Elizabeth’s

A Few of My Favorite Things {September/October 2017}

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by Elizabeth

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Full disclosure: Life has been bumpy around here. We’ve had some health issues (which are as-yet unresolved) and some financial concerns (which are thankfully resolving) and some noise pollution issues (for over a month now) and some just plain too-many-things-on-the-to-do-list issues. I’ve been living with a lot of worry and fear, and I’m working on my issues, but these things take time. It’s been nearly two months since I offered you any reading, music, or other recommendations, so here I am. But please, if you think of it, say a prayer for the six of us Globe Trotters.

Did you know you can use coconut milk as coffee creamer? It’s delicious, with a fuller flavor than cow’s milk (well, if you like coconut, which I happen to like very much). But be careful, you don’t need much. I add a little extra dairy milk too, to balance out the heavy flavor. I don’t need sweet coffee, but I do like it creamy.

Teaching math/art class at home school coop. It’s been a joy to discover that these teenagers are interested in the concepts and in the projects. As every teacher knows, interested students make teaching much more exciting. I’m also thrilled that my own kids have a natural curiosity (including for subjects I myself am interested in), and as they get older, they become better and better conversationalists.

#6 pencil leads. These are way better than #2 pencils. Not for standardized testing of course, but for doing regular school and art work. We’ve also discovered the best little Faber Castell pencil sharpeners (at the IBC, for those in Phnom Penh).

 

BOOKS

Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. I grabbed this detective novel when it was on super duper sale. The dialogue, let me tell you, it’s delicious. Intellectually I can’t keep up, but it’s still delicious. The book was surprising proof to me that women’s worries (including working women’s worries) of today are exactly the same as they were nearly a century ago.

The Light Princess by George MacDonald. I needed more time with this story, so I reread it. For me, The Light Princess is a metaphor for my life. If I ever find the time, I’ll share the reasons why in a blog post. Until then, if you want to know more about why I love this George MacDonald story, just ask me in person!

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. I’m still working slowly through this. Many selections (and their personal reflections) end up in my journal.

Classic Poetry (selected by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Paul Howard). From my children’s Sonlight curriculum. I haven’t been successful in convincing my kids to like poetry, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it, right? Particular favorites from this collection are Rudyard Kipling’s “The Way Through the Woods” and “The Deep-Sea Cables”.

Napoleon’s Buttons by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson. I first read this book when I was pregnant with my second born, and I wanted to re-read it. It’s not a history of chemistry (that’s been done elsewhere), but rather a profile of various chemicals’ impact on human history. This second read-through is much more sobering than the first, after having seen so much suffering overseas and after having studied so much world history in our home school. After reading about the sad effects of the spice trade, sugar trade, and cotton trade on human souls, I was ready for a break. But I will return later.

Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin. An important read for the free peoples of Middle Earth. A Sonlight read aloud.

How To Survive the Apocolypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World by Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson. This is dense, and I do not pretend to understand all of it, but I’m absorbing the social and theological commentary I do understand. I first discovered this book when I heard an interview with Alissa Wilkinson at CiRCE a couple years ago. She was formerly the critic-at-large for Christianity Today.

 

BLOG POSTS

This is for All the Lonely Writers by Jennifer Trafton. Long but worth every word. Tear-inducing.

Around the World, Girls are Taught the Same Limiting Lesson by Emily Peck. I think this is what I was pushing back against in my Paul/breastfeeding article.

Kepler Pursued God. He Found Him in Pomegranates. By David Hutchings. On curiosity, science, and God.

The Ethics of Aesthetics by Andrew Kern. On art, pleasure, and understanding. Short but worthwhile.

Dear Mamas, This is the One Thing That Will Destroy Your Home by Meg Marie Wallace. Long, gritty, honest, true, and gospel-centered.

When You’re Sure God Loves Ann Voskamp More Than He Loves You by Marilyn Gardner. Super important and applies to all people, but especially women and especially those working in ministry.

At the intersection of a Messiah-Complex Friendship and Depression. Helpful insight and advice from the always wise Rebecca Reynolds.

 

FOR MISSIONARIES AND EXPATS

What Did I Do Today? I Made a Copy. Woohoo! By Craig Thompson. Hilarious but incredibly true.

More on the topic of inconveniences overseas: Why things take so long, or ‘something always goes wrong’ by Tamie Davis.

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Anisha Hopkinson. Also hilarious and true.

I Am the Ugly Duckling (Part 1) by Lauren Wells. Help for distorted TCK thought processes. Also Part 2: Avoiding Terminal Uniqueness.

Where Your Story is Held by Amy Young. At the intersection of the physical and the spiritual. Wow.

No to cheese pizza, but yes to green pastures. Renee Aupperlee does it again! Reading her words is like meeting with a spiritual director.

Mental Health on the Field, an interview with Dr. Barney Davis from Michele Phoenix. Illuminates why we global workers are so stressed out.

 

PODCASTS, VIDEOS, AND TV

Angelina Stanford on why she loves fairy tales. A powerful 2 minutes.

And here’s a longer interview with Stanford on fairy tales. For the child within. On transcendent truth. I cried at several points. Touches on some of the same ideas as Wilkinson’s Apocolypse book but heads mainly in a different direction.

Taking Imagination Seriously, a 10-minute TED talk by Janet Echelman. At the intersection of art and engineering. Unbelievably beautiful.

Nate Bargatze on The Standups on Netflix. I’ve been told that other comedians in this series are NOT clean, but this guy is. And hilarious. And I need hilarious. (Don’t forget the Ryan Hamilton Netflix special from last month. We’ve let our kids watch both.)

The Crown. I rewatched the entire first season while my husband was traveling. It’s that good. Seemingly about royalty, it also has implications for marriages in ministry.

Arrival. I’d been wanting to watch this film and was able to watch it with my son while my husband was out of town. It opened up some great conversation about free will and predestination.

Andrew Peterson on Rich Mullins. What’s not to love about both Mullins and Peterson??

An interview with Susan Wise Bauer on Brave Writer. This is SWB at her best — candid and wise. For the home school parents.

What the Scholastic Reading Report Means For You at Read Aloud Revival with Sarah Mackenzie. For all parents.

 

QUOTES

“You are chosen. And so you must choose.” This sentence from a Sonlight read aloud, to me, explains so much about predestination and free will.

Most mornings lately I wake up and sing Job 1:21 from the Scottish Psalter, to the tune of either the “Doxology” or “The Lord’s My Shepherd.” I try to give God my expectations for quick answers. Then I read Philippians 4:11-13 and ask God to teach me how to be content in times of trouble. I have to do this practically every day, and even then I still get discouraged.

 

MUSIC

Man of Sorrows by Hillsong. Packed with theology and written in beautiful poetic verse, on first hearing this song I thought it was going to be from the Gettys. Nope. It’s Hillsong, something I realized when we got to the chorus. Lyrics here.

Doxology/Amen by the talented and ethereal Phil Wickham. We regularly sing the Doxology as a family; I love it. Oftentimes when a new chorus is added to an old hymn, it doesn’t seem to fit either lyrically or musically. This one does. Lyrics here.

King of My Heart by Sarah Macmillan.

“Polyvetsian Dance” from Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor. I have loved this song ever since my 5th grade clarinet days, when we performed a version of this in concert. There’s a sad, minor quality to it in my piano arrangement of the song that I return to again and again. In my piano book there’s a bit of biographical data given — for instance, that the Russian composer’s day job was chemistry professor and that he was painstakingly slow to finish his musical compositions. I relate to him on all three counts — having another day job, being a chemist, and being slow to finish my work.

Arise My Soul Arise, a Charles Wesley hymn set to new music by Twila Paris. I have always loved these gospel words and was listening to them again this month.

Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go, a hymn by George Matheson with updated melody. I’ve been singing it to myself for the past month or so, especially that third verse about the “Joy that seekest me through pain.” Lyrics here.

I was struggling so much with discouragement that last week I asked for prayers at church. At the end of that prayer time, my prayer partner told me to pay attention to the songs that “bubble up” in this time, that God will be speaking to me through them. And so I have, and so I am. These next three songs “bubbled up” this week.

You Satisfy my Soul by Laura Hackett Park.

Do I Trust You Lord by Twila Paris. I can’t find a link without distracting video. Paris wrote this song in the wake of Keith Green’s death in the early 1980’s. The part that always gets me is this: “I will trust you, Lord when I don’t know why, I will trust you Lord till the day I die, I will trust you Lord, when I’m blind with pain, you were God before and you’ll never change, I will trust you, I will trust you, I will trust you.”

I Shall Not Want by Audrey Assad.

 

Let the River Run

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by Elizabeth

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Only two songs have ever won all three major awards (Oscar, Golden Globe, Grammy) while being composed, written, and performed by a single artist. Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run,” the theme from the 1988 film “Working Girl,” was the first to do so.

Now, a few others have received all three awards but were co-written. One of those songs was Howard Shore’s, Fran Walsh’s, and Annie Lennox’s “Into the West,” the final song of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and an absolute family favorite. “Into the West” speaks to something so deep and true, so simultaneously melancholic and hopeful, that it’s no wonder it won all three awards.

But anyway, back to “Let the River Run.” I first heard the song not from the movie, but from my junior high choir director Mrs. Chaney (whom you may remember from last week’s musical contemplations). Simon described her song as an “anthem with a jungle beat.” And indeed it was the sound that first drew me in, not the density of the lyrics — lyrics I could not possibly have comprehended fully at the time.

Even so, something in those words was stretching out and reaching for me. And I think it’s safe to say that, having won all those awards, the song spoke to deep, cracking places inside a lot of people. Of course there are layers of meaning here — some more material, some more spiritual.

And I’m still not sure I understand the song in its entirety, but I understand bits of it. I know it’s about dreams and desires. I know it’s about longing and risk. I know it’s about waking up and about waking up others. I don’t think you have to understand every part of the song anyway. It’s not necessarily for understanding but — like all art — for feeling.

Speaking of art, you all know I am no artist; I cannot even draw stick figures. But this semester I found myself teaching an art class in our home school coop. (In actuality, I’m substituting for the real art teacher until she gets back into town.) I love numbers, patterns, and designs, so I figured we could explore the intersection of math and art together.

In preparing for this class I used some old material but also sought out new material. One of the new art projects I stumbled upon was the Pi Sky Line. While the New York City skyline (complete with Twin Towers) is the setting for the song “Let the River Run,” the Pi Sky Line is a city skyline whose building heights are based on the first 30 digits of pi.

Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. And it’s an irrational number, which means its decimals go on and on forever, never terminating and never repeating. There are no patterns to its digits, and there is no end either: it is infinity captured in a single number.

After you create your sky line, you paint or draw a background for it. And bringing this conversation full circle here, I knew I could not draw any background but Van Gogh’s night sky: “The Starry Night.” It was a painting I first encountered in Mrs. Chaney’s class. And this photo is the finished product. For me it is the intersection of art, music, math, literature and, most importantly, my soul in motion.

Educational thinker Charlotte Mason said, “Education is the science of relations,” and each week Mrs. Chaney assigned us a “Connection” paper. We had to connect something in her class to something in the rest of our lives. Every week we did this. She may not have known of Charlotte Mason’s century-old philosophy, but she knew that brain science supported the idea of interdisciplinary studies. Maybe that’s why, all these years later, the soundtrack of her class is still playing in my life.

Let the river run,
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.

Silver cities rise,
The morning lights
The streets that meet them,
And sirens call them on
With a song.

It’s asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.

We’re coming to the edge,
Running on the water,
Coming through the fog,
Your sons and daughters.

We the great and small
Stand on a star
And blaze a trail of desire
Through the dark’ning dawn.

It’s asking for the taking.
Come run with me now,
The sky is the color of blue
You’ve never even seen
In the eyes of your lover.

What Jesus Has to Say About Dealing With Rejection

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by Elizabeth

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Rejection. I hate it. I hate the feeling. And I was feeling it again recently. In a major way. So I searched through my journals till I found an entry from over a year ago. It was the notes from a sermon Tim Krenz preached to the graduating seniors. The ideas helped me so much that I re-copied my notes into my current journal, and now I’m going to share them with you. It’s based out of the words of Jesus in Luke 10.

“Whenever you enter someone’s home, first say, ‘May God’s peace be on this house.’ If those who live there are peaceful, the blessing will stand; if they are not, the blessing will return to you. Don’t move around from home to home. Stay in one place, eating and drinking what they provide. Don’t hesitate to accept hospitality, because those who work deserve their pay.

“If you enter a town and it welcomes you, eat whatever is set before you. Heal the sick, and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near you now.’ But if a town refuses to welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘We wipe even the dust of your town from our feet to show that we have abandoned you to your fate. And know this—the Kingdom of God is near!’”

Tim offered the graduates a handy little acronym for dealing with rejection: GRAD. It stands for:

GO

REMEMBER

ANTICIPATE

DETERMINE

Here’s how we can deal with the rejection we so much long to forget:

We GO out into the world like the disciples of long ago.

We REMEMBER who we are and what we have — God’s Word and God’s Spirit.

We ANTICIPATE rejection — whether it’s unfounded or not, we cannot avoid it.

Lastly, we DETERMINE ahead of time how we will respond: by shaking even the dust of that rejection off our feet. Even down to the last bit of dust, we will not carry it around with us, because we remember that even when man rejects us, God has not rejected us. We don’t call down fire from heaven on our rejectors like the Sons of Thunder wanted to do in the previous chapter (Luke 9:54). No, we do not take that rejection up: we shake, shake, shake it off.

 

You may also be interested in what I wrote about rejection a couple years ago.

Where does the love of God go?

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by Elizabeth

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Sometimes I need to remind myself that I believe in the love of God. And sometimes when I need to do that, I listen to Gordon Lightfoot. I first heard Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” in Mrs. Chaney’s junior high music class. Mrs. Chaney was an ex-hippie who brought her love of 1970’s music into the classroom and subsequently taught me to love it as well (thus preparing me for life with a man whose mother loved that music too, but died young).

It is quite literally impossible to overstate how much Mrs. Chaney’s 7th and 8th grade music classes formed me both musically and personally (and she probably never knew this; but neither did my 10th grade British Literature teacher – so music, art and literature teachers, take heart).

It was Mrs. Chaney who taught us that “religious music is always the best music” and who had us singing religious music at our public school concerts. It was Mrs. Chaney who, after we’d spent hours and hours practicing and performing choral music with her, played us her favorite 70’s songs, handed us the lyrics, and had us sing along.

It was from Mrs. Chaney that I first heard Don McLean’s “Vincent,” along with the radical idea that suicide only happens to people who suffer from mental illness. (That’s radical for a girl whose religious culture considered suicide to be an unforgiveable sin.) And it was in her classes that I began a lifelong love affair with the song and with Van Gogh’s The Starry Night painting, a painting scientists later determined was a true artistic rendering of the scientific principles of fluid mechanics.

It was with Mrs. Chaney that I sang the Holocaust remembrance song “I Believe in the Sun.” It was she who arranged for girl who knew sign language to sign during performance, moving the audience to tears (a phenomenon I didn’t understand at the time). And it was with her that I first heard “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” I was immediately captured by its sound: the beautiful, haunting sound that’s woven into so many of our family’s favorite songs. The story stayed with me too, the tragic true story of a ship and crew lost to storm in the American Great Lakes.

Over the years I nearly forgot the song and the story, but one day I discovered how to google song lyrics and found it again. During one particularly sad season in my life, I purchased it. I still listen to it when I’m sad. I listen to it when I want to transport myself back to the simplicity of warm spring days in Mrs. Chaney’s music classes. And I listen to it when I want to remind myself why I believe in the love of God.

This is the way I do it. I listen to the entire tragedy, waiting for the 5th verse that asks, “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” And I place myself in the shoes of the 29 men on board who knew they were going to die together, and then I place myself in the shoes of their families back on shore, who didn’t. And then I wonder “what if” along with the musician: what if this terrible thing hadn’t happened? And I swallow a lump in my throat and stay quiet for a bit.

The last time I did this, one of my children asked me where I first heard that song, and I told them the whole story the way I just told you. I told them: I listen to this song to remind myself why I believe in God’s love. I listen to it to remember that when bad things happen — and they do happen, all the time — when bad things happen, where is the love God? Is it still there? Or has it gone away?

It might be a personal loss or a tragedy back home or a tragedy here in my host country or somewhere else in the world. Truly, there’s so much tragedy to choose from. Regardless of the loss, I know I can listen to this song and somehow remember and believe that God’s love is still here and is still real. That God is still good and God is still love. I always cry at that point in the song, and I always remember that the love of God is really all I have to hold on to. I know that if I don’t keep my belief in the love of God, I would be lost. I would have nothing left.

So even when I don’t understand – and I mostly don’t understand – the love of God has not vanished. It is not buried at the bottom of the sea like so many ships. It is still present, in the midst of us. It still survives, though millennium of loss piles on millennium of loss. For me “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” gives voice to sadness but mysteriously brings me to a place of remembering God’s goodness. It helps me stand in the cruel face of tragedy, whether mine or someone else’s, and reminds me that no, God’s love has not gone away. Even though I can’t always see it or feel it, the love of God is still here among us.

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A Master List of My Home School Posts

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by Elizabeth

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Hello fellow moms and home educators! The following is a master list of the articles I’ve written on motherhood and home education, now conveniently in one place, with motherhood skewed toward the top of the list and homeschooling skewed toward the bottom, and with missionary life sprinkled in here and there.

You might also be interested in my new book, The Hats We Wear: Reflections on Life as a Woman of Faith, which addresses six different aspects of being a woman of faith, with sections on spirituality, emotions, and embodied living, as well as marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling.

And if you’re feeling stuck on the homeschool journey, I’d love to help! I also offer homeschool consulting.

I’m a Proverbs 31 Failure

I have this vague notion that the modern Proverbs 31 woman stays at home with her (many!) children, educates them at home, makes all their (organic!) meals from scratch, enthusiastically serves her church community, and, after all that, is still (frequently!) romantically available to her husband. And while there is certainly nothing wrong with any of these endeavors individually, I personally cannot live up to all these expectations at once.

Intensity and Intentionality {a note about marriage and motherhood on the field}

In many ways marriage and parenting on the field is the same as it is in my home culture, but its intensity level is higher. Missionary life simply requires more of me, and in order to match its intensity, I have to be intentional about taking care of both myself and my family. I have to daily turn my heart toward them and toward God. When I don’t, the consequences are great. But when I do, the reward is greater still.

“Me Too” Moments

I always feel so discouraged about motherhood on Sundays. Sundays completely wear me out, taking care of my youngest children’s needs. I feel so out of my league. I think about all the mom blogs out there and wonder how these women have all this energy just to spend on their kids’ intellectual and spiritual development? I’ve got sin issues of my own that need working out; how can I give 110% to each kid???

What I Want to Give My TCKs

There’s something else I want to give my TCKs, and that’s privacy. I’ve chosen a very public profession; my children, however, have not. They may go wherever I go and live wherever I live, but they didn’t choose to live a public life the way I did. Perhaps when they’re grown, they will. I don’t know. I only know I want to give them the luxury of choosing it for themselves.

A Prayer For My Third Culture Kids

My child, I’m well aware that in this life, not everyone gets married. But should you happen to marry, first and foremost I pray you will marry a fellow lover of Jesus. And then — oh then I pray you will marry someone who feels at home in the In Between spaces, who knows how to live in the margins of life, who’s comfortable crossing over and blending in, even if never quite fully.

On Not Being the Casserole Lady

Sometimes I think about people with the gift of hospitality and get this gnawing, guilty feeling. Why can’t I be more like them? I wish I could, for hospitality seems like the Real Spiritual Gift. Delivering meals to doorsteps, inviting large groups into your home for meals, hosting people long-term as part of your family — this all sounds so very first century Christian. I sigh and start to think I must not measure up.

I’m Not Supposed to Have Needs

The idea that “other people’s needs are more important than my own” sounds very spiritual. It sounds very sacrificial and giving. But we are all of us humans, created and finite beings with limited resources. Our lives are powered by the Holy Spirit, true, but none of us can survive if we think we are only here for others, or if other’s needs are always more important than our own.

These are the (Mon)days of Our Lives

The boys were screaming, “Her finger! String! Her finger’s stuck on some string!!” I ran in, and looked, and sure enough, my other daughter had wrapped a string around her finger. The top third of her index finger was already dark purple, and the threads looked deep. I told the boys to go get the scissors, but I was able to untangle it before they returned.

Sometime We Eat Cereal For Supper

Sometimes I bemoan the fact that I can’t do everything all the time. That I can’t seem to get my life in order and pull myself together and balance all the needs. But maybe I’m not supposed to. Maybe every day isn’t supposed to contain every thing. Maybe each day is only supposed to contain some of the things. Maybe something is always going to fall through the cracks.

The Little Word That Frees Us

We talk a lot about Missionary Kids (MKs) being Third Culture Kids (TCKs), but we talk less often about another aspect of their lives, the Preacher’s Kid (PKs) aspect. These MKs of ours, these kids we love so fiercely, are both TCKs and PKs. They deal with both the cultural issues of TCKs and the potential religious baggage of PKs. It’s the religious baggage that I want to talk about today.

That Time Paul Talked About Breastfeeding

You need a lot of stamina. You don’t sleep through the night for months on end. Sometimes you get painful mastitis or yeast infections. You have to keep up your water and calorie intake. To your embarrassment, you leak milk everywhere. Or you have to work hard to make enough milk. Sometimes you can’t figure out for the life of you how to make this child stop crying, but somehow you have to stay calm while you do it. On top of that, you’re basically tethered to your child because you don’t know when they’ll need to eat again. You sacrifice many things for this child, this child whom you love so tenderly and so fiercely.

The Thing That Happened While I Was Scrubbing the Kitchen Floor With a Toothbrush

For me today, obedience means looking at the people who are already in my life, and saying yes to THEM. It means saying no to certain other things. I’m finding that as I practice my yeses and nos, I’m more content in each moment. I’m more joyful in each moment. I’m more present in each moment.

On Your High School Graduation: A Letter to My Third Culture Kids

I must say goodbye to you like this, no matter where in the world I live. And when you do leave, there are things I want to tell you. Things like. . . You are my child. You are now an adult, and I’m proud of who you are, but you will always be part of my family. Our home can always be your home.  No matter where we live, we will always welcome you into it.

7 Thoughts for Graduating TCKs

If you let them, the questions of home, belonging, and identity that your TCK childhood has asked you to answer can take you deeper into the heart of God than ever before. If you’ll take the time to look for Him, you’ll find Jesus on the other side of every question you have. Only Jesus can help you live an unhindered life. His is the face of love, and He is the answer to every question you’ll ever ask. So go with Him: there is redemption on this road.

You Don’t Have to Home School Preschool

Here is what you actually need for the preschool years: a home full of life and love. And books. Lots and lots of books. Kids learn so naturally at this stage, and they’re interested in so many things, that there’s no need to do anything formal.

Dear Homeschool Mother of Littles: Don’t Give Up

One of these days it’s going to be worth it. You’re going to turn around and find that everything you’ve been working towards and everything you’ve been longing for is finally coming to fruition. It’ll all be right here, right now, today. Just keep going.

The Home School Manifesto

We will commit to seeing our children as whole, integrated beings and not as students only, and we acknowledge that their scholarship — whether high, low, or somewhere in between — is only one aspect of their personhood.

6 Things I’ve Learned From 6 Years of Homeschooling

When I was first exploring the idea of homeschooling our children, a woman at church told me very matter-of-factly that in order to homeschool, the mom has to really want to. She told me how her husband had wanted them to homeschool. She wasn’t opposed to it and thought she would try it out for him, but she just wasn’t all that interested in it. She was the one who had to do the teaching, not her husband, who had originally wanted it. Eventually, they quit, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They just sent their kids to school, and mommy was happier.

Let Me Tell You About Kassiah Jones

That Friday I took the first of what I’m now calling a “Kassiah Jones Day.” I canceled home school. I played games with my kids. We watched sciences videos in the air conditioning. I read more than usual to them. I’m with them all the time, but I don’t always share enjoyable activities with them. Instead I focus on finishing our lessons, and then in my “free time,” I work.

After 8 Years of Homeschooling, I’m Giving Up

For years I avoided the way “expert” homeschoolers scheduled their school year, with six weeks on and one week off. I was afraid that kind of rhythm would make the school year last forever and that I wouldn’t have a significant enough summer break to recharge. Who wants to do school all the time?? And school all the time is exactly what that approach sounded like. I opted for the “traditional” school schedule instead.

Two Sanity-Saving Home School Practices

Later I spoke with my husband – who was himself homeschooled – about these things. He agreed that my expectations had been ridiculously high and supported my effort to find more reasonable expectations.

8 Practices That Are Revolutionizing My Parenting

I’m understanding more fully that we are not looking for perfection – in ourselves or our children. We’re looking for progress. For growth. My husband likes to say, “All learning happens one step at a time.” It’s plastered on the wall of our home school, in fact. But though we had pounded that fact into our children’s heads (with varying degrees of success), it had not yet reached down into mine.

Unrealistic Expectations (Home School Burnout Part 1)

I got to the end of most school days and didn’t want any more kid-interaction. I just wanted to quit and go hide somewhere. I wasn’t playing games with my kids anymore, I wasn’t reading aloud to them, I wasn’t enjoying them. I felt guilty about my lack of interaction. I complained to my husband that homeschooling was stealing my motherhood. This wasn’t what all the home school speakers and writers promised would happen if I chose to home school. Everything was supposed to be peaches and cream! Rainbows and butterflies! Pony rides in May sunshine!

“Mom Fail” (Home School Burnout Part 2)

So when the first Monday of summer break came around, I took a break from parenting — almost literally. I let myself be a “bad” mom: I locked myself in my bedroom and let my children watch movies. All.day.long. I didn’t talk to them, I didn’t read to them, I didn’t play with them. It was a total “mom fail.”

The Mean Mommy (Home School Burnout Part 3)

I began to see that I was aggravating the homeschool stress through my reactions and attitudes. Busted! God was convicting me big time. You mean this all came back to me? You mean I’m the problem here? I didn’t want to admit that. I would rather blame my issues on something outside me. I really couldn’t though.

Resources for the New and the Weary (Home School Burnout Part 4)

For me, recovering from home school burnout was about addressing spiritual and emotional issues, as well as practical issues. Here are some resources that helped.

How to be a Temporary Trailing Spouse

As many of you know, Jonathan was homeschooled, and I wasn’t. When we started our family, I just figured we would homeschool because Jonathan would want that. After a few years as a mom, however, I wasn’t quite so sure anymore. I was afraid I’d do it poorly. I was afraid I wouldn’t enjoy being with my kids ALL DAY. I was afraid that life would consist of only one thing: schoolwork.

Going Back to (Home) School

This year in our curriculum, we studied ancient history, from the first recorded accounts in Mesopotamia, to the fall of Rome. This means our studies covered the entire time period of the Bible, including both testaments. And I discovered: I did not know as much as I thought I knew.

Daughter

We’d been studying China, and the art materials came from our curriculum’s China Kit. We mixed the ink ourselves, used special brushes on special paper, and stamped our work in red at the bottom.

Homeschool Math Curriculum Reviews from an Engineering Mom

I LOVE math. I got so excited when my oldest started studying the coordinate plane in algebra that I began drawing on the walls and talking about trigonometry and calculus (see photo below). That was way too much, way too soon, and my husband had to pull me back from my adventure in Mathland before my student’s brain melted down. Now I know not to get too ahead of myself.

Thoughts on Teaching Writing from a Writer/Editor Mom

I remember something Susan Wise Bauer said once. It was something to the effect of, “Good writers intuitively know how to construct sentences, paragraphs, and papers that are beautiful and logical, but they’re not sure exactly how they do it.”

That means that if writing comes easy for you, you might not know how to explain the process to someone else. But students who struggle with writing need explicit guidance. And so do their teachers.

Some Liturgies You Can Add to Your Morning Times

I don’t know if you do a “morning time” in your homeschool or if you have evening devotionals with your family. But I do know a few liturgies that have been helpful to our family, and I wanted to share in case you want to add any of them to your worship times.

Two Questions I Always Ask Homeschool Moms

The two questions I always ask young moms are the two questions they sometimes forget to ask themselves. These two areas are the bedrock upon which a healthy, happy homeschool is built.

What Subjects Should a Busy Homeschool Mom Prioritize?

Homeschool moms often tell me how difficult it is to squeeze every subject into every day. This is especially true when it comes to families with multiple children or families on the field, where ministry can take up a chunk of each day.

And I tell their worried hearts that it’s ok not to do every subject every day. But I also tell them that there are certain subjects they do need to do every day.

What You Need to Know About Homeschooling High School

When I speak with moms who are nervous about homeschooling high school — whether their kids are in middle school or even in upper elementary school — I tell them two things.