Yes, you read that right. Now that we live in the DC area I couldn't pass up the chance to express some of my displeasure with our current government. And since the Ultimate Tea Party was being held today, I got out the doublewide, packed up the kiddos and headed out to see about the hubbub.
I was very nervous about going out there -- huge crowds, a politically charged occasion, and two kiddos to tote around. But, I felt it was important for me to go and represent, and I was excited about doing so in the very place where all these decisions are being made. Corny? Perhaps. But off we went, cheesiness and all.
I have to say that hearing hundreds of thousands of people (maybe a million or more? I'm not sure what the final count was) cheering as we were walking up to the capitol building really gave me chills. I know that sounds corny, but if you have never heard that many people clapping and cheering at one time, let me tell you it is sort of surreal. It sounded like thunder. And this was before we could even see anyone.
But once we got there, it was a lot less intimidating. Everyone around us was so nice. Steve had to stay home because he was sleeping for the night shift, but I was there with a friend. All told, there were two mommies, a teenage boy, a single stroller with a toddler, and my double stroller with Ethan and Matthew. And everyone was so accomodating. Helping me manuever the stroller, making room for us to get through, smiling at the babies. It was just nice...in a loud, shouting, protesting sort of way.
I saw a few people having lively discussions with Obama supporters, but nothing ever got out of hand that I could see. And I loved the creativity some people had with their slogans and signs.
It was a good day, and fun to be a part of something so huge.
Clapping along with everyone else.
A common sight
Your typical right-wing extremist, a.k.a the angry mob.
Okay, I need some home decorating help. When you walk into our house, you are on a small landing with half a flight of stairs going down to the basement, and half a flight going up to the living room and kitchen. This is what you see going upstairs:
The table is actually a kitchen island that does not fit in the kitchen. I like it as an entry table, but I want it to be cuter and less utilitarian looking. I don't want people to be eye-level with my grocery bags when they walk into the house, but yet it is handy to have them here to grab on my way out the door. Any tips on making this cute and functional all at the same time? I think we need more pictures on the wall (the one that is currently residing there is only temporary until we find places to hang all of our pictures) and maybe some small pictures in frames on the table? I got struck with a bit of inspiration when I found this cute runner at Target for $5, but that has been the end of it.
Oh, and while I have you here, this is in our front yard:
What would you do with this area around the tree? I mean, I think we are going to need to pull out all the ground cover, shore up the beams and start from scratch, but what would you put in? I am landscaping dumb, so any details and diagrams would be helpful. It's rather late in the year to start anything now, but I'd like to have a plan of attack for this Spring!
I found this little sketch really moving. I'm not generally one for theatrics as applied to the Gospel, and I'm not sure about the finer points of the theology, but I did enjoy this.
Content warning: this is not for the kiddos! It deals with some pretty heavy issues. Kiddos, please get your parents to watch this first and have them decide if it is appropriate for you.
Okay, I know I said my next post would be non-controversial, but I thought this comment needed a place of its own on my blog. My hubby wrote this, and he articulated many of my points much better than I did. I knew there was a reason I married him!
Kate makes a good point about the role of age in maturity. We should hope that as we grow up we will do a little “growing up”, and usually this is the case. This line of thinking can be taken too far, however, if it becomes a vehicle for excuses and not an explanation for change over time. “Teens will be teens”, for example, isn’t a valid excuse for teenage rebellion and selfishness does not really come from being young – it comes from our sin nature. I knew a lot of people who when they just turned twenty were a lot less selfish than others who were much older.
Also, circumstances impact how we mature. A child constantly indulged by his parents will be a shameful, self-indulgent adult – circumstances matter. This doesn’t necessarily mean that having children early in your twenties will make you less selfish than someone who waits until they are thirty. You can selfishly despise your children for shackling you while you are young; but if that is the case then you are not living by faith and trusting in the promises of God. If you live by faith, God uses the children to sanctify you, which is to say that you will be less selfish because of your children. This doesn’t just apply to having children, though, the principle is universal – taking communion without faith, reading scripture without faith, or disciplining your children without faith will always end poorly.
Dealing with selfishness need not be the only reason to want children when you are young. Our view of the biblical mandate to have children is important and we should shun elevating popular wisdom above scriptural wisdom. It is possible that waiting to have children is more honoring to God than having them immediately. We are not all cut with the same cookie cutter and Godly wisdom must prevail in each situation. When it comes to specifics, what is good for you may not be good for me; but in principle, what is good for you is always good for me, and that means that we should all read the bible and come away with the same high view of children and family and the same low view of worldly wisdom.
Unfortunately there exists an evil kind of individualism in Protestantism (at least in America) that sometimes makes what I have just said taboo among Christians. In some ways childbearing is a very private matter, but it is also a covenant matter. We are members of a community and we are not called to be individuals with a private faith, we are called to be members of a community whose Lord is Christ. I think the issue of childbearing and childrearing needs to be discussed in the church in a way that is deliberately contra mundum. I believe a lot of good would come from it.
Popular psychology usually has enough truth in it to be appealing to Christians, but more often than not it is anti-biblical. We should live in fear of conforming the Bible to our minds and a good first step would be to eschew any conventional wisdom that doesn’t find its support in scripture. Where in scripture are we advised to enjoy the first few years of marriage without children? Where are we told to take time to learn to love our spouses before we bring children into the picture? This advice is peddled by Christian counselors and psychologists, but it is not biblical, and we accept it because it is immensely convenient to our individualism and hedonism. Vacations, together time, and date night do not weigh heavily in scriptural promises of blessing; raising godly children most certainly does (Psalm 127:3-5).
Finally, I will say that there is a real danger of becoming judgmental in this matter. Thankfully, we are not called to divine the reasons why each couple does or does not have children and then issue our judgment on the matter. We have not been deputized as the childbearing police to inquire of each of the childless why they haven’t started pumping out the babies. We should admonish one another to think biblically, however, for the purpose of living rightly before God.
Number 1) I do plan on writing about our big move and our new home sometime soon; it has been a real whirlwind around here, but I had to get some other thoughts on paper first.
Number 2) I don't like to disclaim my posts, but I will say that none of this is a condemnation of others' choices. I just get to thinking and then I decide I need to publish my thoughts because I'm a glutton for punishment I like the feedback and discussion.
Recently, I had the chance to catch up with a good friend over the phone and we talked about a lot of things. Of course, the topic of children came up (as it always does with us girls!) and I mentioned that I wished I had started having children earlier than we did. The discussion meandered from there, but something struck me and I ended up having an involved discussion with my husband about it later that evening. What has been eating at me was the notion that young married couples, or newly married couples need time "just to themselves" before they have children.
Here's the deal: my husband and I didn't start "trying" for children until we'd been married for just over two years. Our reasons back then were mostly financial, but I think for me, the idea of having kids right away did not even enter my mind as a responsible thing to do. And then it took us two years to have our first child. We basically had four years to goof off as a married couple, doing what we wanted, when we wanted. It was a wonderful time for us, but it did leave me with one big problem that has been exasperated in my "childbearing years": selfishness. And aside from physical factors like wishing I had my early twenties self to chase my toddler around, my development of selfish habits and ways of thinking is the biggest factor in wishing we had our children earlier on in our marriage.
Of course having children straight away into marriage is a radical notion that raises a lot of eyebrows, even Christian eyebrows, who also would acknowledge that children are a blessing from the Lord. Why the contradiction? Something my husband pointed out to me is that the main reason God makes husbands and wives into one flesh is to raise Godly offspring.
Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. --Malachi 2:15
Thinking on this really got me. If my main purpose in life is to glorify God, and his main purpose for my marriage is to have Godly children for Him, then what was I doing putting this off for my own reasons? Even if those reasons sound totally reasonable and not at all selfish?
So I really wonder why this sentiment of having children soon after being married became regarded as irresponsible or crazy, even by evangelical Christians. Have we bought into the world's way of thinking that we better pack as much fun as we can into our years before kids, because when they show up the fun is over? And if we do think that way, what kind of attitude are we going to show to our children when they are here? Are we going to be looking for "me time" and "date nights" away from our kids because that is what we need just to tolerate them on a daily basis?
I don't have all the answers, because I struggle with my own selfishness daily. I just want to read one more blog before getting Ethan his snack. I just want them to nap a little longer so I can finish what I'm doing. And oh, remember when Steve and I were able to just go out on our own and I didn't have to worry about what I would wear that was easy for nursing, or what time to be home because the baby-sitter has a curfew?
The problem is that God sent us these children and they are a joy to him. He delights in them. He uses them to sanctify us women (1 Timothy 2:15 - one of my favorite verses!). And when I put off that sanctification in the beginning of our marriage in order to "have more fun" or "get to know my husband better before the hard work of children comes", I think I really missed something in God's Word along the way. And, of course, I say this now as someone who did have, what I believe to be, a misunderstanding about what my ultimate purpose is in life. I do want to goof off with my husband, I do wish sometimes that it didn't take half an hour to get out the door to do the simplest of errands, but God designed this for me. And it is so amazing that he entrusted these little souls into my care. So why was I putting it off?
I'm not a legalist, I don't think that people should never use birth control to manage the size of their family. I do think it is about intention and what someone's heart is telling them. My favorite non-biblical quote on that issue comes from a Credenda Agenda article that I read a long time ago (which is really fabulous, you should read the whole thing!):
So if a Christian couple have bought all the current propaganda, and they are diligently limiting themselves to 1.2 children, then they are allowing the current false assumptions of the world to dictate to them how the Bible is to be read. But if another couple know that children are a blessing, and they use birth control in order to "space" their seven children, I would be hard pressed to say that this was an example of some kind of compromise. A man can have a high view of apple trees and still not plant them a foot and a half apart in his orchard.
Anyway, all that from one phone call with a friend! Hopefully she doesn't mind being my jumping off point! ;) And it's not all her fault, I've been reading this lately that also got me contemplating about how I'm raising my kids and where I need to grow.
I think the next post will be a photo tour of our new home. Pretty easy and no real thinking or controversy involved, except maybe my husband's exasperation at having to move that big painting again because I just want to see what it looks like on this other wall.
Almost two years ago to the day, I made this post about moving in to our little country house on Whidbey Island.
Tomorrow we will be leaving this little house in the country for something a tad larger in the big city. On one hand I will be happy to have more than one bathroom and more than two bedrooms. On the other hand I'm sad to be leaving the home where I had my first babies, sad to be leaving the West Coast after such a short stay, and sad to be leaving our church family. I love Washington, I love driving one way and seeing the Cascades, driving the other way and seeing the Olympics. Hopefully we'll be back here someday.
Also, I'm just so incredulous that when this picture was taken I had no children except the one in my belly and I am leaving here with two boys!!
So, tomorrow we will go pick up my mom at the airport so she can help us on our road trip from one Washington to the other. Who is going to lose their mind first -- me or the toddler?
Last week we went on a whirlwind Memorial Day beach trip to the Oregon Coast, then off to D.C. for house hunting (we move in less than two weeks...yikes!), and then back home. On our trip home, we stopped by my friend's house and stayed a couple of hours to let the kids out of the car and catch up with chatting. She is just beginning to home school her oldest and our conversation on the topic got me thinking of all the reasons that I want to home school my boys.
I believe my boys deserve, and God commands, that they receive a Christian education. I know that this is possible without home schooling them, or even sending them to a Christian school. However, I'm pretty lazy. I really do not think that I have the energy to "un-teach" the values, behaviors, and morals that are currently taught in government schools. I just don't. Not to mention the fact that they won't be old enough for quite some time to fully report everything they learn in school (including behaviors and words learned at recess). So how can I address lessons they may have learned if I don't know what they are? And, how confusing would it be for my young child to go off to a place that I have sent him to, to learn about many things, and then to come home, only to be told that the things he has learned about who made the world, who is his ultimate authority, etc., are not true? It is confusing for me to try and think of a way to explain to them why I think Christ is the center of our lives, yet I send them to spend the majority of their days at a place where he is at best not mentioned, or at worst ridiculed.
"How can an education that proceeds in part on the assumption that the child is the image-bearer of God and in part on the supposition that it bears the image of the animal, an education that is partly religious and partly irreligious, i.e., anti-religious, ever result in a life that is truly unified? It can only lead to one thing, and that is a divided life so strongly condemned by our Savior (Matt. 6:22-23), a life with scattered energies and dissipated powers, swayed and torn by conflicting opinions, lacking in singleness of purpose, in stability and strength, and in that true joy that fills the soul which is consciously moving in the right direction." -- Mortimer Adler
Some might argue that in lower grades, children aren't learning about complex issues that require God to be addressed in school. Kindergartners aren't debating evolution, right? They are learning the basics, and the basics don't involve religion, right? I wholeheartedly disagree! From the very youngest age, Scripture and God and the order of His universe should be the central point of our children's education. Some people think that government schools are neutral on the issue of religion, and therefore our children aren't getting a religious education while they are in them. But if they aren't taught that God is Lord over all things, if they aren't taught that they are His image-bearers, then they are getting a religious education, albeit one that Christian parents don't want them to have.
"An education that denies God and His Word as the interpretive principle of al all things, including academic disciplines, is an education that implicitly denies the whole of biblical truth and the validity of the Christian faith." --Stephen C. Perks
I myself went to public school and private school. I know the difference having God involved in each and every lesson makes. That isn't to say that every math problem in my Christian school was a word problem including Scripture. But we did pray before each class, and it was understood that the order in the universe represented by the figures in our text book was divine. In science, we studied life and cells and microbiology with the presupposition that the wonder in the creation we saw was from the Maker.
The other thing that prompted me to write this post was a posting over at The Common Room. The issue of socialization came up in a post she had linked to (as it always does in home schooling discussions) and there were many amazing comments from home schoolers about the issue. This one truly stood out to me:
"Thus I find myself asking yet again: Does anyone find it a tad disconcerting that we all so willingly and unquestioningly accept the state as the primary agent of socialization for the child? "
My answer to that question is yes! And more than just a tad! The home schooled kids that I know are far from isolationists. In fact, they experience more varied groups of people than I did when I was in school and spent all day in a room of kids from my age group.
Some Christian families I know have put their children in public schools to be "salt and light" or "missionaries" to their classroom. While I respect their choices for their family, I do disagree with this position. In general I feel that missionaries require many months, if not years, of training before going out into the field. In most cases, kindergartners are just beginning to arrive at a saving knowledge of their faith...certainly not equipped to defend their beliefs or explain them in school with an authority figure who is charged with keeping religion out of the classroom. If their teacher tells them something that they believe is untrue, how are children to defend themselves? Who is going to have a bigger impact on the classroom: a child/student who has one small voice among many and no authority, or a teacher with all of the power and authority? I submit that children should not be put in a classroom in order to evangelize until they are at least in their teens, and even then it depends on the child.
I confess that I'm often a bit wistful when friends speak of sending their children off to school some day. I think about what it would be like to have a quiet house for 6 hours per day. And yet, I don't think I can do it, for all the reasons I've listed above. If I found a school that was able to cater to my children's individual learning needs, taught a classical curriculum focused on Christ as the Center of all things, and held high standards of discipline...and I could actually afford it? I'd definitely be sending them off to school. ;)
