have no say in her moral development– leave that desensitizing to us (the government) and our agent (the public school). We’ll make sure we dull or mute any of that unconscionable resistance to same-sex relations. This will create a safer environment for all, since no one will feel threatened if they never have to explain their choices or behavior to those who don’t understand.

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Story-sense

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The sense (usually from long familiarity) of what’s about to happen in a particular series or genre of stories. Examples range from guessing who’s going to end up with whom in a romance, to guessing how the detective will solve a crime, sometimes before s/he does.

In its most-refined form it applies the general principles of creative storytelling, and imagining what could be, to extrapolate the next thing in less formulaic stories or even real-life.

I have a highly developed story-sense. Which is funny to say because it doesn’t “turn on” automatically. There are times I’m so observant it seems unnatural, and other times when I’m nearly oblivious.

Unfamiliar or threatening situations provoke the most scrutiny, and in that way (as for the zebra storyteller) story-sense has been very useful to me

The “Hidden Rules” of Moms’ Groups

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The presentation I mentioned a month ago had a lot of blog-worthy ideas– to the point of over-load. So I never took it anywhere. Recently one element has come up and I spent some time thinking on it while trying to sort myself out.

Hidden rules was the resurrected element. The authors of Bridges out of Poverty describe how every human group has unwritten rules that all “true” members of the group follow, just because they are a part of the group; sometimes to keep the peace and to prove they belong to the group.

When different groups collide, or a person is new to a group, mistakes can be made that damage relationship– not because the offending party desires to offend, but because s/he doesn’t recognize the land-mines.

In a spirit of community-service and a healthy effort to avoid future explosions, I have compiled the following list.

I must point out that some of these will seem infinitely *duh!* to some of you, and my pride compels me to say I did not learn all of these the hard way. But All of them are based on interactions I’ve observed since my first moms’ group two years ago.

Some might just get you a cold shoulder or a nasty look, and (adding to the confusion) people with similar strengths– e.g. a good marriage– tend to overlook similar rules as unnecessary.

If you know them all without thinking, Congrats! You’re already “in”.

I have never spent a lot of time with groups of women. I’ve always been the “loner” (the type with just a couple close friends), never one to run with “the herd.” In high school this had its uses, but it also inhibited my picking up some key rules.

My current collection of The hidden rules of Mothers’ Groups (mostly what you shouldn’t do), beginning with “The things I can’t say:”

  • “I really have to be careful about what I say when I’m with you.”
    • Says “You don’t understand me.” or “I can’t be myself around you.”
  • “Wow, you raise your kids really differently than I do.” (Not a criticism!!!)
    • Any comment that’s not a complement or asking for advice can make people defensive.
  • “That time/activity doesn’t work for me.”
    • Can make it sound (arrogantly) like I and my availability carry some great weight.
      • This is tricky because on the one hand I’m supposed to be quiet rather than negative, but other I’m supposed to participate. One of many balancing acts.
  • “Hanging out with a group is not my most favorite thing to do– even if it is a break away from the kids.” (Did say this one once– to a very cold reception).
    • They could’ve heard, “I don’t enjoy being with *this* group,” which, for me at least, isn’t true, since I wouldn’t be there. ;)
      • Should treat it like a date: i.e. don’t let on there’s anywhere else you’d rather be.
    • It can be taken as devaluing those who find getting-away is their favorite recreational activity.
  • Anything to contradict a contradiction. It’s like a white elephant gift exchange. You can only turn things around so many times or it looks ugly– like you’re fighting or something.
    • It’s too bad people have a hard time disagreeing without taking offense. Too often the rejection of an idea is taken as a rejection of the individual or her experience (see “contradicting experience” below) and there’s no ‘clean’ way to do it.
  • Any unsolicited advice when someone is under pressure. Continue reading »