Kingdom Civics Figuring out how to be a good citizen in the Kingdom of God

1.  We are having people over for dinner tomorrow.  It has been too long since we’ve had people over for dinner, and I’m really excited about it.  We are grilling out, and I’m making this apple dessert that I love.

2.  I had a list of people to talk to at church on Wednesday night.  I always had a “list of people to talk to” about various church projects while in South Carolina.  This was my first time to have that list in Tennessee.  For me, that means I’m starting to get plugged it, really plugged in to the church here.  It’s a good feeling.

3.  Also, I’m really excited about our church’s future.  There is just something in the air right now, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

4.  I only have a week of teaching left.  As much as I loved teaching, I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

5.  I plan on spending my “teaching” time in May catching up on Project Life and working on some projects for church.  I can’t wait to get started on them.

6.  I feel incredible peace about homeschooling.  The more I think abot it, the more excited I get.

7.  My morning plans got canceled today, which allowed me to put a cleanin’ on the kitchen–and I mean, big time.  It was therapeutic.

8.  Then, Anna and I went to the zoo for a toddler class and a picnic lunch.  We had a blast, and she kept a smile on my face.

9.  The weather was beautiful today.  That has been a trend lately.  I am still not used to the beauty of Nashville in the spring.

10.  It was so beautiful that once we picked up Luke, we took him back to the zoo.  We went to see the new dinosaur exhibit, and the kids loved it.

11.  Then, we went to see the elephants, and they were eating hay and spraying themselves with water and dirt.  It was utterly fascinating.  I could have watched them all day.

12.  That night, when I asked Luke what his favorite part of the zoo was, he listed all the animals we saw instead of the Dinotrek, even though he insisted he loved the huge, robotic dinosaurs.  As he explained it, “It’s just that God made all those animals, and people made those dinosaurs.  I liked God’s stuff better.”

13.  I have an idea for my next “Citizenship 101” blog, and I”m excited to hash it out.

14.  We have been reading some really good library books recently, thanks to some online recommendations I’ve found.

15.  I thought of most of this list tonight while laying down with my adorable, four-year-old daughter, my arms wrapped around her and my face in her hair.  After a long while, I lifted my head up and gave her some kisses, which is the sign that I’m about to have to go.  SHe smiled and wrapped her two little arms tightly around my one, in order to get me to stay longer.  I obediently buried my face back in her air and stayed awhile longer.  I wish I could have stayed forever.

As a child, I never understood the idea of running just to run.  You ran from whoever was “It” in Hide and Seek.  You ran around the bases in your softball game.  You ran to hit the ball back in tennis.  Those things all made sense.  But running laps??  Running laps is what your coach made you do before you got to the fun stuff.  That type of running was ridiculous to me.  I remember being so frustrated, for example, when we got a new tennis coach my Senior year of high school.  He had never played, nor coached, tennis, but he was set in his opinion that we should run a mile before every practice.  Now, I had been playing tennis since I was five years old, had played in several leagues, had taken innumerable lessons, and had played for my school since the 8th grade.  No one had ever made us run more than a few laps around the courts to warm up.  That kind of running simply was not helpful for tennis.  I remember silently seething each time we had to run down to the school track, circle it twice, and run back to complete our mile.  “If I wanted to run around in circles like an idiot, ” I thought, “I would have joined the track team.”

A funny thing happened that year, however:  I actually began to see some value in doing this thing that I hated so.  Perhaps it was the conditioning of the dreaded tennis practices, or the fact that, his predilection for torture aside, I actually liked my tennis coach.  Perhaps it was the magazine article I read in either Seventeen or YM that lauded the mental and physical benefits of running.  Perhaps I just had a masochistic streak and decided to try to embrace this thing that caused me so much pain.  Regardless, I decided to tackle the teen magazine’s simple plan to become “a runner.”  I liked that the magazine’s plan talked about running in terms of time, not distance.  For instance, it would start with something like, “Run one minute, walk three minutes,” and then work up to longer periods of running.  Since we lived on our church’s campground at the time, I would either run the trails or run on the treadmill that was inexplicably housed in one of the sleeping cabins.

That’s where it all began.

In the thirteen years since then, I have been a regular “runner.”  I ran steadily through college, through the early years of marriage, and through these years motherhood.  I have even taken to recording the days that I run, which helps me maintain some consistency in my practice. Running, in short, has become an integral part of my life.  When I go a few days without running, I start to get restless and anxious, eager for my “fix.”

Here’s the thing though:  I’m still a horrible runner.

I mean it:  I’m terrible!  After thirteen years of consistent running, I am still not able to run more than two miles without stopping to walk, and I often can’t even make it that far!  Seriously, I’m freakishly bad!  Since I started running, I’ve known several people who are in far worse physical shape than I am–even some smokers!–who have started running, and are now running marathons!  Marathons, people!  And then there’s me…dinkin’ along on my little two mile course, huffing and puffing all along the way.

Truly, I have a problem.

Here’s the crazy part, though:  I still love running.  Well, I love it as much as one can love something that causes them endless pain and frustration.  I am usually eager to go for a run, and I miss it when I can’t fit it in to my day.  I have pondered the reasons behind this bizarre love, and I have come to a simple conclusion:

My body was made to run.

It’s obvious, really.   Our bodies were designed to move, to be used, to exercise.  It’s just part of being human.  Thus, even though I’m pathetically bad at running, it is still something that I was made to do.  

My unique relationship with running has made me ponder other things that I am bad-at-yet-meant-to-do.  I think sometimes we give ourselves a free pass to avoid the things that we are bad at, explaining to ourselves and others that “this” is the way we are made.  In some cases, though, I think that we are made to do more than just the things in which we excel.  There are some things, like moving our bodies, that everyone is supposed to do, even when we don’t feel like it.  For example, my husband has the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know (well, maybe besides my mama).  Meanwhile, I love most fruits and vegetables and can’t resist any dish that has spinach in it.  Clearly, eating healthy is more difficult for him than for me.  And yet, we are both made to eat healthy foods.

It’s also the same with being a Christian.  There are some things that, I believe, every Christian is called to do, even if we are bad at them.  In my opinion, one of those things is hospitality.  Several verses in the Bible describe hospitality as a Christian trait…and yet, as an introvert, hospitality is not my strong suit.  My temptation is to excuse myself from being hospitable, since opening my home falls squarely outside of my comfort zone.  I am tempted to use the “one body, many parts” argument to say that hospitality is someone else’s job, while my job is to ramble about my spiritual thoughts on the internet.  I’m much more comfortable with that.  I honestly don’t believe, however, that “one body, many parts,” excuses us from the basic tenets of Christianity, which include such groaners as denial of self, love for (all) others, and following the radical way of Jesus.  Frankly, I’m not amazing at any of those things…but, just like I was physically made to run, I was spiritually made to follow these commands.  And the crazy thing is that when I do follow them, as bad as I naturally am at them, I come away feeling…happy.  Whole.  Free.  And just like with running, I start to get antsy when too much time passes between practicing those commands.  For example, my stingy self inexplicably starts to get jittery when too much time passes between putting money toward God’s kingdom.  My introverted self starts to sweat when two weeks pass without a visitor in my home.  My lazy self starts aching when I waste too much time on the internet.  Even though I’m naturally a hoarder, naturally private (in some ways), naturally lazy, as a Christian, I was made to practice generosity, hospitality, and self-control.  

As bad as I am at those things, they are as necessary to my spiritual health as running and proper diet are to my physical health.  Thankfully, I don’t have to be great at these commands to feel the benefit of practicing them.  As hard as they are for me, I was made to do them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go squeeze in a run before my morning gets going.

What things are you comically bad at, yet were made to do?

Earlier today, my friend, Courtney, wrote this article about cultural rebellion.  At least, that’s how I would characterize the article, which I very much enjoyed reading.  My favorite part came toward the end of her post, when she asks a series of rhetorical questions about cultural expectations, all beginning with, “Who says”:

Who says …that my house has to be presentable at all times?
Who says …that my laundry has to be caught up every day …or that we couldn’t minimize it by letting every kid have 5 shirts and 3 pairs of shorts ONLY!
Who says …that I or my kids have to a have 52 different church outfits so we are wearing something different each week?
Who says …that I have to be running myself ragged from morning til night, dragging my kids behind me?
Who says …that my kids have to be involved in every extracurricular activity I can find for them to do?
Who says …that I have to wear a size less-than-12?
Who says  …that my toenails have to be perfectly manicured all summer?
Who says …that my clothes have to be from somewhere other than Walmart (or Old Navy …either one).
Who says  …that I HAVE to coupon to manage my pennies well?
Who says  …that I have drive a car that matches everyone else?
Who says …that I have to have a house that is perfectly decorated OR that it has to have a certain number of square feet?
Who says…that I have to have an updated blog at all times?
Who says ..that I have to compare myself to any of those chics on Pinterest? ..or better yet, have the creativity to do any of the stuff on there?!

The whole time I was reading this list, I was thinking, “Ooh, ooh–I wanna play!”  This exercise struck me as an immensely fun game, and I thought that maybe we could play it together.

Okay, now it’s my turn:

Who says…I have to wear makeup whenever I go out (especially when my husband seems to honestly think I’m beautiful without it)?

Who says…I need more than one pair of jeans?

Who says…that it is “normal” to take a vacation every year?

Who says…the plight of the global poor is none of my business?

Who says…people shouldn’t be weird?  I like weird people!

Who says…we can’t ask for (or accept) help?

Who says…Christmas should break the bank?

Who says…I shouldn’t have a chandelier in my dining room that suggests that I’m 85 years old?  New ones cost money, you know!

Who says…my kids need to simultaneously participate in 17 extracurricular activities in order to become self-actualized human beings?

Who says…I need to wear earrings…or have more than one purse?

Who says…we need cable?  Or more than one tv?  Or a tv at all?

Who says…I shouldn’t drink 4 cups of coffee a day?

Okay, okay…doctors say that last one.  Other than that, though, I stand by my questions.  I would love to know who makes these rules.  Well, actually, I guess I don’t really care at this point who makes them.

Because I’m tired of following them.

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Okay, now it’s your turn.  Do you have any “Who says?” questions to ask?

For the life of me, I can’t remember the type of music that they usually play in a souvenir shop in Panama City.  Something poppy, I would imagine.  Breezy.  Upbeat.  I think they would play some light and happy tune to lift your mood as you milled around looking at shot glasses with beach scenes on them or snarky, inappropriate t-shirts.

I should remember the music, as I am no stranger to cheap souvenir shops in Panama City.  PC, after all, was my family’s #1 vacation spot while I was growing up, and we never met a roadside shop that we didn’t like.  As a child, I was mesmerized by the seashells, the beach toys, the brightly colored t-shirts that proliferated in these establishments.  I clearly remember once getting a little jewelry box, lined in red velvet, with little white seashells glued all over it.  I thought it was the epitome of class and sophistication.

The incident I’m thinking of didn’t occur when I was a child, though.  No, I think I was in college when the music in the gift shop stopped.  Maybe I was with my family, or maybe it was that time I had come down with some friends from school.  Perhaps this was the gift shop visit where I bought those shorts with the writing on the rear (speaking of the epitome of class and sophistication), or perhaps I just got a pair of sunglasses or some more sunscreen.  I can’t remember the details.  All I remember is that the song playing over the speakers ended, and suddenly, I heard only words coming out.  The words might have been put to some kind of beat, but all I recall was that I was immediately riveted.  I stood there, transfixed, in the middle of the aisle, holding whatever piece of kitsch I had been mentally mocking, as I listened to a very unlikely message to hear in a Panama City gift shop.  Here are the words I heard:

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a —-ing big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin can openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of —-ing fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the —- you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing —-ing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing* your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, —-ed-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that?

That was it.  No prologue.  No explanation.  Just those words.  Clearly, the speaker’s cynicism reflected his belief that those things were not really life.  Clearly, he felt that these trappings of life were ultimately meaningless.  But…who was he?  Thankfully, I remembered the words clearly enough to relate them to Greg later, and have him identify them for me.  Apparently, those words were spoken by Ewan McGregor in the opening of the movie, Trainspotting, which goes on to give the viewer a grim and unflinching portrayal of drug use (clue:  the speaker doesn’t choose life; he chooses heroin).  For me, though, those disembodied words pouring out of the speaker served as an accidental indictment of the emporium of junk in which I was standing.  It made me think, “What am I doing here?”

That question was not just about me standing in a gift shop, either.  Ultimately, that moment served as a microcosm of many other times in my life where I have been suddenly awakened to the meaninglessness of my actions.  Inevitably, I will get myself all caught up in a situation–maybe the details of a big event, maybe some kind of relational drama, maybe just the minutiae of daily life–and I will let those circumstances take over my thoughts and emotions.  I will let that situation consume me, stress me out, and otherwise distract me from the greater purpose of living.

And then, something will come along to open my eyes and remind me that I’m getting consumed by something that doesn’t really matter.  Usually, though, my wake up call doesn’t come from a Scottish actor playing a heroin addict.

Usually, it comes from Scripture.

You see, when I read the Bible, I find “Choose Life” to be a major theme.  It is stated explicitly by Moses:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed…

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life…

The prophet, Haggai, elaborates on the theme in a different way, when he explains the feelings of frustration and futility felt by the Israelites after the exile:

“Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it”  (Haggai 1:5-6).

The reason the people are so frustrated, according to Haggai, is because they are focusing on the wrong priorities; they are building up their own houses while neglecting the house of God.  They aren’t choosing life, and so they are haunted by feelings of futility and meaninglessness.

Jesus drives the point home when he asks rhetorically,

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Jesus’ question reveals the stark and humbling truth that I can go through my whole life, and even be “successful”–and yet miss the entire point.  How sad would that be?

Paul continues this underlying  theme in such commands as,

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is yourlife, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:1-4).

Together, these Scriptures form a chorus.  They tell me

Choose life.  Choose something better than what is all around you.  Choose to spend your precious minutes on things that matter.  Choose a higher path.  Choose eternal significance.  Choose meaning.  Choose purpose.  Choose love.  Choose God.

Choose life.

Every day, I try to choose life.  Often, I fail.  Often, I don’t even know what that means.  (Is doing laundry “choosing life”?  Well, I don’t know, but I do know that someone has to do laundry!)  But sometimes, I do see it.

I will look at my kids, really look at them, and be filled with love and awe.

I will try to help someone.

I will take two seconds to admire God’s creation and to thank Him for it.

I will work at something with all my heart, as working for the Lord and not for men.

And in those moments, I will think, This is life.  Surely, this is what Jesus meant when He said He had come to give “life to the full.”  Surely, life can’t get any more full, more satisfying than this.

In such moments, I am reminded that I don’t want to spend my life in the equivalent of a Panama City gift shop, thinking about useless junk that doesn’t even matter.  Life has so much more potential than that.  I want to choose life, and choose to live it to the full.

How do you choose life?

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I would edit that word, but I’m pretty sure that it means “drinking,” when used across the pond.

1.  When it’s my turn to pick the restaurant, I pick one with a name like, “The Silly Goose,” because I want to try their couscous and shrimp.  Only, I don’t check to see how far away it is, or if it is even open, which leads to events like a cross-town drive to a closed restaurant.  And then my second choice is a little vegetarian joint in the same building called, “The Wild Cow,” and only when that is firmly vetoed do I settle for the much-more-normal Mexican option across the street.

2.  Over dinner, I ask questions that need lots of prefacing, such as, “Pretend you have no presuppositions about either religion or science.  Wipe away all the things you believe.  Now look around this restaurant at all the people and clothes and behavior and answer this:  Would you say, based totally on present observation, that this species evolved accidentally or that they were created by a higher power?”  This is my idea of a conversation starter.

And like a good date, I stay off my recently-updated iPhone…until the very end of dinner, when I can’t resist playing the new game I got for the kids, Math BINGO.  After I inexplicably miss 7 X 1 twice (it’s not 8, Kim), I decide it will be fun to challenge my date with this rousing game.  As we exit the restaurant, I set it on the hardest setting and pepper him with incisive questions like, “What’s 15 X 19?” on the way to the car.  Since I have to plug his answers into the Bingo board, he gets several steps ahead of me (although, thinking back on it now, it’s possible that he actually might have been fleeing me), which causes me to have to call out the questions a bit louder.  It is only after I yell, “136 divided by 17!” followed by a triumphant, “BINGO!” that I look up to see everyone in Hipsterville staring at me through their thick, horn-rimmed glasses.  Oops.  I just smile and shrug, like, “What??  Doesn’t everyone play Math BINGO in their spare time?” before laughing all the way to the car.

3.  As much as I do appreciate the standard dinner-and-a-movie, movies today are too expensive (not to mention that most of them are not worth seeing.  Did you know that there is currently one out on Redbox called, The Evil Bong?  Not joking).  I’m not even a movie snob (the last three movies I saw in theaters were The Hunger Games, Sherlock Holmes, and Mission Impossible 4) but the combined price and stupidity of most movies make them a no-go for date nights.  For me, the next best thing is a bookstore.  Barnes and Noble is our basic stand-by, but tonight, my date opts to try out a huge used bookstore we’d heard about, and I’m all for it.  I spend most of my time perusing the children’s books and Christianity books, coming away with a few things for the kids’ Easter baskets.

So yeah, if vegetarian restaurants, Math BINGO, and used bookstores are your thing, I would make one awesome date.  For the other 99.9% of the population who are sighing in relief right now that you and I will never have to go on a date, I wish you all the happiness in your own dates with your significant other.  As for me and mine, we spent the drive home from the used bookstore singing Mumford and Sons songs with the windows rolled down and admiring all the greenery in Nashville.  At one point, I caught my date looking at me, and so I turned and smiled at him, and he told me I was pretty and declared that he “married up.”

And I realized that I am a great date…to the person who matters.

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So, um, where do normal people you like to go on dates?

Don’t you hate it when parents complain that their child is just not challenged enough in class?  The kid might be failing, might be a bully, might be making paper airplanes when he should be working, and it seems like the knee-jerk parental assessment of the situation is that little Johnny is simply too smart, and that’s why he is having trouble.  Because, you know, every parent thinks their child is brilliant, me included.  And also, every parent is tempted to brag on every good thing their child does, me included.  I don’t think that this is necessarily bad; children need people who think they are amazing, after all.  I just think that it gets old quickly to the people who are not the parents of said child.

Thus, consider yourself warned:  this post might have some, um, facts that could be construed as “bragging.”  But to the nay-sayers, I say, “I’m not actually bragging; I’m complaining.”  Because that is so much better, right?

When we first talked to Luke’s new teacher back in November, I was one of “those moms” who fretted that her child might not be challenged in class.  To his teacher’s everlasting credit, she suppressed her eyerolls and said that she would do her best to see that he was challenged.  She was true to her word:  within a few weeks, she sent home a permission slip for him to be tested for gifted services.  I signed and returned it the Monday after Thanksgiving break.

On April 17, I have a meeting to discuss the results of that test.

That is almost five months later.  In the meantime, my child has been making troubling comments such as,

“I have not learned one thing in school this year.”

“We just do the same thing over and over every day.”

“What is the point of school?”

These comments vex me.

Thankfully, I am not alone in my concern and frustration; Luke’s teacher feels it, too.  In fact, the reason Greg’s and my homeschool conversations got cut off in February was because his teacher scheduled an S-Team meeting for Luke.  Apparently, the first wave of results from his testing had come back, and he was deemed by the out-of-school tester to be “brilliant.”  In reading, he scored in the 99.8th percentile for five-year-olds across the nation.  In math, he scored in the 95th.  He didn’t do as well in “academic knowledge” (78th percentile), but still, the tester said it had been a long time since she had seen scores that high.  His teacher, being wonderful, immediately kicked it into high gear and called a meeting with the principal, the school psychologist, and the school counselor.

The meeting really impressed me.  Even though there are hundreds of students at that school, many of whom are ELL students, everyone in the room seemed genuinely committed to giving Luke a quality education.  We brainstormed different ways to enrich his learning experience and came up with the following:  1) he would meet daily with a first-grade reading group, 2) he would work with both his teacher and the reading specialist to keep advancing in reading (the benchmark level for kindergarten is level 4, and he is working on level 28), 3) he would be given independent writing projects to work on, and 4) he and I would do special social studies projects on the different cultures in his class.

Part of the reasons we came up with all these ideas was because Luke still did not qualify as “gifted,” because the test was not complete.  Thus, he could not participate in the gifted program at school because there was not that piece of paper that deemed him eligible.  Furthermore, as I looked through the test results, I saw that there was a good chance that he might not qualify as gifted, despite his sky-high reading and math scores.  Those were just two elements in a variety of testing areas.  One area that he seemed not to do well in was called something like, “Observable Behaviors.”  I asked the psychologist about this and she explained that those were actions that the tester observed while the child took the test.  Unfortunately, some of them were tricky.  For example, one behavior that indicates giftedness is the unwillingness to move from one subject to the next since the gifted child tends to get engrossed in his tasks.  However, that behavior contradicts the norms of politeness, and the tester had said that Luke was extremely polite.  Thus, the psychologist concluded that Luke probably lost points if he quickly obeyed the tester when she said it was time for the next subject.

Seriously?

When I came away from that meeting, my one annoyance was how much depended on the results of this specific (and it seemed to me, highly subjective) test.  Otherwise, I was highly impressed.

Unfortunately, reality soon intervened, and much of our plan ended up falling by the wayside.  For example, Luke was not too keen on leaving the classroom for a first grade reading group, so when the first grade teacher had to take an extended leave of absence, Luke’s teacher didn’t think he was socially ready to go to another one.  I agreed with her decision, but that scrapped the reading group part of the plan, which was supposed to be a daily thing.  Then, he was too shy to present his story to the class, so we stopped getting those assignments.  She had also been sending him home advanced homework assignments, but those ended up falling by the wayside, as well, probably because she has nineteen other kids in her class.  I didn’t press the matter because I figured I’d been a big enough pain already.  Instead, I went to the library every week to get readers on his level, and we would read them together at night.  I would also remind his teacher to send home the higher level books so that he could keep progressing that way, and we practiced those, too.  In addition, we worked on our social studies projects, and also spent time each night practicing writing numbers at the teacher’s request…since apparently being brilliant does not include knowing which way your sixes go.

For me, the end result was that I felt we were spending way too much out-of-school time on schoolwork, and became increasingly frustrated that he still did not qualify for gifted services during school hours.  When I got a permission slip to have him tested for “talent,” in order to be invited to the gifted program next fall, it kind of pushed me over the edge.  Maybe it was because the night before Luke had cried in frustration about how bored he was all day at school.

One reason his frustration bothered me so much was because back before Luke even started school, before we even knew where we would send him, I had spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be truly “educated.”  After much consideration, I settled on three simple characteristics of an educated person.  The first and most important characteristic was

a love of learning.

Right now, my son has a love of learning.  He is full of questions, and we are always talking about what something is, or why a thing is so.  The other day, he was blown away by the idea that humans can only live on planet Earth, and not the other planets in our solar system.  Even though I explained it to him thoroughly, he would not give up hope that scientists have simply overlooked something:  “But have you seen how close Venus is to Earth?  I bet we could live there.”  “Or what about Saturn?  It’s so big!”

Already though, he is beginning to despise school.  And my fear is that one day soon, his dislike of school will begin to snuff out his love of learning.  And when he is on a third grade reading level and still learning basic alphabet sounds in class, I fear that day will come sooner rather than later.

That’s why, the morning after his breakdown, I started researching homeschool curriculum.

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And that, my friends, concludes our three-part, epic saga detailing why we are considering the homeschooling lifestyle.

I can so clearly remember the dread that enveloped me as a child those nights after the first days of school.  Each year, I was typically excited about the first day back to school, even after a fun summer break.  I loved shopping for new school supplies, and I always looked forward to seeing my friends again, meeting my teachers, and getting a glimpse into how my school year would look.  First days were so fun.

That night, however, I would realize suddenly that after every first day…came a second day.  And a third.  And so on.  It hit me that those days would not be as fun.  And it occurred to me that I had no choice but to participate in them, to meet their demands.  Furthermore, I was depressingly aware that even my parents did not have much of a choice.  Since homeschooling never seemed to enter any of our minds (least of all mine), it appeared that we were all at the mercy of the traditional school system.

Since I actually kind of enjoyed the traditional school system once it got rolling, I usually rebounded quickly from my funk and moved on with the business of the school year.  However, there was always that brief time each fall where I suddenly felt trapped by the crushing burden of eight hour days, 40-hour weeks of enforced learning schedules.  I felt like a helpless pawn in an unalterable system, a system over which I had no control.

(And yes, I know that I might have been a morbid child to delve so deeply into despair each year.  I think I get that tendency from my father.  He once told me of a time when he saw an airplane fly overhead while coming back from squirrel hunting to his rural Kentucky home.  Instead of excitement at seeing the airplane, my dad was filled with depression at the thought that he would most likely never fly in such a contraption.  Like me, he felt trapped in his world.  However, I generally had much less reason to feel trapped than he, as I was the privileged daughter of a man who, as a business executive, flew in lots of airplanes.)

That dread came back to me at the beginning of this year when I sent my kids back to school after Christmas break.  Often, parents are somewhat relieved to send their kids back to school and to settle back into their normal routines.  Not me.  To me, it felt so incredibly wrong.  We had enjoyed such a wonderful Christmas holiday, and the few weeks of together time just made me want more.  Thus, it was with deep mourning that I packed my son off to his eight hour school day at the beginning of January.  I told myself that it would be good to get back into a routine, that once I started teaching and everything settled down, I would be thankful for our highly ordered days.

Instead, I found myself feeling slowly trapped by our routines, and that familiar feeling started creeping back up on me, that morbid awareness that we were part of a system that dictated most aspects of our lives.  For example, Luke’s school schedule dictated our family time, limiting it to the 3:00-7:30 pm window between school dismissal and bedtime.  Family time was further cut short by church commitments two nights a week at 5:00 pm, and by Greg’s work schedule, which took up three nights a week.  Then there was the homework for Luke and the teaching prep and grading for me, which stole away even more family time.  Because we felt so squeezed, Greg and I opted not to enroll the kids in any extracurricular activities, like sports or art classes, because we didn’t want to give up even more weeknights, and certainly not our cherished weekends.  That was a shame because I really think my kids would benefit from some extracurricular opportunities.  I also began feeling more and more stingy with our time, reluctant to do even good things, such as service or outreach, because our hours together as a family were so precious to me.

Now, I can just hear the chorus of those who have “been there and done that” saying, “Welcome to reality.”  This is the new normal:  two parents working (often both full-time), kids in school all day, a host of extracurricular activities in the evenings and weekends.  So many people’s plates are much more full than ours, and they seem to be managing, and even enjoying it.  So why can’t we get with the program?

I, on other hand, didn’t enjoy it.  Thus, my question was:  Does this have to be reality?  More and more, I feel squeezed in to this mold, this lifestyle, that I really do not want.  I don’t want to be forever frantically running around feeling two steps behind.  I am keenly aware that I only have one life, one chance at this thing, and I want to spend my time on what is most important to me, not on priorities that culture decides for me.  Maybe “this is the way things are,” but right now, I am rejecting the way things are.  I am blessed to be able to choose a different reality instead.

In my chosen reality, I want to spend my time serving my family and my world.  I want to devote my days to the relationships that are most important to me, which will in turn allow me to more freely give my afternoons and evenings to the other work that God has for me.  If I’ve spent a full day with my children, I will not resent going to tutor in the evening or volunteering some “family time” at World Relief.  I won’t mind going on a weekend youth trip, or worry that it is taking time away from the children whom God has given me.  In short, by taking back time for our family, it seems to me that we will have more time to give to others.  Service won’t just be one more thing to squeeze on top of a forty-hour school week; instead, it will be something we can weave throughout all our days.

Those feelings of dread and reluctance formed the “kindling” to our homeschooling flame.  Back in January and early February, Greg and I circled ’round and ’round the homeschooling option, mulling over its benefits and drawbacks.  Our exploration of this option was prompted by my trapped feelings.  When I am feeling romantic, I describe the “kindling” factor in our decision to homeschool as:

Systemic Rebellion.

Power to the people, and all that!  Down with the Man!  We are taking back our precious hours and devoting them to the pursuits that are most important to us.  So…in your eye, cultural expectations!

And when I am in a more prosaic mood, I simply say,

We didn’t like our schedule.

Because, you know, that’s true, too.

So how do you handle the busyness in your life?  It seems like completely rejecting one’s lifestyle is a tad on the dramatic side.  Do you have any strategies that are perhaps more reasonable?

I would never homeschool my kids.

That’s what I said.

Well, really, that’s what I thought.  I didn’t say that because I recognized that it was close-minded and because several people whom I respected homeschooled their kids and because, technically, I saw some value in it.  At the same time, though, I was generally 99.9% certain that homeschooling wasn’t for us.

After all, kids need the structure of school.  And if my kids were anything like me (which Luke is), they would need the constant social interaction that school provides in order to help their overly-introverted selves become normal.  Plus, as Greg points out, kids need to learn to respond to different authority figures, even ones who don’t like them.  They need deadlines and due dates and people who don’t let them off the hook just because they love them.  They need to learn to not be the center of attention, to function and interact with groups of people who might be very different from them.  I could go on.  The bottom line is that I see so much value in the classroom setting.

And yet, here I am…

…fairly certain I am going to homeschool my children next year…

…and very excited about it.

That’s kind of weird, don’t you think?  I think it is.  I actually am pretty shocked at myself.  What really gets me is how good I think homeschooling will be for Luke and Anna, after being so sure that I would never homeschool them.  It’s quite a reversal of opinion!

At the same time, though, I think we might indeed be the weirdest homeschoolers in the world, which is saying something because…you know what?  Never mind.  I won’t besmirch the community:).  Instead, I will just point out all the ways that we, personally, will be weird homeschoolers:

1.  We are weird people.

Let’s start with the obvious.  Three out of four Kirby’s range from fairly to extremely introverted, and even Anna (our token non-introvert) generally keeps to herself in preschool, despite the other girls’ valiant efforts to befriend her.  Thus, there is a good chance that next year, we are all just going to crawl into a hole and become hermits.  It is a very real concern.

2.  We love the public school system.

Yes, for real.  I think it’s wonderful.  I am so stinkin’ proud of our country that we view education as a right, and that we are committed to providing every citizen with a good one.  Whether we are actually able to do that is a matter for debate, but the idea is right on.  A successful democracy depends on an educated populace, for one thing, and in my opinion, it also depends on cultural awareness and acceptance.  And in public school, you are surrounded by people who are different from you, and you have to learn to get along with them.  That’s a good skill to have, which is why I want to be a part of the public education system.  I want to support this noble effort, and the best way to do that, I think, is to allow my children to participate in it.  

Furthermore, we have loved Luke’s school and the people who work there.  Luke’s teacher has gone above and beyond for him, and I love the principal, the counselor, the reading specialist, and so on.  Luke also loves his classmates, and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to volunteer there once a week and getting to know the little children with whom he spends his day.

3.  We are not homeschooling for religious reasons. 

In fact, I am slightly terrified of the idea of indoctrinating my children into my own worldview.  I know that is weird, since my biggest hope for them is to become Christians, but I want them to choose it, you know?  I want them to hear other viewpoints and perspectives, to have other teachers who disagree with them (and us), and to grapple with other worldviews.  If our house has a motto, it might be something like, “The truth is strong.”  And so, I’m not afraid of exposing my children to contradictory worldviews.  To me, faith that is not tested is not faith at all.  That’s probably why I found myself researching secular curriculum instead of the Christian material that makes up the lion’s share of homeschooling curriculum.  The curriculum we finally chose is Christian, but we chose it only after reading many critiques about its “controversial” nature and how it gives other views instead of  just the biblical view.  That’s what got us.

4.  None of our friends homeschool.

At least, none of our friends in Nashville homeschool.  In South Carolina, almost all of my friends homeschooled; I was the weird one for sending my kids to public school.  In Nashville, however, a disproportionate amount of our friends work in the public school system, and so now we’re weird for homeschooling.  Apparently, I have a perverse desire to look at what all my friends are doing, and then do the opposite.  Perhaps I need to explore that tendency…

Until then, those are just a few reasons that we are going to be weird homeschoolers next year.  In light of those facts, you might be asking, “Why in the world are they going to homeschool their children?”  And even if you aren’t, just know that I’m going to blather on about that very subject for the next few days.  So if this topic does not interest you at all, then…um…see you next week?  We’ll miss you!  (For real.)

To the four people who are left, I will get to the two big reasons soon.  They need elaboration.  For now, here are some of the smaller reasons:

Our kids want to.

We want to.

Greg’s schedule is the mirror opposite of the typical school schedule:  his busy times are evenings, weekends, and the summer.  If homeschooling is convenient for anyone, it is the minister’s family.

My two biggest passions in this life (besides the overarching passion for God and my family) are writing and teaching my kids.  When I do those two things, I feel the most alive.

Nashville has so many opportunities for homeschoolers.  Seriously, it’s incredible.

My best friend is moving up here soon (God-willing), and she homeschools her boys, who are my kids’ good friends.  We have big plans for collaboration.

I’m sure there are more little reasons that make homeschooling appealing to us, but I can’t think of all of them right now.  The bottom line, though, is that, as convincing as those factors are by themselves, they would not have pushed us over the edge.  I would describe the two factors that did push us over the edge as

kindling…

and a match.  

But more on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you have children, how did you choose to educate them, and why?  

Well, I appreciated the feedback that I got with my last post, “The Problem with Lent.”  In it, I asked about spiritual droughts, and particularly, what you do when you are in one.  Do you press forward with spiritual practices, even when you seem to get nothing from them?  Or do you take a break and wait for some sort of desire to return?

Honestly, the only thing I really know how to do is to press forward.  And so I did.  I actually wrote that post in the middle of last week, and so enough time has passed for me that I am in somewhat of a different place.

I caught up on my One Year Bible, reading all seven days one afternoon, mostly sitting in the library while Anna played some of their games.  A lot of people died in Numbers.  The last story I read on “catch up” day was the one where the Israelites go and conquer a bunch of people and kill all the men.  They bring the women and children back alive, and God asks them why they did that.  He then tells them to kill all the women and boys, but to save the virgins for themselves.

To be honest, I didn’t take it well.

First, I imagined if a society did that today, and then I pictured that happening to my own family.  Poor Anna!  I imagined the scene, the tears, the begging.  I wondered about the God who would order such a thing.  I was tempted to just stop thinking about it, to run and hide behind Isaiah 55:8-9.  Like I mentioned in the comments of the last blog, that just seemed like a cop out to me, though.  I have this assumption that God can handle our questions.  So I asked Him about it.  And I talked to Greg about it.  We had a really good talk, in fact.  And my friend, Molly, and I discussed it.  And our talks really helped me.  They didn’t explain everything in the way I wanted, but they allowed me to really think out loud without having to worry about being thought of as a heretic.

And so I kept reading the Bible.  I’m in Deuteronomy now.

I also kept dragging myself out of bed, for the most part.  I went back to my trusty notebook and pen, and the prayers started flowing again.  My prayers are hardly models of beauty and devotion right now…but they are, um…there.  It especially helped that this past weekend I got roped into “prayer patrol” for a friend.  My impromptu praying responsibilities helped get me back on the right track.

As for serving, I went to serve dinner at Y.E.S. last Tuesday like I always do.  My enthusiasm level on the way there was rock bottom, and I was mentally whining about how hard it is to get to know the kids this time around.  It was so easy when I was a college student, but now that I have two kids of my own to keep up with while I’m there, it is so much more difficult.  I continued to think about my conundrum at the center, while sitting outside on a porch swing and comforting Anna, who had taken a tumble down the bleachers.  I had just sent her and Luke to play in my line of sight on the playground, when a sweet little 4th grader named Corina bounded up to me and asked if I could help her with her homework.  She acted like we were old friends as I helped her look up the definitions to her vocabulary words and explained to her what “parts of speech” were.  After a few minutes, her friend, Cassandra came and joined us on the swing, casually draping herself across my lap to talk to Corina and joke with me.  Then, at dinner, I sat by Nyana, Andrea, and Selena, three girls whom I didn’t know, but who were all extremely friendly and kind. It was the first week where I felt like I really got to know some kids.  And it came from no effort of my own.

Then last Friday, Greg left for a retreat, which always puts me in what I call “super” mode.  My disdain for cleaning and cooking melted away as I whipped the house back into shape in preparation for being a single parent.  For the first time in weeks, I enjoyed working.

I didn’t give up my Lenten fast, although I seriously considered it, and I cheated a few times (like last night).  I decided that as pathetic as my efforts have been, they are teaching me good lessons about denial and self-control.  And since then, God has given me several “boosts” to get through.  Twice in the last week, I have been completely ready to throw in the towel and on my way to get Oreos or ice cream or whatever it is I’ve been wanting…only to find when I get there that I have no desire for them.  None at all.  I had been craving them all day…until I gave up and went to eat them.  I really do not understand that.

But the moment I decided that my short-lived drought was officially over was on Monday, when I got home from school and realized that I had about half an hour to kill before I went and picked up Anna.  I thought about how to spend my half hour, and it occurred to me that I really wanted to spend it with God.  Wanted to.  It was a beautiful day and I took my Bible out to the swing…but I didn’t read it.  Instead, I just sat and looked at the beautiful nature all around me.  My eyes were especially drawn to all those amazing, bright green blades of grass.  So many of them…created by God.  I looked at them and all around me at God’s creation, and suddenly the stories of Numbers that didn’t make sense to me didn’t seem as important.  Even though I still didn’t understand them, I definitely understood the message of, “LOVELOVELOVE” that was coming from every blade of grass and every flower on every bush.  And I realized that I never doubted God’s love for the people He created.  I don’t understand His methods sometimes, but I don’t doubt His love.  I know that probably sounds weak (“I don’t understand the Bible, but the flowers tell me that God loves me, so I’m cool”), but what can I say?  It’s what works for me.

This week was supposed to be “drought” week on the blog.  Unfortunately for my well-laid plans, it rained.  That wasn’t so great for my blogging schedule, but it was good for my soul.