Nancy Wilson's Blog, page 9

Second Chance!

Guess what! Due to overwhelming demand, we have found it in our hearts to open up a second webinar on the same topic. This is a room by room topical study through the house. If you missed this last time, it’s your big chance to join! Looking forward to it!

Here is the link to more details and registration. Cheers!

Funner, Part 3 – Emotional Control

Emotional control is just another way of saying self control – but it brings something to the forefront. It might be easy to consider self control as pertaining only to actions – like you didn’t eat that brownie, so you exercised self control. But the self is a many faceted thing, and even though controlling your actions can be difficult, controlling your emotions is no small task. Often losing control of your actions comes a long time after you lost control of your emotions. Think of a woman committing adultery – long before she lost physical control she lost emotional control.  We do not usually lead with the body, but rather with the engine behind it.

First of all, the Bible has a lot to say about self control, but this one is so short and potent. Proverbs 25:28

Whoever has no rule over his own spirit
Is like a city broken down, without walls.

Often times people think of themselves losing control as an offensive move. Like you go out with your flags flying to tear down someone else’s defense. But the truth is that losing control of yourself leaves you defenseless – it tears down your own walls. Of course you can do damage to others too – but not without damaging yourself.

Now take this metaphor, and apply to a whole family. Living in one place, with no defenses against anything. Like a bunch of looters, and a bunch of broken windows. Life without boundaries, life without security, life without joy.

So exercising emotional control in our own lives is hugely important. Not only are we are honoring God in our self control, and we are teaching our children to do the same. We want our children to value the protection of self control – and it really is a monumental protection. Right now, your sons may be little and self control may only mean not hitting your sister, or not biting. But in a few short years, self control will be all about not clicking on links, not listening to the Proverbs 6 woman at the street corner, and not following her down to death. Do not let your sons become practiced at tearing down their own defenses now, if you want them to be able to resist destructive sin later. Walls built up now will stay with them forever as a foundation, and walls destroyed in your youth will never be a refuge.

And our daughters – we want them to be like columns, like cornerstones sculpted in the palace style (Psalm 144). Strong, stable, secure, beautiful, unmoving, foundational. What may now only be a struggle to get dramatic and cry over something tiny, or to lose control if made to wear an outfit she doesn’t want to – that will not grow up suddenly into great stability and strength. Right now these sins are little enough to not be destroying lives – but they will grow, and they can destroy.

Teaching our daughters to control themselves now prepares them for life by giving them great strength, giving them great confidence. Popular wisdom today often tries to equate feminine strength with not being told what to do – as though it takes great strength to tell people off, to use foul language, to take nude selfies, or to just demand everyone treat you a certain way all the time. But this is like saying “Be strong, girls! Like a turtle without a shell! You don’t need that wall! Don’t control yourself, just let us all come in and rob you of everything!”  There is no hope here for strength. True feminine strength is seen in the strength of the walls around her – because it is self control that keeps them in place.

Now this is all well and good – but how do we practically implement this at home? Here are a few examples – a few principles that might help as you work on self control with your children.

1) Be self controlled yourself – do not yell, discipline in anger, get crazy emotive about little things. Mothers especially need to guard themselves from using their emotions to manipulate your children. When sin happens, as it will –  be quick to the walls with repairs. Confess, own the sin, seek forgiveness, move on.  Let God repair the walls as soon as you mess them up. Be honest and forthright with your children about what you should not have done – and tell them that you know it doesn’t please God and you have asked him to forgive you.

2) Emphasize taking responsibility. When our children get in a fuss or a tangle with one another, we ask them to each give their side of the story, only telling us what they themselves did. You may not tell on each other, but please, do tell on yourself. Occasionally there are exceptions to this. But the rule in our home is that if two people are fighting, two people are in trouble. If they are having a trouble with a sibling, they are supposed to come talk to us and ask for help.  But if one child begins drama flopping about the wrong they have suffered at the hands of the other child, they will also have to explain the lack of self control. There are no rewards for losing control. Obviously, this takes the initial investment of following through on these things and talking through it every time. But it is so, so worth it! Your children will start to see and correct their own impulses to lose self control.

3) When your children deal with people who are unkind to them – do not show them that your method is to lose control yourself. We try to handle bad behavior from others by taking responsibility for ourselves. So, for example, one of our daughters was having a hard time with an exclusive group of little girls. We talked about how we cannot control them, but we have to control us. This was a wonderful experience for her to see what it is like to be excluded and to look at how she might be doing that to others. She came away from that little problem with a deeper understanding of herself, and a softer heart towards others. And in the course of talking her through that I found a childhood friend on Facebook to apologize for the way we excluded her back in the third grade. Had I gotten on the phone to honk the horn to all the parents about the situation we would never have learned the things we did – and I would not have thought of someone who was owed an apology.

4) Do not use entertainment as a band aid for bad attitudes. I know and you know that sometimes the easiest thing to make everyone quiet would be to turn on a show or let them play video games or something like that. But you cannot fix a lack of self control by indulging it. If your children aren’t controlling themselves well and are bickering and being unkind, dial up the requirement. Dial up the opportunities to control yourself. If a muscle is weak, exercise it.

5) Related to that, practice! When our little people mess up with something, we often give them a chance to try it again. Just this morning I told Blaire to go get on her play clothes and she cast a weary eye and raised her voice in sorrow. So we dealt with that, but then I say something like, “Hey! Let’s try again! Go out of the room and come back in. I’m going to tell you what to do, and this time you are gonna do it right.” This way whatever discipline has taken place, we end on a note of success. “Good job! That was perfect! I love it!” is a much better ending than, “Let that be a lesson to you – I never want to see that kind of thing again – that was a bad job.” End by building up the wall that got broken.

6) Remember that all of our efforts are weak, but that the Lord Jesus knows all there is to know about resisting temptation. He is our ultimate rock and refuge, our strength in weakness, and our hope. We try to imitate him in controlling ourselves, but we can never replace his work in our lives. His sinless obedience is the perfect wall around us – so that we are free to live in joy with one another. Hebrews 2:18 says, “For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” And amen!

 

Fruitful or Busy?

When the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our hearts, the result is fruit. Lots of it. And yet even Christians can forget that without the grace of God working in and through us, we can become barren and unfruitful. In 2 Peter 1:5-8 we have a list of things we are to diligently add to our faith (virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, etc.) and the conclusion is that “if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ: (vs. 8).

Now we can be very, very busy people, with a calendar booked for months ahead, but that is not the same thing as being fruitful. I’ve been trying to come up with a definition of fruitfulness, and I know that it isn’t connected to busy-ness. Obviously, it must be connected to the fruit of the Spirit, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest. At the same time,  it is undeniably the Holy Spirit who makes us fruitful. So here’s my attempt at a definition: fruitfulness is Spirit-filled obedience to God.

The reason I like this definition is because it does not limit us to one kind of fruitfulness or one kind of obedience. One person may think that being fruitful means evangelism, and for another it might mean hospitality. We are each called to obey God in our own circumstances, not our neighbor’s, and all our obedience must be by the grace of God. Obedience involves a whole lot of good works, and work is certainly involved in fruitfulness.

The passage I cited above says that we are to add to our faith. Faith is the beginning point, not the end. We are to be diligently pursuing virtue (that means working hard at it). Paul bragged in 1 Cor. 15:10 that he worked harder than anyone else,  but he quickly added, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me.”

Being busy is not the same thing as Spirit-filled obedience. Though fruitfulness may sometimes mean a heavy schedule, other times it might mean saying no to certain activities, commitments, or invitations. We all make choices every day, and we ought to ask God to direct our decisions. Once we understand the duties in front of us, we want to diligently pursue God’s pleasure as we do them. If I’m pleasing God, then I can be confident that He is making me fruitful.

So often we think of having a fruitful life as somewhere else. Not here. Not this house. Not this sink of dishes. But this is simply discontentment. We can be fruitful and obedient where ever God has us, with what ever circumstances He calls us to. So look for your duties. They are always right in front of us. God does not play hide-and-seek with us when it comes to our duties. Apply His grace to your situation. Work diligently and pursue virtue and knowledge and patience as you go. And throw in a whole lot of hymn singing. That is fruitfulness.

If you can’t approach your duties this way, then you might just be busy.

Gardening

The last couple years my yard officially got away from me. It was so overwhelming that I would go out in the spring, walk around seeing all that needed to be done, and then come back inside, not knowing how I could tackle such a big project.

Then I decided to ask a dear friend to come give me perspective. She walked around my yard and suggested that I turn one area along the south of the house into a focal point and just start with that. In other words, pick a spot and dig in there rather than looking at the entire project and throwing up my hands.

So I took her advice and recruited my husband to pull out some overgrown and unattractive bushes (no mean feat), and he dug up the hard-as-nails soil for me so we could add some of those good things that you add to soil to make it garden-ready.

After we were ready to roll, Lisa came back over with a carload of starter plants, and she helped me lay them out in the space according to size and color and time of bloom. And did I mention… she also met me at the building supply and showed me how to install a drip line, which I did over the course of many spring days in March and April. She went above and beyond and then above again. What a woman! She stuck it out with me until I got it done.

All this to say, I have had a lovely garden all summer. Am I finished? No. As you can see from the picture, there is still plenty of work to do. I’ll be planting bulbs soon, and adding things next spring. But I am back in business.

So what is my point in relaying all this to you? Because I see so many parallels to our Christian life. Some times you might get in a place in your spiritual life where all you see are overgrown ugly bushes and hard soil. You may not know how or where to begin the beautification process because it seems so huge and impossible. That’s when you may need to holler for help. If you have a friend who knows how to garden, call her. If you don’t, you do have a Master Gardener who can break up your hard soil and make you fruitful and productive again.

Sometimes we are too embarrassed to ask for help. My yard was so ugly. You might think, “Do I really want to show someone, especially someone with a beautiful garden, my disaster?” But someone with a healthy garden is just the one to help you out.

Maybe your marriage is struggling, or you feel a general need for spiritual renewal. Ask God to show you someone who can come alongside and help. Maybe He wants you to do it yourself without a friend coming alongside. Don’t be discouraged. He is all we need and He has given us all the directions we need in His Word. Begin the process, one step at a time, and you’ll be surprised how fast God can transform your hard soil into flowers.

 

Praise in the Furnace

We all have natural instincts and impulses that kick in when we receive criticism. But after those instincts and impulses get out of the way, if we are trying to receive the criticism in a Christian manner, we thank the person who gave it, tell them that we will think it over and weigh it and pray about it and consider it. And at the end of the day, we might think their criticism was brilliant or we might think it was cuckoo. But my point here is that we are used to the idea that we should take criticism seriously and at least give it some consideration. The Scripture says plenty about receiving criticism. For example, “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Prov. 27:5-6).

But what about praise? We have natural instincts and impulses here as well. I’m pretty sure that I receive a compliment without much soul searching. Praise has a ready reception. But take a look at Proverbs 27:21.

“As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise.”

This means that praise should go into the furnace and get tested before it is accepted. I don’t think we should agonize over such things. (Do I really look cute in this dress or not?) But we ought to receive praise into our hearts with caution.

How do we test it? We should hand it off to God and ask Him to test it. Or we should laugh to ourselves and say to the praise, “Into the furnace with you!”

Matthew Henry has a slightly different take on this, and I will happily defer to the great Puritan preacher. He says praise puts the man into the furnace and we find out what kind of man he really is. The praise might make him proud and lazy or it might make him diligent and thankful. I like his take on it. Either way, whether the man is in the furnace or the praise is in the furnace, praise is something we need to steward, and maybe even more carefully than we steward criticism.

Funner, Part 2 – Loyalty

One of the most important and long term fruits that our family is working towards is loyalty. We want our children to be loyal to Christ, loyal to us, loyal to one another, and loyal to their broader family – the people of God.

Loyalty is not something that will spring out of nowhere when our children are eighteen – it should be growing in them from the very beginning. And this is because loyalty is fundamentally about who you are, where you stand, who are your people, and who is your God.

One of the most obvious ways to build loyalty is to identify your own self with your children without shame. Every weird input from a stranger about your children is a chance for you to show them your loyalty.  There is no need to be rude about it – but there is a great need for you to be completely unashamed and un-moveable. When people say to me, “You have your hands full!” I respond, “Full of good things!” When a stranger says, “Well, you must be busy!” I almost always say “Yes! But who wants to be bored?”  If they say something vague like, “Look at all those children!” I might say something back like, “Aren’t they great? We sure love them!”  The point here is that my children hear over and over that I am happy that they belong to me.

There is another, far more sneaky way that we can be disloyal to our children, one that is quite common. Being ashamed, frustrated, and generally discontent with the state  of your post baby body, your post baby home – being embarrassed to drive a mini van, making fun of your own social life, and generally  talking bad about the mothering gig. Your children know full well that they are the specific reason for your general problems – don’t let your attitude be an insult to them. If you don’t want them distancing themselves from you and your mom jeans when they are teenagers, don’t you distance yourself from them and their snotty noses now. You belong together, and the overwhelming message that they should be getting from you about that arrangement should be gratitude, joy, and love.

Loyalty naturally extends into everyday family rules because it has everything to do with how we deal with one another. For instance, we do not allow our children to make fun of one another, tell embarrassing stories on one another, side with friends against siblings, chose siblings to be close to and exclude others, etc. We have had talks about friends who want to get between siblings, and how to not allow that.  This is of course a policy that the parents live out first – no sharing embarrassing stories on your husband, making fun in an unloving way, or over sharing about weaknesses that your family has. Treating your children as yourself and identifying yourself with their weaknesses is a wonderful way to instill loyalty in them for each other and for you.

There are a number of ways that we try to not create meaningless divisions and instead instill loyalty. For instance, cleaning up. We make a point to have everyone clean up after everyone. We do not sort messes into who made them as a general rule (obvious exception if someone does something truly extraordinary).  The kids absolutely notice this – and it is a great thing to talk about. “Freely you have received, freely you shall give.” People clean up freely after you all the time, and you should be freely cleaning up after others also.  There is no great injustice happening if the child who did not play with the legos today is cleaning up the legos today, although the flesh does feel that way!

This is not in opposition to learning to clean up after yourself, it is simply learning to have a bigger view of yourself – one that includes the people around you. Right now for our children this is the community of the home – but we hope to see this grow as they do – so that they will be people who serve the church family and the broader community without calculating every thing that they ever did for anyone. We want the kind of adults who serve others naturally without thinking about it, and home is a great place to start!

Now the heart of what I wanted to talk about in terms of loyalty is forgiveness. The biggest loyalty in our families must absolutely be to the Lord Jesus Christ. So when we discipline our children, or correct them, and when they confess that sin and seek God’s forgiveness – that is the final word. If our savior Jesus Christ has declared this child to be forgiven – then it is our absolute duty to honor his word. He says the sin is no longer with them – and we show them our loyalty to him when we never bring it up again.

As a parent it is tempting to file offenses that your children are committing somewhere – you can make it even seem like responsible parenting. You have a little storehouse somewhere with a big fat file in it, and every time they do some unseemly thing you take great care over the incident report. I know, and you know how easy this is to do. It is easy to act as thought the first offense was never forgiven when dealing with the second.  We can act as though the sin was primarily against us,  confessing it to God only as a matter of tradition.

But when we do this – it is far worse than just antagonizing our own children, making them feel like we are building a case against them for some time when we will prosecute. Worse than that, we communicate to them that we are not being loyal to our savior. He forgives them! What are we doing dishonoring His word to them? What are we doing acting like our court is the high court, and his is an afterthought?  What are we doing letting this behavior identify them to us, when the Lord Jesus has forgiven that behavior? Another word for loyalty could be allegiance – and every time our children are forgiven by God we show our allegiance to Him by letting it all be forgiven. All the way. Gone. As far as the east is from the west, even if the sharpie itself is still on the living room wall.

This ties in with the issue of identity. Our children belong to Christ – and they have all been baptized in his name. This is their fundamental identity. We ask them, “Whose name is on your head?” and they answer, “Jesus.”   The rest of the training that we do is simply working this out for them. We seek to shape their behavior with their identity – not let their behavior shape their identity. They have a name. They have a baptism. Our job as parents is to simply help them work that out and grow up into it consistently. We want them to honor that name that is on their head. We want them to be loyal to Jesus all of their days – and by God’s grace, we will show them how that is done.

 

 

Online Study!

Hi ladies! This fall I will be doing an online webinar study. It will be a topical room by room through the house study, with a focus on purpose and joy.

The fine people at Canon Press have set it up so that you can register as a group, if that appeals, or as an individual. It will be a live webinar,  but the talks will be recorded and each registrant will have 6 months of access to the recordings.

I am looking forward to it, and would love to have you join us! You can register and find out more here.

Funner, Part 1

One of the things that I spend the most time thinking about is mess. Seriously, I know. If you have read much of what I have written you have probably noticed that I can basically not write at all without mentioning laundry or walking on pretzels. I try to suppress it, but it does pop out – probably because it is actually a really big deal in my life. Mess in the home and people in the home have been some of the major headers over the flow chart of my sanctification. Much of my personal walk with the Lord has taken place circuitously around our home, and I am so thankful for that – because also in my home are a bunch of little people that I love. And it is here, in the middle of my sanctification laboratory that they are learning about life and God and joy and peace and family and sacrifice. 

When I bring up my problems to my husband – they are often things such as: organizational methods, things we need to get rid of, messes that I have uncovered, why the children could be making the messes I uncover, whether I need to become more organized and live by a schedule, etc. In other words, I bring up methods. I judge my performance by methods. And the thing he pointed out to me the other day has been on my mind ever since.

He said “Show me the fruit. What are you making?” And as we talked about this, I began to see how many ways I am not looking at the fruit – and how much more important that is. His comment was that I could show him that I had gotten rid of all the junk in the kitchen – cleaned the drawers out super clean and now I had only a one cup measure and a rolling pin. Ta-Da! Look how sleek and simple this is! Look how much we aren’t in bondage to all those potato peelers and microplanes! Look at how we finally have uncluttered our space and are living the good life. And it wouldn’t tell you anything at all. The question, upon looking in the vacant kitchen drawers ought to be, “What are you making with that?” And, “Is it any good?”

So the question really ought not to be about what does my home look like – but what does it sound like? What does it feel like? What are my kids like? Are they joyful and secure? Do they trust us and love each other? Are they enjoying the life that God has given them? Are we loving them and  honoring God in the way we treat them? And of course when this is all true, your house will also be good to look at.

It will be different though, because the priority difference is noticeable. When the people come first, the house doesn’t. When the fruit comes first, the method doesn’t. When the joy of the Lord comes first, the joy of minimalism doesn’t. The truth is that we need to re-order what we look for. You could walk into a home that looked perfect, and yet the fruit of that home might be bitter. And it could easily tempt you to resent the noise and the spills and the troubles that you are having in your very sweet, fruitful home.We simply cannot forget what we are doing in our homes. What is the whole purpose of this place? Not just how it looks, but why it looks. What are we for? Why are we doing this?

If you set a time lapse camera up over my kitchen sink and then reviewed the footage, you could come up with some pretty dark news: a lot of mess and many dishrags coming and going. But if you turned the camera to the table, the picture would be very different. I should be judging that mess in the sink only in light of the smiles on the faces, the laughing around the table, and the joy of the Lord. These two passages really make up my whole point:

Psalm 128

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.”

And then in Proverbs 11:29, we have this warning.

“He who troubles his own house will inherit wind, And the foolish will be servant to the wise-hearted. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, And he who is wise wins souls.”

This is the answer to what you are trying to do at home: win souls. Your home, your cleaning, your cooking, your laundry, and all the things you do are simply the tools that God has given you to use as  you win souls. This is the real work, this is the real fruit. It is a wonderful thing that God has given us so many diverse ways to bless our kids. And every one of those ways can be used to trouble them. But the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who is wise wins souls.

I am going to try, in the next couple of posts to talk a bit about things that we do in our home with this in mind. I don’t think we all need to do this the same way, because, thank the Lord, we are all different and have different children. But it is good to think through our methods looking forward to the fruit – and I will try to share a few of the ways that we do this in our own home.

And finally, about the “funner” sign. It’s a joke and an admonition all at the same time – be funner, people!

 

Courtship Tales

Same leather jacket as our first date . . . and I still like hangin on while he drives!

This is a bit random, but I thought I’d do an entirely anecdotal post about courtship. What with all the hullaballoo lately on the interwebs on this particular topic, I thought I’d just share what it was like for me.

Dad (as you may or may not know) wrote Her Hand in Marriage which is a biblical defense for the courtship model, and that book is one of the things which put courtship on the map in the first place. He had been teaching on the subject for several years, and then he put everything all in one place in that book. Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye first came out right around the same time as my dad’s book – I don’t know which one came first. Personally, I think that moment in the late ‘90s was right for this subject because the first wave of kids raised in the Christian education movement were just reaching marriageable age. I was the oldest in my family, and I had gone all the way through a classical school from kindergarten onwards, and of course the Harrises were right at the beginning of the wave of homeschooling.

I’m only speaking for myself here because I’ve never even met Josh Harris, but I would assume that something similar was going on with them in the homeschooling camp. My parents had sacrificed an awful lot to give me the education they did. They not only did a ridiculous amount of actual hard work to build a school, but the whole thing had to begin by questioning the status quo, working through Scripture, trying to apply Biblical standards to the question of educating their children, and then doing something that in the eyes of the world – and also most other Christians – was completely and totally weird. They did this faithfully, and I was raised knowing why we were doing what we were doing. I was used to the idea that we obey Scripture even when it seems that no one else is doing it – and I also got a front row seat in watching all the blessings that came along with that principled stand. Then I became a teenager, and it was a totally natural progression for Dad to be looking a few years down the road and wonder about how we would tackle the whole dating / marriage thing. It was also a totally natural thing for me to realize that we were probably going to do it in a way that no one else was. That was just how we rolled in our family and I was used to it.

You know how it is – once I hit about 13, guys started asking me out on the street or at the mall – and that was not a complicated situation. To all guys who were cat-calling, whistling, yelling out car windows asking my name, or in general asking me if I liked to party . . . the answer was no, and I did not give them my (or my dad’s) phone number. (Nor did I give them any of the remarkably witty come-backs that my brother always suggested for me after the fact. I would faithfully put them in the file for future use – but of course it never plays out the same way twice and I never could think quickly enough on the spur of the moment.) But I do think that this whole situation is probably what made Dad say to himself, “Self: give this a think.” And he did. He studied it, we talked about it, and I was totally on board with him being an active participant once I was old enough for marriage to be on the horizon.

When I was 16  the Christian guys started thinking that I was of totally marriageable age and began talking to Dad – or asking me if they could talk to Dad. I do know that plenty of girls out there have completely punkish fathers, but I was never anything but grateful for my Dad’s protection and involvement. I don’t love saying no to guys – especially nice Christian guys that I like just fine. In fact, I’m rather horrible at saying no in general – and I was absolutely thankful that Dad would do it for me. And contrary to what certain segments of the internet would like you to believe, my Dad is not (and never has been) a heavy-handed, power-tripping, control freak who delights in smacking people down. When he said no to guys on my behalf, I know that he was not unkind . . . because I’ve known him for a lot of years and I’ve never seen him be unkind.

The way it generally worked was this. If Dad knew already that this fellow was a non-starter, he simply said no thank you. But frequently he would tell them he would get back to them, and then he would tell me at dinner that he had had a visit from so-and-so today. My response was generally something like, “AAAAGGGHHH!!!!” although if I had been asked directly by the guy it would have taken me 20 painful minutes to make him understand that I probably wouldn’t go out with him no matter what night of the week he suggested. And, in fact, if I was part of the traditional dating lifestyle I know for a fact that I would absolutely have gone out with the guy and had a very uncomfortable time, rather than just say no thanks. And it wouldn’t have saved me anything, because I would have had to just say no to the second date, or the third. And like I said, I don’t love saying no. I do it, but I hate it. One of the things I really disliked about this article was that he wants direct access to the girls without ever having to deal with another man – old adages about hiding behind a woman’s skirts come to mind. If the mere presence of a father is enough to make him pass a girl by and go look for one who’s not similarly protected, I’m sorry, but that’s not much of a man. I would offer a counterpart to his advice to guys: “Girls! If a guy is too much of a pansy to talk to your dad, say good riddance and be grateful you aren’t being troubled by the attentions of a eunuch.” He also wants girls to always answer yes when asked out. Seriously? No dads, and girls who always say yes? He’s asking for the bar to be lowered until it’s on the floor before he’s willing to step over it. Not an overly impressive attitude, and not a trait that would be in any way fun to have in a husband.

Anyway, time went by. Dad started New St. Andrews college and pretty soon I was 19. Courtship was an actual word by then – even though neither Dad’s book nor Josh Harris’s book had been published yet. And I’ll be real – there were some serious courtship nerds floating around back then as I assume there still are today. Dad has always been big on the concept that you need to distinguish between principles and methods – and there were people even way back then who were getting all caught up on the method . . . frequently at the expense of the principle. Once, at a homeschool conference where my dad was speaking, a guy came up to me in the hall and asked me if he could court me. He even went so far as to spell out his future career plans and lay out his financial situation to show me that he could support a wife. The whole thing was just ridiculous – he and I both knew that what he wanted was a girlfriend for the weekend, but at this particular conference you had to wrap that up in proper “courtship” language. He couldn’t just say, “Hey do you want to hang out?” He had to say, “May I have the honor of courting you? I am totally capable of supporting a wife.” Anyway, that was the first and last conversation I ever had with him and I assume he found another girl willing to fill that role for the weekend. I would also put money on it that they are not married today – and I hardly set that down to a failure of the courtship method. When people throw up their hands and start wailing, “Why isn’t courtship working???!!!!” I would suggest that perhaps they’re being too easily fooled by people using specific “approved” courtship words or methods to mask what’s actually going on. Principled obedience is always blessed (sometimes not the way we expect!) but a method never saved anybody. Because Dad could see that people were getting hung up on the words and the method, he leaned against that, and taught us to lean against that, from the beginning.

So I was 19. I was also pretty convinced I would have to become a spinster missionary because no guy was ever going to show up. I remember announcing from the back seat one day that I was going to have to follow Jepthah’s daughter’s example and go bewail my virginity on the mountain tops because there were absolutely no guys that I would ever be interested in. I remember Dad saying, “There’s Ben Merkle.”

“Ha.” I said, “He isn’t reformed, he doesn’t go to our church, he doesn’t even live in Moscow anymore, and he has a girlfriend. I think. This just proves my point that Jepthah’s daughter is the career path I will have to follow.” But truth be told, I really thought Ben Merkle was pretty awesome. I had met him in my New St Andrews Greek class my freshman year, but my dad and brother had known him for a couple years because they all played lacrosse. He had a very cool motorcycle, he looked good in his leather jacket, he played lacrosse, he was a former Marine, and he was funny. Really funny. And he was taller than me. Nonetheless. He wasn’t reformed, he didn’t go to our church, he didn’t live in Moscow anymore, and he had a girlfriend. I thought. What a shame.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, he had become reformed, and the summer before my junior year at NSA he moved back to Moscow, came on staff with our church, and there wasn’t any girlfriend in the picture. We saw each other around a lot at church, at the college group, at parties. We always ended up talking together – and in September (I had just turned 20) he went and talked to my dad. Contrary to the normal routine, Dad didn’t tell me about it. He told Ben that they would meet together for a bit first. During their first meeting, Dad turned around and printed out Her Hand in Marriage which he had just finished writing and handed Ben the entire manuscript and told him to read it by next time and they would talk. They met together for about four weeks and I still didn’t know about it. Dad knew me well enough to know that Ben wasn’t in the same category for me as previous suitors or he wouldn’t have done it this way. At the end of October, Dad told Ben that he could go ahead and ask me out.

Both of them – Dad and Ben – wanted Ben to be the one to do the asking. No sense in making this into a junior-high style note-passing . . . “circle yes or no if you want to court me and have your dad hand the note back to me.” So one day after church, Ben asked me out. I said yes. (And not just because I couldn’t work up the guts to say no!)

Ben came and picked me up on his motorcycle that night – wearing his cool leather jacket. Yes, we went on a date. On a motorcycle. Just the two of us. Dad did not come along in a sidecar on the motorcycle, and he did not come and sit at the next table with a pair of binoculars. As I recall, he said something like, “Have her home by midnight.”

As people found out about us, we consciously said that we were “dating”  because we were trying to lean against the courtship nerds who got scandalized about the word and who were hung up on a method rather than a principle. We dated for two months and Ben and Dad continued to meet together. We never had a chaperone on our dates, but we also had plenty of accountability. Dad oversaw the whole thing – but thankfully he was never one of those dads who felt that it was his God-given role to make things difficult. He was there to facilitate a godly relationship, not to get in the way of it.

And there were never any guarantees that this was fool proof. Dad was clear to Ben that he did not need to feel like having started a courtship, he was stuck for life. He let Ben know a number of times that if he was starting to have second thoughts, he was welcome to back out without any black clouds hanging over him. And I had the same freedom. It would have been tough if either of us backed out – but we knew that courtship wasn’t engagement, and it certainly wasn’t marriage.

Of course Dad talked to me about how it was going all the way through, but after two months we had a specific conversation about how I would feel about this moving on to marriage. We had gotten to know each other, and Dad wanted to know my thoughts. Since I was smitten, I was all for it. Dad was similarly impressed with Ben, and so when Ben was ready to ask Dad for permission to propose, Dad was ready to give it. We got engaged at the beginning of January and married at the end of May, right after my junior year.

Seventeen years and five children later, I’m still nothing but grateful for my dad’s wisdom, kindness, protection, and oversight. But let’s face it – going to talk to Doug Wilson about his daughter would be a wee bit intimidating. I’m ever so thankful that Ben wasn’t the kind of guy to be scared off by that. He proved right at the beginning that he’s the kind of guy that likes a challenge and who welcomes accountability – and that, girls, is the kind of man you want.

 

Joy Can’t Die.

Well I have ended up taking an enormous hiatus from actually blogging. Don’t think for a moment that I haven’t been busily writing blogs in my head though – I have! All summer long! Consider them all wise, well timed, and apparently best unpublished.  It turns out that the only missing component in my life was time to sit down. It seems like it is time to break the ice with my old friend, the blog, and it’s patient readers.

Summer has been blasting along beautifully, with no child going to bed on time, just like always. Shadrach broke his femur just in time to celebrate his 2nd birthday in a body cast. He is still in it – we hope for only another week and half. We did volleyball league and lacrosse, Irish step classes, and lots of hospitality. Life has been really beautifully full. The kind of full that makes your back feel sick at night, and your laundry get out of control.

I continue to wrestle, day in and day out with keeping the house clean because I find that to be no small task. There are so many people in this house – living every corner of it up to the max. And I love those people and the creative games that drive them to leave things in all places but the right ones.

But loving this is not the same thing as always feeling like it should be this way. So I think through my options. I feel like if I wanted to keep my house looking great all the time I would have to choose between doing nothing but clean the house, and becoming an affliction to my children all day every day. By that I mean, I could throw away all their toys, and I could walk around behind them all day in order to notice who it was who dragged their dirty hand down the hall wall – but I’d really rather not be that person in their life.

But this little dilemma of mine actually includes a few other options too. You can have a messy house while being a pill to your children – just ask me, I’ve done it. And you can have a clean house and be laid back and pleasant – this is of course the ultimate dream, and I have had a few brushes with that moment, but it never lets me stay. And I’ve been wrestling with these issues, because often it feels like this is the hardest thing I have to deal with.

While in the throws of some part of this argument that I have with the internal accusations, we were driving in the country  and saw something that is pretty common around here – a collapsing old farmhouse. Sometimes there isn’t even a house anymore, just a broken barn, or a stray root cellar, or just the tell tale wild roses and lilacs out in the middle of nothing else.

As always my mind wanders to the people who lived there. The people who started a life there. Who built that house out of nothing, and painted it and planted flowers outside of it to mark their love for it.  The bed in the upstairs room that bore up under births and maybe deaths. The people who worried there, and nursed grudges there. The people who made love and prayed there - who wept over failed crops and hoped over new ones.

Then comes to mind that beautiful, rich, sorrowful line in Psalm 103 -

As for man, his days are like grass;

As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

And its place remembers it no more.

And as I though of this Psalm, and as we drove past this little marker of someone else’s life lived – it strikes me. What will be left of me in a hundred and fifty years? Will there be a legacy of a perfectly organized house? Where will my piles of clean laundry be in that time? Nowhere. Gone. Lost forever, and no one will even know it was here. What will have become of my endless quest to be streamlined and organized? Well – nothing. There will be no brass plaques.

But the very next line of this Psalm is so beautiful -

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
 To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them.

So here you have it in a nutshell. God’s mercy doesn’t need any memorial – it never dies. It is the one legacy that we can give our children that does not just melt away in time. God’s righteousness will not fade in the sun or break under the weight of snow. There is no grave that can hold that. It is explosive from one generation to the next.

I find myself looking differently at all this work we are doing – the most enduring legacy that we can give to our children is God’s grace to us.  When I indulge in a petty attitude about my work at home – I am choosing the thing that cannot last over the thing that cannot die. When I seek God’s grace to overcome the temptations that are before me, however petty, I lay up very real inheritance for my children.

When we fight for contentment and joy, we fight for generations of blessing – for generations of the strength of righteousness. When we do not indulge in selfishness or shrillness or bitterness because we are living in the joy of the Lord – our children will be strengthened by that. And in a hundred and fifty years – what will have become of these adorable little children of mine? They will have poured themselves out for the next generation – and Lord willing, those children of my children will be fighting the good fight. Not just for organized closets – but for the Glory of God. And they will be fighting with the mercy and grace and strength that God poured out so long ago on us.

And I find this so comforting. Wherever you are, however clean your house is, however together you feel – there are places that God is pushing on you. Grab onto His grace there, and build something lasting. When you find yourself wanting to give up – not feeling like respecting your husband or disciplining your children – that is when you need to ask God to build your house – throw open the doors of your heart and ask God to lay a foundation that will last for generations. Generations of testimony to the strength of God – to His mercy to us, and to His everlasting Grace.