In 2006 when our lead minister and his wife became empty nesters and moved out of the church parsonage so that we could move in, they left their kitchen table. We were a young family who didn’t have a kitchen table and were grateful for all the other furniture they left too.
Over the next six years, our family grew around that table. We added babies, and we added memories. We created a family and ministry culture around that table, and when we left the States for Cambodia, my best friend took the table into her home.
It was full of memories for her too. Memories of late-night conversations when she would visit me because I was stuck at home with young children and a traveling husband. (I now try to return the favor to young moms when I can, going to them during naptime.) It was full of summer days with our kids eating snacks around the table and then playing in the yard or doing science projects together. She had to let me go, but she didn’t have to let that table go.
A new kitchen table was one of the first things we needed to find when we arrived in Phnom Penh in 2012. Some friends took us to a local furniture shop and helped us pick out both dining and living room furniture. The pieces were cheap, but they looked good enough.
Our first table soon fell apart. Huge flying termites bored holes into the table and migrated into our door frames as well. We could hear them chewing away at the wood. Jonathan tried to tear out the rotten pieces and kill the termites, but eventually he gave up the struggle. The table had to go. Its cheap, untreated wood had probably brought the termites with it from the shop in the first place. Next time we would be more careful.
In the meantime, we needed something to eat from, so we pulled out a spare metal round table, the kind that Khmer people set up at weddings. It took up a lot of space in our kitchen, but we discovered we liked the equanimity of a round table. Everyone could participate in family life the same. We were all the same distance from each other, and family life thrived. We decided our next table needed to be round.
Eventually we found a super heavy, high quality Khmer round table, and it took several delivery men to pull it up the two flights of stairs to our kitchen. We couldn’t host people around that table very well, but we couldn’t host people very well around our rectangular table either. Our kitchen was just too small.
We loved that round table. You can see it in lots of family photographs from our time in Southeast Asia. It became emblematic of Trotter family life, and after a few years we all signed our names under our places at the table.
Then covid happened. We returned to America early for a planned furlough, leaving our table and other belongings behind like usual. When we realized we weren’t going back, Jonathan did everything he could to rescue our Cambodian kitchen table, that centerpiece of family life. After multiple failed attempts with one company, we found a legitimate company that could transport our most precious belongings back to the States. It consisted mostly of books, pictures, and personal items, but we also shipped the table.
The shipment took several months, getting stuck in U.S. customs and requiring unexpected fees, but it eventually found its way to Joplin, where we were resettling. We pulled our heavy Cambodian table into our new home in December 2020 and breathed a sigh of relief that we had preserved part of our children’s childhood for them.
But it took up a lot of space here as well as there, and after a couple years Jonathan started dreaming about a table that could host more people. We weren’t engaging in much hospitality during the pandemic, but he knew he wanted to host people again. He wanted to live like we did at the parsonage, regularly inviting people into our home and our backyard. He wanted to live like he did growing up on an acreage in a small Kansas City suburb, where his parents frequently hosted people for evening bonfires, sunrise services, and hot cocoa. To do that, we would need a different table.
The family wasn’t sure how to take this news. We loved our round table. It reminded us of Cambodia. But I caught the vision. I knew he was right – we needed a different table if we wanted to invite people into our home and into our lives. But tables are expensive, and we needed everyone to get used to this new plan, so the idea sat for a year or two.
All along, he kept an eye out for wooden tables and benches (which seat even more people than chairs). Then one Saturday morning he saw a friend selling wooden benches online. He texted right away, explaining that he was looking for benches to go along with the long kitchen table he was still dreaming of.
She said they still had the table that went with the benches, the table they had raised their family around. The table they had invited dozens of people to over the years. This table had a heart for ministry. It had a legacy. Its owners decided to gift it to us.
And what a gift it was. To know that this table had seen years of love and care and fellowship, years of laughter and soul secrets and tears. And to know that we were receiving such an incredible heritage from these generous people so that we could do the same thing they had done, the thing we had been dreaming about doing again, was such a sweet gift from the Father.
So we rearranged our kitchen to welcome this new table, which came with two benches and two extensions for larger groups. Daily life doesn’t require the extensions, but we can already envision our married children and grandchildren gathering around this table someday.
Our Cambodia table still has a place in this new arrangement. We cut off both leaves, along with the rolling feet, and set this reduced mass in an open area near our kitchen. Now we have a place to put food and utensils when we host people, since our kitchen has next-to-no counter space. And this is getting into the geometry of it (which I find fascinating, though you might not), but a round table maximizes circumference (which is why it took up too much floor space in our kitchen) while minimizing surface area (which is why there was no room on the table for food). This new table solved all of our problems at once.
A few weeks later we got a taste of this new way of living. We tried out the arrangement with guests, and it worked splendidly. Everyone could relax comfortably, the kitchen didn’t get overcrowded, and we could all eat whenever we wanted. Our home feels like it’s meant to feel – open and warm and clear, and most definitely ready for guests.
The cry of my heart for ever so long. I encounter God so deeply in science. My girls gave me this mug for Christmas. I love it, and I love them for giving it to me.
My firstborn explaining trusses to me. I took Statics 20 years ago when I was pregnant with him, and here he is 20 years later taking the course himself. I actually remember very little about it, but it was fun to geek out with him over the E (engineering) in STEM.
My four children overlooking Horse Bluff at Camp Tahkodah. Their great-great-grandfather Dr. George Benson cashed out a life insurance policy to purchase the campground — that’s how much he believed in it.
The older I get, the more I’m thankful for such a heritage for my children. (They have a beautiful heritage of faith and family traditions on my side too.) Benson later sold the camp to Harding University, who still owns and operates it.
Horse Bluff has always been my favorite bluff.
In many ways the song “Sing My Way Back” from Steffany Gretzinger represents the year 2023 for me. Re-entry challenged my faith and seemed impossibly hard at times. In a very real way I lost access to the one thing that could have strengthened and sustained me in that time.
My relationship with God thrived on the field, but upon returning unexpectedly in 2020, I found that not only had I changed while I’d been overseas, my passport country had also changed.
For a long time everything felt dark, and I felt dead inside. But somehow in 2023 I found my way back to His heart.
Much of this change was accomplished through working with a spiritual director. I’m so grateful to Danielle Wheeler for answering my questions about spiritual direction and for connecting me with a potential director.
We are more completely our true selves when we are in communion with Christ. That’s part of why I felt so much unlike myself during re-entry. I’m thankful to be making my way back to both God and myself.
Brooke Ligertwood’s “Honey in the Rock” represents another aspect of my year. I first heard it a couple years ago and disliked it. I wasn’t experiencing life like this and thought it was out of reach.
But 2023 has changed all that. It started at the beginning of the year with some financial challenges — we had to make major foundation/crawl space repairs, and the bill for these necessary repairs frightened the living daylights out of me.
I’d had anxiety around money for decades — ever since adolescence when my family faced adverse financial circumstances. I’d carried that anxiety through life, memorizing and reciting Matthew 6:25-34 over the years and praying for my daily bread with the Lord’s Prayer. But the anxiety remained.
I had to do some deep inner work on my money fears this year, and it wasn’t pretty. About halfway through the year I began to find some healing.
But that wasn’t the only way I found “honey in the rock, water from the stone, manna on the ground, no matter where I go.”
This year was a series of progressive healings, only one of which was with money. There was healing in relationships, healing in my ability to reach out to others. The manna God offers isn’t just physical nourishment, but I hadn’t experienced His manna in a long time.
Of course, now I can look back over all the years of re-entry and see honey in the rock everywhere. But for so long I couldn’t see the stars, I couldn’t taste the honey.
24 years ago this handsome guy asked me to marry him at this camp (albeit a different bluff). We’ve returned to this place as often as we can over the years — it’s as close to Home as he gets.
And it’s been the place where we’ve often made big decisions. The decision to start a family (remember that big tall guy explaining the trusses?), the decision to go to nursing school in KC, the decision to go to the mission field.
There were no big decisions to make this year, but I came away with a very grateful heart for 2023 and the God (and people! you know who you are, College Heights Church!) who brought me through it.
“Home is wherever I’m with you.”
Re-enacting our engagement for our children.
There’s no one else I would rather do life with. Here’s to 24 more years — and 24 more years after that.
Over the years our family has developed a morning ritual. We call it “devo,” and we model it after the daily devotionals my husband grew up with. Every morning his family gathered in the living room before breakfast to read the Proverb and Psalms for the day.
We started doing morning devos in Cambodia when everyone was young and still learning how to read out loud, and we’ve changed up our routine several times. We started with the Proverbs only but at one point got bored of them and switched to the Psalms instead. Then we went through a phase where we were reading through the Gospels. We tried Shane Claiborne’s Common Prayer for a while, and now we’re back to the Proverbs again – we all missed the simplicity of those early days in Cambodia.
Several years ago we decided to sing on Friday mornings instead of read. Hymns had been instrumental in building my faith and keeping me moored in times of doubt and fear, but my children didn’t know the hymns, as we didn’t sing them at church on Sunday mornings. We owned a few Church of Christ hymnals, so we got to work teaching our family how to sing.
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.
The Apostles’ Creed. With a world in such flux and so many arguments over what is important or true, we wanted to draw our children to the foundations of our faith. In the Creeds we proclaim the most important beliefs of the Christian faith. They are the ones we need to agree on, the ones we should never waver from. We worked together to memorize the Apostles’ Creed and say it together most (not all) days. It has been an anchor for me the past several years. There are a couple modern songs based on the creeds, but nothing beats reciting the complete Apostles’ Creed, whether by yourself or in community.
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The Doxology. This was one of the first songs we taught our children. It’s simple and easy to sing and is really a prayer. We often end our morning devo by singing the Doxology (although we sometimes end on another song, which I’ll explain below). We also sing it before meals, especially when we have guests over. We love it when old Church of Christ friends come over because they can SING. Four-part acapella harmony, delicious and delightful and a little taste of heaven. (As it turns out, you can take the girl out of acapella churches, but you can’t take the acapella out of the girl.)
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
The Serenity Prayer. Reinhold Niebuhr’s words are a newer addition to our morning times, but I think they have staying power. Like most people, I’ve known the first stanza for years (and it is the only part of the prayer attributed to Niebuhr with certainty). The second part is used in many 12-step programs and has been particularly helpful to me as a compulsive worrier. We are memorizing the entire prayer as a family.
Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, Taking, as He did, This sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it, Trusting that He will make all things right, If I surrender to His will, That I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
Paschal Troparion (Resurrection Hymn). We’ve been singing this song ever since I learned it from eine blume during a Velvet Ashes retreat. The lyrics are a modern English translation of a 5th century Orthodox hymn. We sometimes end our morning times with the Paschal Troparion instead of the Doxology.
Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death. And to those in the grave He’s given life, He’s given life.
The Lord Bless You and Keep You. My mom prayed Numbers 6:24-26 over us each day before we headed off to school, and I started praying it over my oldest as soon as we got home from the hospital. At some point I stopped saying it over my bigs before bed, but my youngest still regularly requests this prayer – a reminder of the power of repeated prayers. The version below is closest to the New American Standard.
The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face to shine upon you, The Lord be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.
And finally, the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t pray these as a family, but I pray them regularly by myself. I depend especially on “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”; “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, Your rod and your staff, they comfort me”;“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”; and “Give us this day our daily bread.” They speak to my tendency to worry, especially over money and death and danger. I need something beautiful and poetic and true to ground me in those times.
Prayer rituals have the power to form us as Christ followers. Perhaps you already have prayer rituals of your own; perhaps you are looking to develop some. If so, I hope these ideas can enrich your spiritual life and build a deeper, sturdier faith in our triune God.
I love to write, and I love to edit, but I was still lost when it came to teaching my own children the craft of writing.
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.
That’s where writing curriculum comes in. But which one should we use?? There are so many to choose from! So today I’ll share some principles for writing instruction, along with practical resource ideas. I’d also love to hear about the resources you have used and loved (or loathed).
First, a little primer on the writing process. Susan Wise Bauer, whom I consider to be an expert on the subject, has explained in many places that there are two distinct steps to the writing process. The writer must first put an idea into words; they must have something to say. Then, they must put those words down on paper. These two steps aren’t necessarily related — at least not in the beginning.
The first step is really a thinking step. In fact, Bauer has said that bad writing isn’t a writing problem; it’s a thinking problem. The second step involves our physical bodies: we must hold the pencil or pen properly, we must know how to construct each letter legibly, we must know how to spell words (mostly) correctly, and we must put the words in the correct order on the page. Eventually we must know how to type quickly and accurately.
This is all quite complex work, which is why Bauer recommends developing the skills separately. For the thinking piece, she recommends oral narration, or a re-telling, of the selection. The student isn’t required to write anything down yet; they are just practicing coming up with something to say. The parent can either listen to the narration and write it down or just listen.
For the pencil-and-paper part, she recommends dictation and copywork. Copywork is exactly what it sounds like: copying sentences from another source. In general we try to choose beautiful sentences for copywork so that the child develops an appreciation of what good writing looks like and sounds like. (This is also why we read them living books and develop a read-aloud culture in the home, but that’s a topic for another article.)
Dictation is harder and involves more memory work. The teacher reads a sentence aloud (usually only once, but sometimes twice), and the student listens and records the sentence as they see it in their mind. Here they are remembering and recording at the same time, but they are not formulating original thought.
In the early years these can be combined if a parent writes down the child’s narration and then assigns copywork or dictation from that narration, but the two activities are not yet happening simultaneously.
Eventually the student will connect both parts of the writing process. They consider the thoughts they want to communicate while recording those thoughts on paper (or a screen) and also remembering to implement spelling and grammar rules as they write or type.
Bauer’s elementary writing program, Writing with Ease, is based on these two principles of narrating (thinking) and recording. I used this program in the early years and enjoyed it.
Later on, Bauer teaches that the student will need to come up with their own thoughts rather than retelling ideas through narration. This is a higher-level process and involves learning how to outline nonfiction works and beginning to create their own outlines and compositions. That program, entitled Writing with Skill, took a lot more time and energy from both me and my oldest child, so eventually I gave up on it and simply used the Sonlight writing assignments.
Now, I love Sonlight, but there are some weaknesses in their writing curriculum. The main issue is that it tends to focus too much on creative writing and not enough on expository writing. This weakness seems to work itself out around level 200 or so, when more of the assignments become expository in nature and fewer are creative. This is important because, as Susan Wise Bauer has explained in several places, not everyone needs to know how to do creative writing, but everyone needs to know how to do expository writing.
As I was transitioning my oldest to the Sonlight writing program, I continued requiring copywork from my younger students. Their copywork was usually in the form of poems and hymns. I also assigned daily written narrations based on their science and/or history reading. They would begin with just a sentence or so in 4th grade and move on to short paragraphs from there, gradually lengthening over time to longer and longer paragraphs.
In these years I used the following articles from Mystie Winckler as my “handbooks” for teaching writing. I printed them out and referred to them regularly:
The more I read about Charlotte Mason education, however, the more I realized I wasn’t doing narration right. True Charlotte Mason instruction requires narration after a single reading, which focuses the child’s attention and requires more of the mind. And the more I read about Charlotte Mason, the more I became convinced that her style of education is one of the best for children. Which means I could have taught writing better in the middle years.
So if you, like me, are convinced of the efficacy of Charlotte Mason principles but don’t know where to begin with writing, here are a few resources:
Karen Glass has written Know and Tell, an entire book about narration.
Cindy Rollins (one of my favorites!) writes about the magic of narration in her magnificent memoir Mere Motherhood.
If you’re short on time, you could read this article about narration to help you figure out if the approach is right for you.
And if you tend toward more a more classical style of education, you may want to check out the Progym. This particular program looks to be an excellent resource from some trusted voices in the homeschool world. (I love Schole Sisters and have learned a lot from them.)
Here are some practical recommendations in case you skipped narration or paragraph writing with a child who had difficulty with spelling or handwriting or some other skill involved in writing. As a homeschool teacher, I appreciated the step-by-step instructions, because I didn’t feel competent to develop them on my own.
Paragraph Writing for Kidsby Ann Roeder is designed for students in 4th through 6th grade and teaches them how to write descriptive, narrative, persuasive, expository, and comparative paragraphs. It breaks down the writing process into very small steps – it takes a couple weeks to learn how to write each type of paragraph! But after the student has truly grasped the process for each type of paragraph, they can write another sample paragraph in one sitting. This workbook is especially good for students who are nervous about the writing process and lack the confidence that they can do it. By the end of this book, my student could confidently write paragraphs and was ready to move on to a more robust composition program.
Jump In: Middle School Composition by Sharon Watson is the next step in that process. In this program, students learn how to write entire compositions. Everything in Jump In is also broken down into small steps, which both my student and I needed. I recommend getting the teacher’s guide along with the student book.
At the same time, I know literary analysis is coming in high school, and I want my students to be prepared. One way to prepare them is to start having them think about story structure for some of their assigned reading in upper elementary or middle school. You can have a conversation about the ideas with your younger students, or if your student is a little older and thus more proficient in writing or typing, you can assign a short paper that covers just one or two of the ideas. Here’s my template for beginning literary conversations.
A discussion of writing instruction wouldn’t be complete without a mention of spelling and grammar.All About Spelling is, hands down, the best and easiest way to learn spelling.
Grammar is much harder to teach. I’ve tried so many programs, trying to fit the program to each child’s needs. What I’ve learned is that there are a lot of not-great ones out there. Two of the better ones are Shurley English and Rod and Staff English. Shurley is more fun, but Rod and Staff is extremely thorough (though at times too thorough – who really needs that many practice problems?!).
In case you didn’t know. . . .
In addition to my editing services, I also provide homeschool consulting. Whether you’re in the early years of home education or are wondering how to approach high school, I’d love to help you with your questions! I’m especially passionate about helping moms who are overseas. You can find the intake form here. I’m offering a discount until August 31, 2023.
It’s been about a year since I published one of these roundups, so buckle up! There’s a lot to talk about. From the best missions books to the Duggar documentary to menopause, married sex, and toxic masculinity, it’s all in here. ~Elizabeth
BOOKS
Magic for Marigold by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I’ve loved Lucy Maud since I was in sixth grade reading Jane of Lantern Hill on a porch swing with V-8 in hand. I even dressed up as Montgomery for a middle school language arts assignment. But I’d never heard of Magic for Marigold until last year. It was absolutely delightful (and cheap on Kindle!). When I got to the last page, I was ready to begin all over again.
And I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I like to read Montgomery’s The Blue Castle about once a year. It’s also cheap on Kindle and well worth the read if you’ve never experienced it. (I love to read from my Kindle before bed; it doesn’t have the bright blue lights to keep me awake, and I don’t have to worry about a book falling on my face or about flipping the book from side to side as I read.)
Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins. This was perhaps my fourth time through the book and my first as a parent of adult children. Somehow Cindy speaks to the moms of littles, middles, and bigs all at the same time. Each successive reading has been better than the previous. I wrote more about Mere Motherhood here, so be sure to check that out if you’re interested in Cindy or her book(s).
Facing Fear:The Journey to Mature Courage in Risk and Persecution by Anna Hampton. I loved Anna’s work on both witness risk and dysfunctional family systems so much that when I found out she was writing a new book, I practically begged her for the opportunity to read an advance copy and endorse it. This book specifically focuses on facing the fear that comes with living in “witness danger,” but the Biblical teachings in Anna’s book will help and encourage any believer who deals with fear, even one who doesn’t live in danger or risk. Here’s my official endorsement of the book:
“Facing Fear is a book for all believers. Author Anna Hampton dives deeply into the Hebrew and Greek words for fear and courage, explores the neuroscience of fear and attachment and their implications for our relationship with God, and shows us a better way to respond to the grief and suffering of others through her compassionate treatment of the wife of Job. For those living in dangerous situations, she also offers a roadmap for assessing risk and discerning the next right step. Facing Fear offers comfort, courage, and a way forward even in the darkest of circumstances.”
The Missionary Mama’s Survival Guide: Compassionate Help for the Mothers of Cross-Cultural Workers by Tori R. Haverkamp. Tori was my first book coaching client to reach publication. And while I’m super excited for her and so proud of the book she has produced, her message also moved me on a deep heart level. Tori helped me understand how hard it was for my own mom to be separated from family (those grandkids!) for so long. Reading Tori’s book also inspired me to host more pieces from parents of missionaries at A Life Overseas; this has historically been a missing part of the missions conversation.
You can read an excerpt from my favorite chapter at A Life Overseas. Even though I’m only launching my kids to college and not the mission field, I still relate to what Tori writes in that excerpt. And I love that she’s not afraid to talk about menopause or midlife (more on menopause later!).
She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky. I don’t know how they did it, but the authors of The Great Sex Rescue have managed to create another gem for the modern church. Each page is packed with Biblical and thought-provoking commentary, along with data analysis (which the scientist in me loves). If you grew up in the church and sometimes wonder about purity teachings that, though well-intentioned, placed a disproportionately heavy burden on the backs of girls only, while giving boys a pass, you’ll be interested in this book – especially if you have daughters yourself.
Gregoire, Lindenbach, and Sawatsky produce theBare Marriage podcast, which unpacks a lot of the ideas in both The Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better. Importantly, they discuss the fact that evangelical women have much higher rates of pain with sex. This can be traced back to the obligation sex message, the idea that women “owe” their husbands sex whenever they want it. But in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, sex in marriage is painted as something that is mutually pleasurable. So if we’ve got pleasure for the husband and pain for the wife – or even pleasure for the husband but no pleasure for the wife – that is not how God designed sex in marriage to work. If this is your situation, please know there is help available. You can see a counselor, a physician, and/or find resources for female pleasure on Gregoire’s site.
REFLECTION & CONTEMPLATION
Aviva Romm (a midwife, herbalist, M.D., and expert on all things healthy living) on perfectionism.
This article (if you can access it) reflects even more deeply on masculinity in society. I found the discussion to be nuanced and well-researched. There are a number of reasons masculinity is in crisis in our society, and we need solutions and role models other than the voices pushing toxic, abusive forms of masculinity.
Shiny Happy People, a documentary about IBLP and ATI, the homeschool group my husband Jonathan grew up in. We found it to be both highly accurate to the experience and empowering to survivors. WARNING: the subject matter begins dark and only gets darker throughout the episodes. So if you’re not in the mental space to watch it, please feel free to give it a pass.
If you are in a place to view the documentary, the Aftershow is also worth watching. There’s good news here: you don’t have to reject Jesus or even the church because of the false teachings in IBLP-adjacent groups. Gothard and other teachers twisted Scripture to control people, and it distorted many people’s view of God. But there’s hope – we can find God outside fundamentalism. Alex Harris was particularly well-spoken in the follow-up interview (yes, THAT Alex Harris – co-author of Do Hard Things and brother to I Kissed Dating Goodbye’s Joshua Harris). So if you watch nothing else, skip to the second segment at 23:15 and watch only the parts where Alex talks.
FULL DISCLOSURE: There was a time a few years ago when I wanted to reject everything I had ever believed. I wanted to be an atheist and was about to give up on God. Not believing in God seemed like a less painful option than believing in the God some people around me were preaching. I had to do some hard soul searching and some hard seeking after God, and eventually I found Him again.
What I know now is that I wasn’t chafing against Christ himself, but against Christian nationalism and other forms of cultural Christianity, such as those depicted in Shiny Happy People. It took me so long to untangle man-made religion from the God of the Bible.
I wanted to say this here in case any of my readers are in a dark place right now. It’s ok to be where you are. It’s ok if you find yourself rejecting human religion and desperately searching for something more. It’s ok to respond out of pain. It’s ok to not understand everything. It’s ok to take time in the valley — there’s no need to rush. What I want you to know is that God is still with you and that it’s possible to find God again.
HEALTH & LIFESTYLE
Ballet class. I’m still attending ballet class and finding it to be a good workout. Like any good workout, it is both challenging and relaxing. The teacher added a tap class this summer, so I’m getting back to my roots. (I took both ballet and tap as a child, but I wasn’t very good.) These days I’m working hard on my technique and enjoying the process.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or medical practitioner. I am just a woman living in a 40-something body who still wants to be happily married to a man in a 40-something body. The things I’m writing about below are things that have helped me, but do your own research and talk to your own doctor.
At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about this, but I’ve talked about everything else in life, and neither Jonathan nor I have shied away from talking about sexuality, so here goes: Hormone therapy has been life changing for me.
I never thought I would say that. I never thought I would use hormones. I was into natural living, and besides, everyone knows hormones are dangerous. The Women’s Health Initiative proved that in 2002, right?
But the more I looked into solutions for perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms, the more I became convinced that not only is hormone therapy safe, but it also reduces the risk for heart disease, osteoporosis, and dementia (diseases that increase after a woman enters menopause). And of course, hormone supplementation reduces the bothersome symptoms of perimenopause and menopause.
I wanted to manage my symptoms as naturally as possible for as long as possible, but my symptoms started getting worse this year, and I was determined not to walk out of my midwife’s office without a prescription. Thankfully we had discussed options in the past, so when I told her things were getting worse, she whipped out that prescription pad immediately.
My symptoms improved almost overnight. Hormones are like magic.
I don’t share all of this TMI just for the sake of oversharing. I want this information to help someone. So first of all, if you’re in your late 30s or early 40s, you might be experiencing symptoms of perimenopause. That’s because your hormones can start shifting up to 10 years before your periods actually stop.
So what does perimenopause look like? It might look like worsening anxiety or PMS. It might look like heavier or more painful periods. It might look like sleeping problems or brain fog or increased irritability. It might look like frequent urinary tract infections or pain during sex. It might look like hot flashes or a sudden gain in weight, especially around the middle. Your mind and your body just aren’t working the way they used to, and these hormone changes might be affecting your relationships.
But we don’t just have to suffer through the symptoms, even in perimenopause. There are a number of safe, effective, inexpensive, FDA-approved formulations of body identical (bioidentical) hormones, so if your symptoms are feeling more and more unmanageable, please talk to your doctor, midwife, or nurse practitioner about your options.
Importantly, be aware that there are local estrogen therapies to treat the genitourinary symptoms of menopause (whether that’s dryness or pain with sex or recurrent urinary tract infections), and these medications are not absorbed systemically. For more information on local estrogen therapy (usually in the form of a cream, tablet, or ring), see: Dr. Kelly Casperson or Dr. Rachel Rubin (both urologists). A woman’s quality of life matters. Her sex life matters too. Hormones help with both.
I still do a lot of lifestyle interventions to stay as healthy as possible, especially when it comes to diet and exercise – because there are certain changes with menopause that hormones can’t fix, such as loss of muscle and increased insulin resistance. The following authors have helped me on my journey:
1. Lift heavier than before. It’s harder to build and maintain muscle in midlife and beyond, but we need muscle to keep our strength and our balance and to manage our metabolism and blood sugar. This motivated me to buy a heavier set of dumbbells.
2. Eat more protein. We need more dietary protein as we get older because our bodies aren’t as good at building and repairing muscle. Protein also helps us modulate our blood sugar. This motivated me to increase my protein intake.
3. Do more interval training (especially high intensity interval training, or HIIT). Interval training is kind of hard, and I don’t always like it, but I gave it another try and found that I actually do like the way it makes me feel.
4. Stretching, mobility, and balance are more important than before. Honestly I’ve always skipped stretching and core work because they were SO boring. I’m trying to adjust.
The Galveston Diet by Dr. Mary Claire Haver (also check out her YouTube channel, which has a wealth of information). One of the main things I’m learning from Dr. Haver is the importance of intermittent fasting. As women get older, the hormone shifts of perimenopause and menopause cause us to be at higher risk for insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes. Intermittent fasting, or time-based eating, is one way to reduce our insulin resistance. Humans are designed to eat during the daytime and not eat at night, but modern life with its electricity and constant streaming capabilities has interfered with this pattern. Intermittent fasting honors it. Intermittent fasting doesn’t have to be extreme – Dr. Haver doesn’t recommend going over 16 hours of fasting. Just go at least 12 hours without eating at night: it’s the way humans used to live.
Like Stacy Sims, Dr. Haver also recommends increasing our protein intake in perimenopause and menopause. Actually, she recommends tracking all macro and micronutrients. I refuse to do this. It would be stressful and would take over my life. So I loosely aim for more protein in my morning and noon meals but stick to a plant-based meal for dinner, because I find I feel better and sleep better that way. And all the menopause experts say you need to get better sleep.
Cold brew coffee. I loved cream in my coffee and couldn’t imagine drinking it black. But one of the ways to go 12+ hours without eating is to drink your morning coffee black. I tried Dr. Haver’s tip of adding a pinch of salt to cut the bitterness, but it didn’t impress me much. The black coffee hurt my stomach, and my taste buds still cried out for cream. Then I tried cold brew. It’s so much smoother and richer than hot brew, and it never gives me a stomachache. I think this has something to do with the reduced acidity (though minor) in cold brew as compared to hot brew. It also tastes a lot better!
[I know, I know, we’re not supposed to consume caffeine at all, and a few years ago I had managed to wean myself off all caffeine. But these days I find I still need a little bit of kick in the morning, so I use a mixture of half caf and decaf in my morning coffee.]
MUSIC & SPIRITUALITY
The song “Wandering Day” from the Rings of Power series. Granted, the show wasn’t the perfection of Peter Jackson in the original Lord of the Rings, but it was good for what it was (something completely made up), and this song was breathtaking.
Chording. This year I’m trying to teach myself chording so I can play modern worship songs (and songs like “Wandering Day”) with lead sheets. I only took a year of piano lessons as a child, so my skill level is very low, but I’m still learning and enjoying as I go. Every few years I try to get back to piano, but this is the first time I’ve tried to learn chording.
Searching for song. I’m happiest when I’m singing. Some of you might remember my first email address, isingbunches@yahoo.com. What you might not know is that I fell in love with singing when I was 10, the summer I went to church camp for the first time. I’ve been told that on the three-hour trip home, I was either singing or sleeping. If I was awake, I was singing.
And I’ve been singing ever since. Some of you may remember me as the girl in youth group who was always saying, “Let’s sing!” And since we were in a cappella churches, we really could just sing anytime, anywhere. All we needed were our voices and our memories. (Excuse me a moment while I reminisce.)
All of this to say, I have to do whatever I can to get enough singing in my life. One of those things is playing the piano and singing at home, and another one of those things has been attending worship nights at local churches wherever I live. There were a couple international churches in Phnom Penh that hosted regular Saturday worship nights, and I tried to attend whenever I could. It was always such a rich experience with God.
Here in Joplin there’s a local church that hosts a worship night once a month. It reminds me of worship at our international church in Cambodia, the way the leader creates so much time and space to commune with God. I cried the first time I went to one of these monthly worship times. It felt so much like being in Cambodia. I can’t make it every month, but it’s been such a comfort to have the option of more worship through song.
Lent series on the saints and their different expressions of Christian spirituality. When I attended Ash Wednesday service in February, I saw an announcement for a teaching series on the saints and their various forms of spirituality. I was intrigued; I didn’t know anything about the saints or their spirituality.
I’m so glad I went each week during Lent. I would walk in, and the tension in my shoulders would start to unwind. I could breathe more easily. Father Ted just had a way of ushering us into a deeper connection with ourselves and with the Lord. I’m know I’m drawn to contemplative Christianity and am currently trying to figure out how to get more of it in my life. I’m considering finding a spiritual director; I think I would benefit from the guided prayer times. But whatever I decide to do in the future, I’m glad I spent this spring learning about the saints and their faith.
Jonathan & Elizabeth Trotter 