Saddling the Moose

About a year and a half ago, my youngest was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s not your garden variety OCD: no hand-washing, door-checking, thing-counting. In fact, because a year of therapy has had little effect on her symptoms, she just went in for some more extensive testing to confirm that the diagnosis is accurate. But all the mental health professionals she’s worked with seem to feel that’s a good name for what she’s experiencing, and it rings true to her.

It’s been a very interesting eighteen months learning how my daughter’s brain works. Essentially, the best we’ve figured out is, she is unable to make small decisions. Big decisions are not so much of a problem – where to go to college, what to major in . . . she’s confident on that.

But what to wear this morning . . . what to eat for breakfast . . . whether to eat breakfast . . . how much to eat for breakfast . . . how long to watch TV . . . whether to check the notifications on her phone . . . whether to answer that text . . . when to answer that text . . . how long to exercise . . . it’s 9am and I’m home all day today and there are fifty things I could do and ultimately need to do sometime (shower, school, walk dog, pray, sleep, laundry, clean, exercise, etc. etc.) so which of those fifty do I choose to do right at this moment . . . those decisions stymie her.

In the past, she dealt with this by setting up systems for herself. And frankly, she probably learned that behavior from me because that’s how I approach my daily tasks. But the systems became more and more complicated, and more and more rigid, and ultimately more and more illogical to the point where she is afraid to go that direction again for fear of enslaving herself once more with her own self-built structures.

So now, her go-to solution is to do what certain people tell her to do. But that, obviously, has its drawbacks. For one thing, anything I tell her to do now becomes a compulsion itself. I told her once to finish her biology worksheets, and in the next 36 hours (before I realized it), she completed two months’ worth of biology. The poor thing feels like she’s living out the “Ella Enchanted” story sometimes.

At the heart of this, it seems now, is the need for her to figure out how to narrow down choices and choose. It doesn’t sound difficult, does it? Do what you need to do first; then do what you want to do. But how do you know what you really need to do versus what you just think you need to do, or what someone else is trying to convince you that you need to do? And how do you know what you want to do?

That one made me do a double-take. She has relied on systems for her decision-making for so long that she does not even know what she wants. And when she does know what she wants, she can’t determine if she should feel free to do what she wants or if she should do the things she feels like she should do – because she’s not always sure if that is actually something she should do or just something she thinks she should do.

You see why our heads are spinning.

I’ve always said that our biggest faults are usually the flip sides of our greatest strengths. I think that principle applies here. She has been able to accomplish tremendous things in the past that we now  realize were the result of this “disorder”. There’s an amazing strength of will underlying all this that I’d love to see her harness.

In one therapy session, her counselor gave her a bunch of small figurines and asked her to create a picture that represented her OCD. She put herself on one side of a bridge with a giant moose standing in the middle of the bridge, preventing her from crossing. I told her that my hope for her is not just that she get the moose out of the way, but that she saddle that moose and make it carry her across.

We just need someone to show her how to become master of the moose.

Je Suis Elijah Under the Broom Bush

My pastor preached on 1 Kings 19 last Sunday -- the story of Elijah running away to Horeb after his big victory over the prophets of Baal (in chapter 18). This story has been a meaningful one in my life: God used it in the past to teach me about my depression.

You see, Elijah is depressed here. "He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die." That's depression. And one of the first things to note here is that it came after a mountaintop moment . . . which is not uncommon. We should brace ourselves for a possible crash after a spiritual high, especially if we know we are naturally susceptible to such crashes.

But what's the first thing God does for him? He let him sleep. He let him sleep a lot. He slept, then he woke up to eat, then he slept again. I've learned that for me, a lot of my depression is connected to sleep deprivation. I'm TIRED. I need rest. Just getting a good nap usually helps my outlook significantly.

And what's the other thing God does for him right away? "All at once, an angel touched him and said, 'Get up and eat.'" He gave him food. The man had been running for his life and presumably had not stopped to get any nourishment. In fact, the angel fed him twice: sleep, eat, sleep, eat. Taking care of my body -- so important for my emotional health. Depression is a physiological thing to a great degree; it is profoundly influenced by maladies in my physical self. A change in diet often improves my emotional state.

Now, note what Elijah says in verse 10 when God asks him what's up:

"I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too."

Poor Elijah. It's all about him, isn't it? Now, in a sense this response is understandable in his situation, but if you keep reading, you notice that he makes this exact same speech again in verse 14. The man seems to be rehearsing this lament; he's got it down, memorized to the word, ready to spout to anyone who asks. Meditating on your laments will not pull you out of the doldrums.

So God does one of those awesome things that He did with Old Testament prophets that we often wish He would do with us: He came to Elijah, directly.

"Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper."

My pastor said on Sunday that the phrase "gentle whisper" is sometimes translated "the sound of silence." Often, I realize that my depression is exacerbated because I am paying so much attention to the storm and noise. God speaks in the sound of silence. I need to ignore the noise and listen to God in the silence.

So, what does God do next for Elijah? He gives him a job -- three people to go anoint in His name to take over important roles. In other words, stop moping around and do something productive, something for someone else.

Then He filled Elijah in on something he actually probably knew but just conveniently ignored in his self-pitying rambling: "Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel -- all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him."

Elijah wasn't "the only one left" like he claimed. There were seven thousand more Israelites staying faithful to God . . . Elijah just wasn't paying attention to them. He went off into the wilderness, even leaving his servant behind, and pouted alone. Isolation increases depression. We were made to need each other.

One of the things about the Bible is that it doesn't idealize its heroes. Peter denies Christ, Moses kills a man, David commits adultery . . . we see the spiritual giants in their worst moments as well as their best. God needed us to see, first of all, that these were real people with real problems and failures, just like us. And He also needed us to see models for how to deal with these problems. When I'm under my broom bush, praying to die (which, praise Jesus, happens far less these days), I need to stop obsessing over my misery . . . get a good night's sleep . . . cut the sugar from my diet for a while . . . make a plan to get something productive done . . . and get out of the house and with some friends.

Don't tell me the stories of the Bible are not practical for our times.

Story and Being Human: Imago Dei

In a quiet moment last night with my hubby and youngest, I sat looking at our bookshelves upstairs. We have bookshelves in many places in our house, but these particular shelves have my daughters' old books. Some that they read on their own after they became independent readers, but many that hubby and I read to them at bedtime over many, many years of their childhood.

Oh, the books. Oh, the memories!

Narnia and the Pevensies. Laura and Mary in their Little Houses with Ma and Pa. All the American Girls. Junie B. Jones (the B. stands for Beatrice, but she just likes B and that's all). Anne of Green Gables, the whole series. The Magic Tree House. The Babysitter's Club. All sorts of Dear America history books. Charlotte's Web. Stuart Little. The Mandie series they got from their older cousin.

Oh, I wanted to go back. For a moment, I wanted to be sitting on a bed with one of their heads lying on my chest reading about Aslan singing the world of Narnia into being. I'll be sharing that book with my 6th graders this fall, but no -- it's not the same standing at the front of a classroom as it is snuggling at the head of a bed.

One of the greatest blessings of homeschooling was all the reading I got to do with my daughters. They did read on their own, but I also read literature aloud to them, stuff that was a step above their independent reading level to move them forward. I remember reading Julius Caesar with my eldest when she studied the Roman Empire in fifth grade or so, skipping a few unimportant scenes, stopping to explain stuff as we went, but reveling in the language and reciting my favorite speech of Antony's with mucho gusto. To this day, she claims that Shakespeare is one of her favorite writers.

An article I just read yesterday reiterated what I have heard and known for many years: one of the best things we can do to help our children write better is spend years reading high quality literature aloud to them. Let them hear the rhythm of mature language so they can replicate it naturally.

But reading high quality literature to them is also one of the best things we can do just to help them live better -- to help them become truly Human. The root of the word "educate" means "to draw out." We often think of schooling as a matter of pouring information into someone's head, but no -- it's a matter of drawing out of them what is there so that they can use it well. Which means something has to be in there to be drawn out.

Now, I believe there is a core of "knowing" that God has already instilled in us. It's a part of our being made in God's image. What is lacking is a "language" to couch our knowing in. Does that make sense? There are a lot of things I know, in a sense, but until I draw it out, until I can explain it in words, it is of no use to me. Most of those are spiritual things; thus, they are the most critical things to be educated in.

And this is where stories come in. Stories are a vehicle of knowing. Ideas and concepts can be communicated through story sometimes far more effectively than through exposition. Those inner things we know from God but cannot yet use can become accessible to us through narrative.

When I read about Laura's relationship with her Pa, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know about the security of a father's love, whether I have a father or not.

When I read about Anne breaking her slate over Gilbert's head, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know the extent of humanity's foolish pride, whether I'm conscious of my own or not.

When I read of Aslan's death on the Stone Table, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know the nobility of and need for sacrifice, whether I recognize my personal need for it or not.

Man has always told stories -- around the campfire, in books, on screens, on stages, in poetry, in song, always and everywhere. Jesus himself told stories to communicate the truths he has to tell us. When I teach my students about the story elements and the plot chart and such, I emphasize to them that this isn't stuff that people made up. We write stories that way because that's how God created story to be. That's how He made our story run. When we tell a good story well, we're imitating God. Imago dei.

Read to your kids people. Read to yourselves now. Read. Read. Read.

On Paris, My President, and my Lack of Confidence

Paris. So sad. And what happened in Beirut last week is so sad, too. (How many of you even heard about Beirut? Look it up.) What's been happening in the Middle East and Europe for months. Sad, sad, sad.

But now the question is, what do we do about it. And that's the saddest part for me, because I don't trust our leaders to have the wisdom to know what to do about it.

Specifically Obama and his crew. And this isn't a political tirade nor a personal tirade against the man-- it's simply a fact about me right now. Personally, I don't have confidence in President Obama that he truly understands the nature of the situation and knows what to do to protect our country. I wish I did.

When I was studying psychological theories for my counseling degree in graduate school, I found
that I was able to divide the theories into two broad categories. On the one hand are the theories that are based in the idea that people are born good and only get messed up because of what happens to them externally. Bad parenting. Mean kids. Poverty and lack of opportunity.

On the other hand are the theories that are based in the idea that we are born with a tendency toward doing wrong and that it is only the constraints of society that keep us from really going off the deep end. External things can certainly affect us negatively as well -- bad parenting, mean kids, poverty, lack of opportunity -- but the germs of our problems were there from the beginning. Taking away the external wrongs doesn't fix the internal wrongs.

It is distressing to me how many people don't understand that the Bible is in the second camp, not the first. It is distressing to me how many Christians don't understand this. It is distressing to me how many Christians act in ways to try to improve things in the world, to build the kingdom of God, and do these things in God's name, and yet their actions are completely contrary in premise to the most basic teachings of the Bible.

And yes, this has to do with Obama and ISIS and Paris.

I have NO idea what to do about ISIS. I am profoundly grateful to not be in our President's shoes having to make decisions about the matter, and I have been praying for him (and all of our world leaders) daily for the decisions they need to make.

But as his constituent, one of the basic messages I have gotten from my President during his term in office is that the reason the world is the mess it is, is because the U.S. has been a busybody bully. We've stepped in to other people's business and forced our way on them, which has made them angry and made them act out against us. The answer is to back off, be respectful, give them the means to do the right things (which they, of course, will want to do) and all will fall into place.

This is right out of psychological theory camp number one. And it's foolish and dangerous.

Some semblance of this method might work on a one-on-one basis . . . for example, with me and a defiant student. On a national level, this is a disaster. Surely he knows this. But as a general rule, he seems to operate from an incorrect worldview, which makes me distrustful of the wisdom of his actions. I expect more disasters to come. I expect weak responses to those disasters. And in all honesty, I pray for a stronger leader in the White House very soon.

However, even if I am not confident in my President, I am confident that he is only in that office because God put him there. And I am confident that God is more in control of world affairs than my President is. Whatever tragedies or victories follow this already tragic week, they are of God's ordaining and will ultimately serve His purposes.

Somebody remind me of that truth when the next tragedy hits closer to home.

Getting Rooted at the Right Now Conference

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Right Now Conference in Dallas and hearing some amazing speakers (Francis Chan, Eric Metaxas, and others). I've been digesting what I heard for a couple days and want to summarize the most pertinent points here -- for your and my benefit.

- The parable of the mustard seed. Note that, when we plant a mustard seed, our end goal is . . . well, mustard. But in the parable, what God accomplishes is a huge plant in which birds build their nests. We have one goal -- God uses our work to accomplish another goal, often something that never even occurred to us. God's purposes are far beyond what we have in mind. Cool. (From Mark Batterson)

- If the Spirit lives in us -- if we really and truly believe that -- why don't we allow Him to live through us more often? Why do we insist on doing things on our own strength? (Pete Briscoe)

- We pray best when we're most aware of our sin . . . when we involve our bodies (knees, anyone?) . . . when we pray our gut-honest desires (which is risky and takes courage) . . . and when we remember God's grace. (Jen Pollack Michel)

- Plagiarism is taking credit for another person's work and words. How many of us commit spiritual plagiarism every day? Taking credit for work that was actually God's. ALL THE TIME . . . (Bryan Carter)

- Larry Osborne spoke about Daniel being a model for the Christian in this post-modern age. He teaches us how to live successfully in Babylon. So much to glean from that. Daniel had humility with the pagans around him. He never copped an attitude about how wrong they were; he spoke with respect and graciousness to them. He made Nebuchadnezzar a better king and a better person, just being with him. He had the wisdom to pick his battles rather than fighting everything wicked around him.

Something interesting he pointed out. Daniel and his friends were brought to be trained "in the language and literature of the Babylonians." That means, they were being taught Babylonian religion -- paganism and the occult. And not only did they not refuse to participate in that education, but God gave them "knowledge and understanding" of what they were learning and more, to the point that when their training was evaluated by the king, he found none equal to them. And this was the only reason that they were allowed to be in the service to the king, that they were put in places of such tremendous influence, that they had ANY credibility with the most powerful rulers of the world at that time, and that we even know their names today. A great argument against the "cocooning" so many Christians do today -- as if knowing the theory of evolution or the basic tenets of Islam will transfer heretical germs to the believer.

- When you accepted Jesus, you accepted the call to missions. Period. No further call is needed.

- Eric Metaxas talked about William Wilberforce. When Wilberforce was saved, he assumed he would need to give up politics (which at the time was an even dirtier profession that it is today). But his pastor, John Newton, told him to stay, to be a light in the place where God had put him and with the gifts God had given him. Again, no cocooning ourselves from the world's dirt and grime: go engage, and learn, and salt, and shine your light.

- God's desire is for us. (Francis Chan) Why do we need to be reminded of that? But we do. Often. God's greatest desire is not for a just society or sinless followers or miserable people or even happy people. God's desire is for a relationship with us. Everything else is either a means to that end or a result of that blessing.

Yep. A good week. Thanks, Paul and Jackie.

Too Lazy for Due Diligence

I'm not normally a . . . you know . . . activist type. But I had a thought while driving home from Kansas this past weekend.

About an hour north of Austin on I-35 (Austin! I-35! Oh, Texas friends, you know the insanity, don't you), our traffic slowed to a crawl for about twenty minutes. On a Sunday night after 10pm, I couldn't imagine what would be causing a traffic jam other than an accident, and hubby saw some flashing lights way ahead of us, so we assumed that was the case.

But as we neared the problem area, we saw that the flashing lights were on some kind of construction-looking vehicles, not emergency response vehicles. And these vehicles were empty and not moving; they were way off to the side of the road cushioned by three lanes of traffic blocked by orange barrels -- those orange barrels they use to block off construction areas.

Yet, we saw no construction. No construction work going on, of course (as if they'd be out fixing our roadways at night on a Sunday, the least busy traffic time on the highway, as would be logical). But there wasn't even any evidence of construction in progress. Three perfectly good, very drivable lanes were simply blocked off for no apparent reason, and all the Sunday night traffic on I-35 (north of Austin! Insanity!) was funneled into one lane . . . again, for no apparent reason.

Now, I know you all are thinking, "OH, yeah, I see that all the time. Drives me crazy." Because yeah -- we do see that all the time, don't we? Traffic lanes blocked off for "potential" construction zones although they are completely passable at that time and it seems they will be for the foreseeable future. And the flow of traffic is drastically disrupted because of it. We are all aggravated about that.

And my question is, why do we put up with it?

Doesn't the Department of Transportation work for us? If everyone who drove through that single lane of traffic Sunday night -- or even just half of the people -- wrote or called the state highway officials and complained about the situation, wouldn't they have to do something about it? If everyone who ever finds themselves in such a situation contacted the officials to bring the problem to their attention, wouldn't just the extra phone and email traffic be annoying enough for those officials to make more effort to prevent such scenarios from occurring in the first place? You would think so.

So why don't we make such calls? I submit two reasons. One, we are lazy. Two, we assume there is a reason for the blockage that we just aren't aware of. The first reason is obviously unacceptable; citizens cannot be lazy in a democracy. And I'm not sure the second reason is acceptable, either. We're not stupid. We can look at a piece of highway and tell if it is drivable or not. Why do we assume such incompetence from ourselves?

It concerns me a bit that we have this tendency to look at situations created by our government agencies -- situations that seem to all intelligent observation to be useless, wasteful, inefficient, perhaps even unethical or illegal -- but we don't trust our instincts about that. We give our government the benefit of the doubt. Do they deserve that benefit? Perhaps. But I think we lose something important in our lack of diligence in their oversight. And it starts in the little situations . . . the three lanes of traffic blocked off for no apparent reason.

But I'll admit: I'm too lazy to do anything about it. Sigh! We deserve the government we get.

My Social Justice Problem

I realized something in Sunday School yesterday that I'm not happy about. The word "justice" -- especially the phrase "social justice" -- when it is used by fellow Christians sets alarms off in my brain.

I'm not happy at that discovery. It shouldn't be so. And yet it is.

"Justice" is one of the attributes of God. God is just; even more, God IS justice. Our only conception of the idea of justice comes from God's interaction with us through the law. It's not like it's a cuss word or anything.

But it has seemed to become a buzzword for a certain segment of the Christian world, a segment that I have unfortunately often disagreed with on a variety of issues, issues that those brothers and sisters promoted in the name of "social justice." I sat yesterday and tried to pinpoint for myself again what all it was I disagreed with them on . . . and I had a hard time doing so. The biggest differences were political, I think. My social-justice-loving Christian friends seem to also want to use the government as a means to achieve this social justice, which I often question the wisdom of.

Ah . . . and now I think I remember the big culprit in this: Obamacare.

It was when Obamacare was being debated that I found myself mentally setting apart a camp of people (Christian and nonChristian) who seemed to be all about "social justice" and seemed to be getting it all wrong.

It went like this: As much as I am concerned about making good health care available to all who need it, I was very reluctant about Obamacare (and still am). Admittedly, the people on "my side" of the argument had not approached the problem which much sense of urgency, to their shame. But Obamacare didn't seem to be the answer. I saw too many problems with the proposed system. It just didn't seem to be the best way to do this; it seemed to be an emotional, rushed reaction to the problem.

But the real stunner was the reaction I got from social-justice-touting friends when I expressed my concerns. Rarely were those concerns addressed in a reasonable manner. I was called selfish. Completely uncompassionate. Unchristian. Clearly unchristian. I was told I obviously hated poor people. Obviously. I was called a spoiled rich girl who had never had to suffer in my life and so my opinion had no validity in this debate.

Yes. Those very things were said to me. Often implied, but sometimes directly and bluntly. And it hurt me and angered me.

And so, my social-justice-promoting Christian friends got put in a mental box in my mind: they are WRONG. They are wrong about me, they are wrong about Obamacare, they are wrong, wrong, wrong about so many, many things. It was an emotional reaction, and it kept me from seeing what they were right about.

Which, I imagine, is exactly what they did to me, too.

I still get alarms up when my Christian friends start talking "justice" too much . . . partly because I think in the fight for justice, they often forget the need for "justification" (as we eventually got to in our Sunday School lesson). And I acknowledge that in my corner, the pendulum often swings too far in one direction, too. But I was reminded yesterday of how past wounds and personal feelings can color our "theology" and make us haughty. And wrong.

God gave us emotions, and they motivate us to act, which is good. But even our emotions are fallen and cannot be trusted alone. The heart is deceitful above all things, Jeremiah tells us. We would all do well to remember that. I'm trying to, at least.

Slamming Doors with That Look

Our pastor told a story last week that I'm sure is common to most pastors. A friend of his describes how every time he makes a new acquaintance and they've spent some time talking, as soon as he has cause to mention that he is a pastor, the new acquaintance immediately apologizes for his language. (This particular pastor decided to head off such encounters and put people at ease by using some mild curse words in his own speech before the question of his occupation ever arises . . . not sure that's a good solution, but that's beside my point here . . . )

Interesting, he noted, how this is one of the defining characteristics of Christians to non-Christians: they don't cuss. Unfortunately, this shouldn't be one of the defining characteristics.

Our pastor brought this up in relation to the scripture we were examining in Matthew 23: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in men's faces."

Let's be blunt. Cussing has nothing to do with entering the kingdom of heaven. It really doesn't. Using the "H-word" doesn't make you ineligible for salvation. The fact that you don't use the "S-word" doesn't make you any more fit for heaven than the next guy. Not using the "D-word" doesn't mark someone as a believer, and using the "F-word" does not mark someone as a heretic or hypocrite. These are the facts.

Now, I'm not saying we should feel free to run around talking like the proverbial salty sailor. There are plenty of other reasons for tempering our language that I could expound on in another post on another day.

But this needs to be very clear: cussing has nothing to do with entering the kingdom of heaven.

Given that, those of us that were raised in environment where such behavior WAS treated as something that would strike you from the Book of Life need to pay close attention to how we react to this behavior in others, lest we end up "shutting the door of the kingdom of heaven in men's faces."

As the story of this pastor demonstrates, the unbelieving crowd seems to have gotten the impression that the kingdom of heaven is about our behavior -- and not only that, it is about petty details of our behavior like whether you say "hell" or "heck." And they got that impression from us, folks. Because we treat them like they are going to hell because they use the word inappropriately. They are not. They may be going to hell, but not because of that. And the problem is, they will NEVER understand why they are going to hell because they won't get past our immediate reaction to their language to ever explore the heart issues and relationship status that is the problem. And it's not just about cussing. It's about all the other external "sins" that are obvious and out there for the world to see and react to.

Sometimes, our outrage over a person's observable sin is self-righteous indulgence more than it is an expression of respect for God's holiness. We tell ourselves we react to someone's "F-word" because it is offensive to God . . . but no. We are really just reacting to something that makes us uncomfortable, that reminds us that the world does not behave or structure itself the way we want -- and of course, the way we want is right.

And our reaction is very likely to shut the door of heaven in men's faces. I'm sure first century Jews had their versions of the "F-word," and I'm sure Jesus heard it from people on occasion -- most certainly at those dinners he had with the tax collectors and sinners of the community, the dinners the Pharisees criticized him for even attending. But folks, I'm pretty certain that if he reacted to their "F-words" the way some of us do -- with the jolt, the shocked expression, the look of contempt -- the sinners he was eating with would never have invited him over, never have listened to him, never have heard truth, never had gotten "saved" at all.

And we might need to consider whether that's why our neighbors and loved ones are not getting "saved" either.

ESP: Extra Spiritual Perception

When I was a kid, my best friend and I decided to learn braille, just in case we ever went blind. We also learned to spell in sign language, in case we went deaf. (I don't think we were really as pessimistic as that sounds -- we just liked to learn cool stuff.)

I was pretty fascinated with the idea of living without one of the senses back then. Even more fascinating to me is the idea of being born without one of the senses. Can you imagine never having been able to see? Not having any concept of what color is? And you wouldn't even miss it, because you've never experienced it. I don't know how you'd begin to explain color to someone born blind.

I was also fascinated with the idea of our possibly having senses that we aren't even aware of or using. I mean, we apparently only use a small percentage of our brain's capacity as it is -- who knows what we would be capable of if we were operating at our full potential? Maybe there's another way of "knowing" that we have inborn senses for, but don't know about. ESP and stuff. Yeah.

I kind of outgrew those fantasies a while ago . . . until I read A.W. Tozer, an old theologian who awoke those wonderings in me again.

Tozer notes that, for most people, even Christians, God is an inference more than He is a reality. We infer His existence based on the things we know. All evidence points to the fact that He is there, and that certain things are true about Him, so we assume it is so because we are a people of reason. (Romans says the natural world screams the existence of God, so that we are "without excuse.")

But the Bible doesn't treat God as an inference. When you read closely, the Bible clearly indicates that human beings should have the capacity to know God as a reality, the same way we know our fellow human beings.

How can this be, if God is spirit and we are material? ""We have in our hearts organs by means of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses," Tozer explains. "We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for that purpose [vision, hearing, touch, etc.], and we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit's urge and begin to use them."

Whoa.

Now, these spiritual senses became deadened within us from The Fall, Tozer continues; we have to be spiritually regenerated -- "born again" -- for them to be turned back on so to speak. And even then, we don't know how to use them or even recognize the information they are giving us. (Like color to someone born blind -- how can we even conceive of what this would be like, this completely different way of "seeing" or knowing? How could someone who uses these senses explain it to the rest of us?)

I'll admit: the Realist in me thinks this sounds a bit out there. But the Believer in me recognizes that, as Tozer says, this is a reasonable assumption based on what the Bible teaches, if you believe what the Bible teaches We are made to know God. Not inferentially, but really. And there seems to have been people who have known God that way. I've met a few myself.

So, I've been praying lately for my spiritual senses to be turned on. Knowing God -- really knowing Him -- is what I'm created for, after all.

Self-Love Is the Default, Folks

The Bible tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. That's a pretty good sound bite. Jesus himself said that if you do that and love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind, that sums up the entire law in a nutshell. 

But there is nothing simple about loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is not even anything simple in understanding what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.

I've heard this biblical command used over and over to teach that we need to learn to love ourselves more. How can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we don't love ourselves? Because, you know, we are SO filled with self-hate. We don't like who we are; we just don't accept ourselves for how we are made.

Good heavens. Satan must be particularly proud of himself for that one: turning the second greatest command of God into an invitation to indulge the most basic and greatest of all sins -- pride. Yep, that was pretty brilliant. And what suckers we are to fall for it.

I can't think of a single place in the Word where we are instructed to grow in love for ourselves, to try to love ourselves, or to love ourselves at all. Rather, we are constantly being told to die to ourselves, to put God and others above ourselves. In Jesus' command here, he assumes that we love ourselves from the start – which seems like a reasonable assumption to me, having observed myself and a good number of human beings for several years now. Our problem is never that we think of ourselves more lowly than we ought. Quite the contrary.

I've been reading and re-reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity during my nighttime devotions these days. (There's another brilliant one, C.S. Lewis. Not to compare him to Satan -- but yeah, brilliant.)  He talks about this self-love idea:

Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. . . . In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing.

So, the Self-Love contingency would say, "See? He can't like himself when he thinks he does horrible loathsome things. How could he?" But Lewis continues:

I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Part of this has to do with our definition of love. If you think love has to do with fondness or affection, you might have trouble loving loathsome people. But love is not a feeling; it is an action. Love is acting in another's best interests. (Which, Lewis notes, is easier to do when we are fond of the person, so it still behooves us to try to develop some fondness for folks . . . but it's not a requirement to obey the command.) Even when I hate the things I do, I still act in my own best interests.

And even when I hate the actions and behaviors of my neighbor, I can still act in their best interests. I can love them. I can even have some affection for most of them, if I give it some effort. 

This love command of Jesus' -- it really requires more attention than we give it.

Giving My Doctors a Break

I have such mixed feelings about the medical community these days. On the one hand, I have genuine appreciation for people who dedicate their lives to caring for and healing the sick. I have friends who are nurses and I know how hard they work and how exhausting it is, physically and emotionally. I'm sure it's the same for doctors. I couldn't do what they do, and we desperately need people to do these things.

On the other hand, I find my dealings with the medical community to be consistently frustrating. Most of it is the "bureaucracy" around them, I suspect. It's probably a lot like public education. The required paperwork and red tape and hoops to jump through make it all an ineffective circus; if teachers could just TEACH, for crying out loud,

I have friends with medical problems that nobody seems to be able to find an answer for. And I've experienced some of this, too. In the five years we lived in Sioux City, I saw seven different physicians trying to find answers to my sleep problems and never did. My husband has some kind of sinus and drainage issue that doctors have been working on for years to no avail. My regular bronchitis I get with any cold -- no doctor can ever give me anything that makes it better.

It drives me insane sometimes that we can spend all the time and money and hassle and never get answers. First, we go through the necessary processes to get a diagnosis -- which may involve lab work (which takes time to get results from) and imaging (which you have to make an appointment for elsewhere for AND takes time to get results from), and we usually have to harass the doctor's office to find out if they've received those results and then make another appointment (which we pay for) to go over the results.

Then the doctor makes his hypothesis about what is actually wrong (because that's all a diagnosis is, really -- an educated guess based on the evidence in front of them) and suggests a possible treatment. Said treatment will involve prescriptions (to be picked up at another place, and often waited for) and behavioral modifications (snort this stuff up your nose three times a day) and will, of course, require time to see if it is working or not. Once we've established that it is NOT working (which seems to be the norm for us), then we have to make another appointment (which we again pay for) to have them come up with another possible treatment and go through the whole process again.

In the end, when nothing is working after several weeks of continued misery, we end up revisiting that hypothesis and judging whether it was incorrect in the first place . . . and coming up with a second hypothesis requiring a whole different set of treatment options . . . yada yada yada. SIGH.

I have to really fight the frustration I feel at my doctors. I like my doctors, usually. I particularly like my current primary doctor. But it is really tempting sometimes to feel like they either have no idea what they're doing, or aren't trying very hard, or perhaps are even stringing us along to keep us coming back to make more money off of our misery. (I don't think that often, but . . . )

However, as I said, I try to fight those frustrating feelings. The truth is, fixing a human body is not like fixing a machine. Machines are simple. If you know how a machine works, you can repair what is not working pretty easily. (And yet, how often have you found mechanic types who get stumped at what's wrong with, say, your car? Or your phone?)

The human body is NOT a simple machine, as much as we'd like to think so. Medical science learns more and more about how our bodies work every year, but there is still SO much they don't understand. But even if they knew everything about our physical workings, we are not just physical beings. We are spiritual beings. And our spiritual lives -- our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions, our wills -- profoundly affect how our physical bodies function. I don't think medical science will ever be able to get a complete grasp on that, because science, by definition, is limited to what is observable.

So, it really shouldn't surprise me so much that doctors can't figure out why I don't sleep well. And I should stop expecting the answer to be as easy to find as a broken timing belt in a car engine. Even my car stumps my mechanic sometimes -- my body is an even greater mystery.

Independent AND Interdependent

Independence. It's been on my mind lately, but not the kind of independence we celebrated this weekend.

I don't remember the article I read that got my mind cranking, but the cranking meshed with other things I've read and with personal experiences with loved ones. It was all about class -- our nation's economic classes and the cultures and values of the different groups.

The middle-to-upper classes, it seems, place a high value on independence. The ability to stand on one's own two feet, to take care of oneself. So they see education as important -- you need a degree to get a good job that will support yourself and your family. Money management is important -- you sacrifice and save money so that when an emergency happens, you have the resources to handle it, and so that when you're old and can't work anymore, you have resources to live on.

The poor, on the other hand -- the poverty class -- seem to place a higher value on interdependence. We take care of each other; we can rely on each other. When you need a place to stay, you can sleep on my couch as long as you need. I can drive you to work tomorrow, or you can borrow my car. Your kids can hang out at my house after school until you get home. I'll help you today because the day will come when I'll need someone to help me.

Of course, human nature being what it is, there are those in both cultures that warp these values into something sinful. There are people of means who become selfish and greedy and isolated in their independence, hoarding their resources to meet not only their needs but their luxurious desires. There are also poor people who take advantage of the generosity of others and become irresponsible, selfish moochers. Selfishness is no respecter of persons.

People from each class often see the sinful in the other and color the whole group with that color -- which results in their moving even further to the extreme of their own end of the spectrum. "See that free-loader? This is why you have to save your money. (And why we need to toughen the welfare system.)" Or conversely: "See that greedy rich man with the huge bank account? Money isn't as important as people are. I'd rather be poor and surrounded by people I love than rich and lonely. Come on; I just got paid -- let's spend it all on a fun weekend together."

We forget that this is not an either-or situation. It's a both-and situation. We need to be both independent and interdependent. They are not mutually exclusive, even though we think they are.

We have things to learn from each other. The poverty class can learn that sometimes, you need to pay attention that the way you help a friend in need is empowering them rather than enabling them. They can learn that sacrificing to save a little at a time not only means they have resources that keep them from needing to rely on others unnecessarily, but also gives them more resources to share. (Everyone "must work, doing something useful with their hands, that they may have something to share with those in need." Eph 4:28)

The upper-middle class can learn that sometimes you endure the inconvenience and the risk and simply give just because there is a need -- no strings attached, no judgments rendered -- and let God sort out the deserving and undeserving. They can learn that it's okay for us to lean on each other. That's how God made humanity: a body with interdependent parts. And they can learn that money is a tool, a tool to be used to build God's kingdom, not our own. (Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you." Matt 6:33)

I'm talking big-picture here, so don't yell at me about individual situations that don't fit this characterization. I just find that I'm learning much from those in my life that come from the other end of the spectrum . . . and I hope they're learning from me as well.

The Isms

I've been vacationing with the family, so I haven't written for a while. And what I'm going to write about today, I'm a little nervous about, because believe it or not, I don't like controversy. But it's been heavy on my heart, and I feel like I need to say it.

The shooting in Charleston. So terribly sad. But as I joined the online grieving, I was convicted by some of the comments I read. Sentiments along the lines of, "How could this still be happening in our country?" "I thought we had moved past this!" "When will we eradicate racism in our society?"

Sentiments I would have shared in the not-so-distant past, but I don't think I can share today. Because, friends, I don't think we will ever "move past this." I don't think we will ever "eradicate racism." Not really. And so, as much as we need to fight racism, we've really got to focus on a more important task.

I just re-read a book over vacation that I'll be assigning my daughter in English class this fall: The Deadliest Monster. It compares the worldviews of two classic monster stories (which she will also be reading). In Frankenstein, the doctor creates a being who is pure and innocent in its creation; it only becomes a monster when it is treated cruelly by society. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll recognizes within himself a virtuous self and an evil self and tries to isolate the evil self so as to be able to indulge it once in a while without damage to his reputation; however, the evil self, through the indulgence, becomes more and more powerful and eventually takes over.

The question in this book is, which monster do you believe in? Modern society believes in Frankenstein. We are born good -- the only reason we do bad things is because society messes us up. The solution then is to fix society (laws, education, etc.) so that people are never "trained" to do bad things. We need to pass strong hate crime laws, integrate our schools and neighborhoods, and teach our kids that we are all equal. Then we will get past racism. We will eradicate it.

But the reality is that we are not Frankensteins -- we are Jekyll/Hydes. We are not born good -- we are born with an evil self lurking within us. We are born selfish little snits that need to be "trained" to do good. Racism (at least the selfish, prideful seed that becomes racism) is within us from the womb.

There's an old saying that God doesn't have grandchildren, only children. Righteousness is not passed down from generation to generation. It is not a legacy we leave our offspring. Good manners, maybe. Religious traditions, certainly. Moral habits and desires, perhaps. But not righteousness. Righteousness must be re-born in every individual, one at a time. Who was it that said "We are always one generation away from apostasy"? This is truth. One generation.

I long for a day when our world is genuinely color-blind . . . and gender-blind, and class-blind, and blind to every difference between us that doesn't matter. When my friend's dark brown skin is of no more consequence than my other friend's bright red hair. When we stop celebrating women's history month because women's history is just American history.

But the truth is, IF that day were to ever come, there would still be those who find a reason to hate a group of other people and use guns or bombs to kill them. "Racism" may not be the cause, but there will always be an "ism". No matter what laws we pass . . . no matter how we educate . . . there will always be an "ism".

Because God doesn't have grandchildren. Racism is not a result of bad training; it is a result of an unrighteous heart. The re-birthing of righteous hearts: that's what will stop the isms.

The Pastor, the Black Man, and My Father

The story came to me second- or third-hand, so the details may be wrong . . . but the details don't really matter.

In the latter years of my father's struggle with Alzheimer's, many of his old friends started coming to my mother sharing stories of how he had made a difference in their lives. One of them was our pastor, a godly, well-educated man who happened to have a very strong Southern accent.

Pastor shared how, when he first came to our little Southern Baptist church, there was an African-American man in the congregation (we'll call him "Bill") who clearly had a distinct dislike for him. Pastor didn't know why, although he had his suspicions. But he waited patiently, hoping to win him over in time.

Then the day came when Bill's wife didn't get a Sunday School teaching position she wanted. There was nothing malicious in the decision -- a decision Pastor had nothing to do with anyway. But Bill arrived at that evening's church service breathing violence, making threats, demanding to speak to the pastor alone in his office right now. Pastor agreed to speak with him, but only if my father was there, also. Bill agreed.

Once the office door was closed, Bill began to rage. You hate me . . .You did this . . . You did that . . You've always done this . . . You're a racist! . . . You're a hypocrite! . . . You hate me!!.

Pastor and my father sat quietly and let him vent. When he was finished and stood panting in front of them, there was a long pause. And then my father leaned over, looked the angry man directly in the eye, and said calmly and purposefully:

"Bill, you know that nothing you just said is true. You know Pastor is not a racist. You know he does not hate you. You know he loves you as a brother in Christ. Everything you just said is a lie . . . and you know it."

Bill looked at him for a minute. Then he looked at Pastor for a minute. Then he sat in his chair and began to weep. And the hour that followed was filled with old stories, old injustices, old hurts, and long overdue forgiveness and healing. The brotherly love I saw between these two men in all the years I grew up in that church never gave any indication of this rocky start in their relationship.

Praise God, He is Jehovah Rapha, the God Who Heals.

I am honored that God chose to speak love and truth through my father that night. And I wish there were more voices speaking this way to people today.

Yes, friends, you have been wronged. Your pain is legitimate. There has been injustice and there still is. But let's live in the truth.

Citizen, this police officer did not stop you just because you're black.

Friend, this neighbor does not hate you because you're a lesbian.

Son, this teacher does not call you out more because you're Latino.

Sister, this boss did not pass you over for that promotion because you're a woman.

Brother in Christ, this comment is not an attack on you because you're a Christian.

There has been injustice in the past . . . and there is injustice now and will be in the future. But that doesn't mean that THIS is injustice, or that everything is injustice. And it is no answer or solution to injustice to accuse other innocent people unjustly.

Be committed to truth. Walk and live in the light. If we want others to not make assumptions about us based on our "type," we must afford them the same courtesy.

Best Nugget of Wisdom

"If you were to give somebody your best nugget of wisdom, what would it be?"

The Pastor asked us that question to begin his sermon last Sunday, his introduction to a sermon series on the book of Proverbs. But he really shouldn't begin like that because then my mind started ruminating on that question and I wasn't listening to him very closely anymore.

My best nugget of wisdom. If I had one bit of advice to give the world.

Well, the number one nugget of wisdom would be to seek and know God. Period. Above all else. Not join the church, or do good things, or love everybody. KNOW GOD. Everything else falls into place after that.

But that's not what came to mind immediately last Sunday morning. The first best nugget of wisdom
that I fell upon in that moment was this:

Commit to live in truth.

Complete, absolute truth.

No more lies. No more hiding. No more deceit. No more sneaking around. No more masks. No more justifying the unjustifiable. TRUTH.

Be who you are, unashamedly. If you are ashamed of who you are, figure out if you should be ashamed and if so, change that. If you should not, own yourself as a beloved creation of God and learn to accept the child He made.

If you have done shameful things in the past, recognize that once you ask for forgiveness, God wipes that as far away as the east is from the west (I love that image) . . . and then God uses your experience to shape you into who he wants. OWN your failings as much as you own your successes. It's who you are, and it shows God's hand in your life. Perfect people are no testimony to God's grace -- broken people are.

Don't lie. To anyone. Don't hide things. If you are hiding something from someone, good heavens -- that should send off major alarms in your spirit. Why are you hiding this??? Be honest with yourself. I have heard the most ridiculous justifications for covering stuff up. I've known people who convinced themselves they were doing someone else a favor -- "protecting" them -- by deceiving them in the most unconscionable ways. Very rarely is there a good reason to lie to another person. 99 times out of 100, it is wrong. Stop thinking yours is that precious one in a hundred situation every time it's hard to tell the truth.

(If somebody is too weak emotionally to handle the truth, you are only contributing to their weakness by "protecting" them. Speak the truth in love -- help them grow in emotional strength. Someday you won't be able to protect them anymore.)

Stop lying to yourself. Really, that's the most remarkable thing: we tell ourselves things that we KNOW are not true -- and we believe ourselves!! Stop it. Just stop. Nothing is ever better in your life when you are denying the truth. Nothing.

And stop lying to God. You know He knows it all anyway, so it's a waste of time.

Once you stop putting a mask on for God and yourself, you stop needing to have it on for the world . . . and you will be AMAZED how much happier you will be. I promise you.

John called it "living in the light." Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Those are heavy, heavy chains you are binding yourself up with. Throw them off, my friend. Live in truth.

Death Is Where We Are Now

Someone posted this awesome article on Facebook this week, which I encourage you to click on and read here. But I want to summarize for you the points he made that really hit home with me.

See, we tend to think of death (and conversely, life) in a time perspective. We are living now; someday, death will happen to us; and then, if we're saved, we get "eternal life."

Only that's not quite right. I love the way this writer, J.D. Walt, puts it:

You see, death is not something that happens to us when we die. It’s something we carry around in our bodies that finally takes us down. Death is the disease we are born with and the one that will eventually kill us. 

Did you get that? We carry around death all the time. We are "in death" right now. It's not that we are going to die someday -- it's that we are in the process of dying from the moment we were born.

And it's that this is not how God made humanity in the first place. Do you remember what God told Adam and Eve about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? "When you eat from it, you will certainly die." Now, I've heard people make a big deal out of the fact that they didn't fall down dead the minute they chomped the fruit. That's not the point. Eating from that tree brought on the disease of death -- a disease that we all inherited from them. We will die. Before that, we apparently wouldn't have.

More than that, it's not even that we will physically die at some future point in time -- again, it's not a time thing. It's that we are not really "living" now.

Again, I love what Walt says about eternal life:

Eternal Life is not that portion of life that begins after we die. No, Eternal Life is the Person of Jesus Christ. Eternal Life means the restoration of human beings to God’s original intentions—i.e. like Jesus Christ. Eternal Life is a qualitative change, one dimension of which is the end of thinking about time as a quantitative reality. Eternal Life is the infusion of the very life of God into a human person. It has a durable nature of an unending quality. 

Eternal life is not about quantity of years; it's something qualitatively different from what we have now. It's something akin to what Adam and Eve had before the fall. It's what Jesus had after his resurrection. And it's not something we have to wait for until after we die. It's something Christ will start creating in us right now.

This is deep stuff. This is stuff that will roll around in my brain for months as it meshes with the other info in my brain and scripture I read and teaching I hear and life I live. When stuff like this jumps out at me, I get really excited to see what difference it's going to make in my life this time next year -- when I really understand it.

My Grammar Curriculum . . . the One I Should Write

I shared a video on Facebook yesterday about a school in Atlanta called Ron Clark Academy. In the video, teachers are leading their students to sing and dance through their lessons . . . walking on the tables . . . stuff like that.

If I really felt the freedom to do it, that's how I would teach. Especially when I teach stuff I love, like grammar. I taught a K-2 grammar class in our co-op where we sang and did hand rhymes and played games. Those games and songs are why my daughters are grammar gurus like me -- why my eldest used to re-explain the grammar lessons to her classmates in high school who weren't getting it from the teachers' instruction.

I LOVE TEACHING GRAMMAR. That apparently makes me some kind of freak; it seems very few people like grammar. I love it. I love the labeling, the analyzing -- I love that there are right answers and I can figure it out. It appeals to many aspects of my personality as well as to my love of words.

I just recently had a conversation with our school's new principal and new academic dean about how I would change the teaching of grammar at my school. And it led me to come home and type up my ideas to give them. Because there are SO MANY THINGS I would change about how grammar is taught -- not just at our school, but pretty much everywhere.

Teach grammar through games. There are so many games -- like "The Minister's Cat" -- that are fun just in themselves but help a kid develop an inner sense of how language works. There are certain words you can use to describe the cat (those are adjectives), and there are other words that don't work. You have to understand in your gut the jobs that words are doing in a sentence before you can label them or analyze them.

Teach grammar through songs. And hand rhymes and chants. Anything rhythmic and easy to memorize. This year, I taught my 7th graders songs to remember the definitions of adjectives and adverbs ("Adverbs tell us how, where, when, or to what extent . . . "). When they needed to remember, I saw them mouthing the words to the song. If they had learned a song like that in 2nd grade, they wouldn't still be needing to mouth the words to themselves -- they would just know it.

Teach grammar through colors. In homeschool, we assigned certain marker colors to certain parts of speech and the girls wrote sentences on the whiteboard with different colors for every word. A visual aid to solidify in their minds what the words are doing in the sentence.

And teach grammar through other visual aids. I told my classes this year that modifiers (adjective, adverbs, prepositional phrases) are like sprinkles. Nouns and verbs are like ice cream and cones -- you have to have ice cream and a cone to make an ice cream cone. Sprinkles, on the other hand, are not required, but they add sparkle and flavor to the cone. You can sprinkle as many as you want on wherever you want them.

I want to write a grammar curriculum. Grammar is so easy to understand if it is taught well. Someday, when I have a reason to . . .

IMHO: The Biggest Fix for Education

My eldest just told me that on one of her college-associated tests (ACT? CLEP? She couldn’t remember which), she had to write on this question: should high school be extended to five years instead of four? Well, that led to a lively discussion on our part.

She could see pros and cons. On the one hand, some students need more time to learn what they need to learn in high school and to mature enough to be ready for what follows. On the other hand, she wasn’t confident that they would simply be allowed more time; she suspected the powers-that-be would just add more to the load of what they were expected to learn.

Here is the root of the problem with our society’s system of schooling, in my humble opinion: it is bound by time restraints. It is no secret to anyone – teachers, administrators, parents, students, psychologists, educational researchers and experts – that students learn at different rates. One student learns at a different rate than another student. A student learns one subject at a different rate than he learns a second subject. And a student may learn at one rate at one time of life or stage of development and at a very different rate at another time of life or stage of development.

The time involved to learn is a constantly changing variable. But our system of schooling does not allow for such a variable.

In order for a teacher to teach something to a group of students, all of the students have to be at about the same place academically, ready to absorb this particular new skill or information. If that teacher is going to teach that same group of students over a stretch of time, then over that stretch of time, the whole group of students needs to remain in about the same place academically.

So for one teacher to teach a class of twenty second graders seven hours a day for nine months, that means that all twenty of those students have to be at about the same place academically – in every subject – and progress at about the same pace – in every subject – for nine months.

What a ridiculous expectation! No wonder so many students struggle . . . and so many others are bored. And so many teachers burn out.

In a recent discussion about a math class at our school, I made the suggestion that the teacher could slow down the pace, since all the students are struggling at the moment. “But then they would be behind,” was the response I got.

Behind what, exactly? Behind the arbitrary point in the typical math curriculum that every student in the country of this age group is expected to be at by the middle of April? Should that really be our goal?

Maybe it's the homeschooler in me, but I so want to free all of our students from those time restraints. I want to tell them, "The goal is to learn Algebra -- the full content of it, and to learn it well. It isn't important how you learn it. It isn't important when you learn it. If you could do nothing but Algebra in an online course for six weeks and get it down pat, great. If you stretch it out over two years, sitting with a private tutor twice a week but get it down, awesome. The goal is mastery of the material, however and whenever that happens for you."

But people are so afraid of their kids being "behind" the rest of the kids their age. What if -- gasp! -- they don't finish high school in four years? Well, what if they don't? What if they are a year older and more mature when they start college? What if they actually have the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in college when they start rather than having to fake and float and eventually fail when you're paying thousands of dollars for the education? What if they come out of high school knowing that they know something and not just that they worked a system to get a signed document that everyone seems to think means something (but they know it doesn't)? 

What's wrong with taking more time in high school? 

Frankly, if we would have this mindset in the earlier years, it might prevent a lot of kids in high school from having to worry about "graduating late." I have all sorts of thoughts for how elementary school could be done differently. Not being an elementary teacher, I hesitate to promote my ideas much, but I still have them.

Can we just stop with the race to adulthood and give our kids some time? I'm sure they'd thank us for it, and I think we'd all enjoy life so much more.

My Mom's Review of "A Chorus Line"

I saw something on Facebook about April 16^th being the 40^th anniversary of the first performance of A Chorus Line. Ah. A Chorus Line. There’s a musical.

The national tour of A Chorus Line came to Wichita sometime when I was 11 or 12. I know because I was still taking ballet, and everyone at the studio was positively raving about this show, which I’d never heard of. The dancing! Oh, the dancing! It was fantastic! You HAVE to see this show!

So, I talked my mother into taking me to see the show. To this day, I’m a little ashamed that I put her through that. Of course, never having heard anything about the show (other than, “The dancing! The dancing!”), I’m not completely to blame. I had no idea the storylines and subject matter and suggestive language we would be subjected to. I remember being afraid to look at my mother until it was all over. The whole time, I was waiting for her to decide this had finally crossed a line and remove me from the premises.

She never did. She didn’t say a whole lot about it, actually. I worked up the guts in the car on the way home to ask her what she thought about the show. “Well,” she hesitated, “I like that it showed a lot of different kind of people living a lot of different kinds of lives.

“And that’s what I didn’t like about it, too.”

My mother. The queen of sweetness and diplomacy.

Now that I’m mature and all, I’d love to ask her more. For one thing, I wonder what she told my dad about the show when we got home. I can’t imagine that she owned up to the real content matter that she had subjected me to, because I’m pretty sure he would have taken me home at intermission and would have thought she should have, too.

I also kind of wonder if she could have articulated even more what she meant by the review she gave me. If she could explain what she liked about the variety of lifestyles shown. Why is that a good thing? It’s not because she enjoyed hearing about all those lifestyles – that, I’m confident, is what she didn’t like about it. But could she articulate what was good about hearing all that?

I’m not sure she could, but I think instinctively she knew that there is benefit to being aware of not just the sin in the world, but of the situations that lead to sin, of the grief and brokenness that comes out of sin. I think there was something in her that understood the dangers of a Christian cocooning and accusing rather than listening and loving.

So much you miss when you lose your mom at 31.

My Unclean Heart

Create in me a clean heart, O God. So sang the choir yesterday.

A clean heart. Wouldn’t I love to have one. I think part of growing in Christ is becoming aware of how unclean your heart really is.

I’d like to think I teach with a clean heart. But the truth is, I have many ulterior motives. I don’t teach only with a desire to help my students. I teach because I like to be in control of a group of people. I teach because I like attention focused on me at the front of the room. I teach because I like being the one in the room with all the right answers. Yes, I care about my kids a lot, but I have no illusions that I do my job with a clean heart.

When I help friends in need, my heart is not all clean. Yes, I am desperate for the well-being of those I love. But I also enjoy the feeling of being needed and trusted . . . and again, of having all the right answers to fix other people’s problems. I know that’s the case, because I find myself hurt and offended when they call on someone else, when I’m not “in the loop” knowing what’s going on. I feel a tinge of jealousy when someone else’s assistance is more effective than mine, or more desired. As if it’s all about me. Such uncleanliness in my heart.

Even my parenting is not done with a clean heart. Here is probably where I come as close as I will ever get to acting completely in another’s best interests, but Self still ultimately reigns. I want my kids to be healthy, happy, and fulfilled . . . and the truth is that is partly because of the benefits I derive from that. An easier life. A good reputation. Again, that feeling of having been right about things. (Notice a theme here?)

I think part of growing in Christ is becoming aware of how unclean your heart really is, and always was, and always will be, at least in this life. And an even bigger part of growing in Christ is understanding the incomprehensible fact that He chose me as His beloved while I still wallowed in my uncleanliness.

And I think the bulk of growing in Christ is being so awed by the fact that that He chose me anyway that I’m filled with love for the God who loves me so infinitely and so completely.

Because only when I love Him . . . really love Him . . . can He create a clean heart in me.