For the Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For You Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias,

I’m addressing you metaphorically, of course, as Austen’s characters are merely that. But, I find no better way to warn you, Girl, of the downside to obsessively fixating on potential matches and romance all around you in the seventh grade. You remember, don’t you, how Lydia’s obsession with “the officers” and her mother’s relentless matchmaking led to shame and embarrassment for her whole family, how she threw caution to the wind and put undeserved faith in Wickham, who was interested in sex and money and very little in Lydia? In Austen’s days, of course, Lydia was old enough to marry, but hitched and pregnant is not where I want you or any of your friends at sixteen. Need a contemporary warning? Lorelei Gilmore (albeit with the worst parents on earth). Pregnant at 16. Yes, it all turned out all right after she lived in a garden shed with her daughter and was estranged from her family for many years. It’s good now, but might I remind you of the years her romance cost her?

All this is to say, it concerns me that you take so much pleasure in matchmaking your friends at the junior high school dance, that you are “so happy for” the “couple” who has just placed tentative hands on one another’s shoulders and hips for the first time in their lives after only glancing at each other fearfully in the hallway for the first two months of school. You’re happy and squeally for them--as if they’ve just announced an engagement, a wedding, a baby. And this leaves me unsettled and wondering what on earth you think this means—two children swaying together for three minutes in a gymnasium. I hope you know this is not the end of their story. That they will (99.99999% likely) “break up” in the next two weeks, that their hearts will get broken over and over again in the context of this not-quite-real world of global studies tests, bus rides, field trips, hall passes, AP exams, choir concerts and track meets. They might do things they wished they hadn’t.

Sweetheart, some of these kids will take this "romance" in the serious way that you seem to be taking it--up to the next level. You should know: there will be pregnancies you will not see evidence of. There will be diseases you hear nothing about. Some of your friends, too, will end up used and abused by other children who haven't learned anything about real love. There will be appointments and counseling and parents tearing their hair out and crying because these poor parents are strapped with the job of helping these not-quite-or-even-close-to adults navigate adult-like decisions and adult-like hormones and adult-like bodies.

Please accept my kind but urgent rebuke. How about we celebrate romance later? Let’s pull out our dancing shoes when these children understand that romance is as temporary as the cold, solid ice pop you get handed at the Fourth of July parade. What seems so solid and dependable in romance can liquefy in the wrong climates. Let’s laugh and smile when these creatures learn how to own their choices and take responsibility for their lives. Let’s do the Macarena when they learn selflessness, because that's what helps love last; it's what gives romance a fighting chance at re-forming once it's become a puddly mess. Let’s do the Cha Cha Slide and the Chicken when they’ve learned how to suffer long for someone else, when they know how true love hopes and waits and defers and hangs in there and doesn’t give up. Okay, sweetheart? Okay? Okay??

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (November 10)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

It's Monday and--after surviving a sleepover with 6 10-year-olds this weeken-- I sleepily present to you a few good reads I stumbled into this week:

On pregnancy and the secrecy we keep to deal with potential loss: I'm Pregnant. So Why Can't I Tell You?

A fresh look: School Prayer Doesn't Need a Comeback.

On what God is like: If You Can't Say it about Jesus, then Don't Say it about God.

As usual, a little edgy, but to the point: Jamie the Very Worst Missionary criticizes the use of the word "blessed" in her post #Blessed.

Parenting through our anger: Why Yelling Doesn't Help.

For laughs, if you're a Jane Austen fan: If the characters of Pride and Prejudice Could Text.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Distracted Girl, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Distracted Girl,

When you were little, I thought only your age was to blame on your restlessness and forgetfulness. I’ve been waiting all these years for you to grow out of “it”—an “it” I’ve had a hard time defining up until now. It’s that thing that happens when I talk to you and you don’t seem to hear me and I repeat myself and you don’t seem to hear me, again, as if you’re lost in your head and daydreaming about video games or beading or the clay sculptures you want to create as soon as you can get through your breakfast. Being inside your head is a good thing. I like to live in mine as well. It’s where I start the beginnings of essays and emails. It’s where I problem-solve financial and relational challenges. So, I wasn’t truly worried back then because you were pretty focused at school; you stayed on task; you told the disruptive kids where they could go be disruptive if they got in your space. Your second-grade teacher told me he wished he could discover the secret to your focus-in-the-classroom combined with your wildness-on-the-playground, put it in a book, and sell it. Imagine my relief.

But then third grade came around and those stupid test scores caught me by surprise. Oh, I know, it was your first year taking standardized tests and third graders shouldn’t be expected to have the hang of those straightaway. But it was other little things too—like your rushing through words without sounding them out and substituting something nonsensical just so you could say you read them. And now, added to language, it is the math—the mere mention or sight of a division sign and you lose yourself, as if fractions and decimals and negative numbers and operational signs are whirring inside the blender that is your head, just to torment you. And we sit at the kitchen table for a good ten minutes some days, before I can even convince you to calm down--before the tears are gone-for-the-moment--and lead you through a path of reasoning that you, inevitably, find crooked and laden with stumbling stones. It’s a big victory when you’re able to surmount those stones and climb the path after me.

I spent so much time feeling frustrated, like maybe you just didn’t want to do your homework or clean your room, like maybe you were just prioritizing fun and friends and creativity over the “first things first” that I’ve taught you since you were three. But I’m realizing now that it’s not mostly laziness or disobedience, but that you likely don’t notice the mess, Sweet Thing. You think, in all honesty, that you did clean your room, that you did empty your lunchbox—at least, it’s what you remember, or think you remember.

I don’t know how long this will go on, but I’m changing how I parent you. No more series of requests presented all at once—because you will remember the last one and forget the first two. On school mornings, I get your breakfast ready for you now so it’s at your place at the table—because it would take you half an hour to collect bread, jam, a knife and plate if you were instructed to do so. And we’re going to see someone in a few weeks—someone who might shed light for us on what’s happening inside that sparkling, thought-full mind of yours.

But let me just say, for the record, that I love your mind. I love your enthusiasm and your quick-to-burn excitement that does, inevitably cause you to focus on what’s-most-important-to-you even when the things-that-are-important-to-me fall by the wayside. Look at how you gather all the kid-piano books in the house and tap out songs you used to play in your lessons. Look how you’re teaching yourself "Ode to Joy" on the recorder, shuffling through the house like a marching-band-of-one. And last night, on your tenth birthday, I watched you in the audience at a choral concert, your eyes almost weepy over the sweetness of the girls’ voices, your phone poised in mid-air so you could record this little bit of auditory heaven for keeps. I could see you up there someday. I know you’ll be up there someday, singing like there’s nothing better than entering that kind of beauty. All in is what you are, Girl, to the things you care about the most. 

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir, on sale now through Thursday for $.99 cents (Kindle Version.)

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Fundraising Company, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Fundraising Company,

I know, I know, it’s for the school. For the children and the after-school sports and the library.  But let’s be honest: it’s for the companies, too, that make a fortune on “silver” pendants ordered through glossy catalogs full of caramel corn, soup mixes and phone charging stations. Normally, my scrooge levels crank up to full power about now. I could buy better quality stuff at Target, yet you’ve somehow gotten my children so excited about the Crap They Can Win if they sell your product to me and to their grandparents and to the neighbors. Invisible ink? By golly, it’s all worth it. Canvas the neighborhood! Call the aunts and uncles! Let them know that for 19.99 they can buy a set of melamine nesting bowls in Tex-mex colors. And why wouldn’t they?

But, I'm telling you, you shocked me with the magazine sales that Oldest was asked to participate in now that she’s a seventh grader. There’s a streak of altruism running through this set-up that’s different than any other. Oldest told me that she didn’t want the "dumb prizes” you were offering kids for bringing in post cards addressed to all the members of their extended family. Instead she was given the choice to donate a live chicken to an individual in a third-world nation. Come again? A chicken in lieu of a fake mustache? And apparently, she can do this again if she sells five more subscriptions.  Who are you—the Heifer International of school fundraisers? I love you. Wait--I’m conflicted. I mean, I want South American farmers to get chickens if they need them, but does that only happen if I order Rachael Ray Everyday! and Martha Stewart Living?

I'm not sure how to live with the irony that basic food and sustenance for an under-resourced family in the third world is supplied by way of our purchasing tomes that document photoshopped first-world lives and homes and celebrities. But it seems to be a theme here in America--we implore givers to give by giving them something, albeit less valuable, in exchange. And as disturbing as it is to me that we cannot seem to request from people the same level of generosity without returns, it seems to be "working."

Maybe you've got a CEO who's keen on providing livestock to third-world families even though she's in charge of a school magazine sales fundraising company. If that's the case, I guess she's winning. And, I'll thank you for giving my daughter the option--for keeping my living room clear of one more piece of plastic-headed-for-the-trashcan, and for sending a bird to a family in South America.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Pastor's Kid, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Pastor’s Kid,

You’ve heard the stories about Jesus and Abraham since you were in diapers. You know that God is Good and Jesus Loves You because The Bible Tells You So. You’ve sung the Sunday school songs, performed in the Christmas programs, and just because you’re you, have corrected the theology of the younger ones who wanted to know if angels and Santa were in cahoots, if the Easter Bunny was as real as Jesus. Also, you take science seriously; you wrestled with creation theory, held intelligent conversations about how the theories of evolution and God-as-Orignator might somehow fit together like a puzzle, and not be at odds as so many people seem to think they are.

And you know so much about the Bible—names, spouses, plot twists, dates—that I’m surprised to hear you casually recounting the stories. You don’t know it all (how could you; how could anyone?), but I’m sort of impressed. You’re invested, in other words, in figuring this whole God-and-the-Bible thing out.

But, you’re also worn out on God Stuff.

When I suggest reading the Bible out loud to you and your sister, or when there’s some new thing for kids at church who are your age, you'll sigh and say, “Do we have to? I already know everything there is to know about this stuff.” And sometimes, when you come home from youth group, or you hear about a church event other kids are going to, you sigh and say, “I’m just gonna feel guilty because they’ll tell me I should be telling people about Jesus. And I just don’t want to.” And not wanting to makes you feel like a very bad person.

I will commiserate with you because--listen--the last thing I want for you (or anyone who loves Jesus) is to feel like you have to perform for Him. It's not what anyone has meant to convey to you, but somehow the message has gotten scrambled over all these years.

Here's the problem I've started to clarify: So much knowledge about God, so much immersion in “church” and the Bible to the exclusion of knowing God with your heart just as much, is counterintuitive if not downright damaging. All of those facts and figures and names and verses could trick one into thinking that they have this God-thing all figured out, that this mass of information is all there is to gain. 

That kind of knowledge is dangerous, love, because like a vaccine, it so easily inoculates us against the most important things--it works against our Searching, against our Hunger and Finding Out With Our Hearts and our Souls who God really is. Those things, dear one, are what I most want you to inherit--not the satisfaction of memorizing verses and references, not a sense that you have "arrived" in church-land culture.

If taking back some of the Vacation Bible Schools, some of the forced Sunday school attendance when you were just not "into it" meant opening up your curiosity and encouraging your questions, I might do it. And even though it's not my first choice, that is why I'm letting you go to the junior high dance and giggle in a corner with your two girlfriends rather than make you go to the church youth conference. Maybe--and this is my prayer--your spiritual hunger will grow best in an echo-y gymnasium full of shy seventh graders. Maybe you will search for God right alongside bowls of Chex mix, cups of fruit punch, and Pharrell Williams through the sound system.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

For Tiny at Bedtime, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For Tiny at Bedtime,

It’s the ritual that I think will stay with you through all the years that lie ahead. I don’t know when we’ll stop, but for now I can’t help but believe, as I sit in your dusky bedroom at twilight, that the repetition of these requested songs every night is somehow building a solid core in you. You never sing along, and you only like the songs sung quietly while I rub your back, but I trust that their rhythms are somehow becoming the primal stuff of childhood memories--that and your mother sitting next to your bed, singing.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.

I don’t say prayers with you regularly like all of the good church-going parents I know. I struggle enough with helping you understand my own hold on this unseen God, an invisible being who doesn’t quite “live” in any one place that I can point you to—a person you can feel but not hear or see or smell. How can I explain God to a four-year-old, to whom "going to heaven"--where God also "lives"--sounds about as appealing as visiting the dentist where she'll get to pick out a "prize" when the drilling is all over?

Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.

Other parents say their toddlers talk to Jesus like he’s sitting across the table at supper time. Not you--this family is full of doubters, literalists, skeptics, question-askers. Which is fine by me--because whatever faith we eventually do claim as our own becomes--against all odds--something textured and made sturdy by that doubt, those questions.

Thou my best thought, by day or by night.

I wonder if, when you are grown, these words will remind you of your mama, of the way she surrendered to an unseen God as her best Thought and Vision? 

Waking or sleeping, They presence my light.

I don't always hold the vision before me, though. My awareness of God ebbs and flows like the Pacific current against the west-coast shore, and sometimes my sense of God's presence is all tangled with distraction like seaweed around my feet. But my vision is there and my vision returns and subsides and visits me again. And somehow I'm changed in that process, by the many returns, by all the reminders of God-with-us. I can't explain how this works, Tiny. I can't explain God to you. I can only live before you while I try to know God--in the best way I know how.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Fighting Girl, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Fighting Girl,

You are so small and glowing and full of spunk and you know your own mind so well that my before-school promptings to empty the dishwasher and eat breakfast are intrusive and offensive. You can do it yourself. You can do it in the order you want to do it in. And sometimes I let you try this. Inevitably, though, I find you out-the-window gazing or fort-building with your littlest sister, your pajama bottoms still on and your teeth half brushed. Or: sitting on your bed, writing in your journal. This does not bode well for getting out the door on time. Doing It Yourself is not working for me or for school administrators. So every morning it’s the same: your obliviousness to time, my intrusions and your subsequent anger. You yell or stare at me in frosty silence, refusing to acknowledge or grant my requests.

It’s desperate enough—my desire that you learn how to cohabit with the inconvenience of Parents and People Who Care and that you learn how to make your way in the world without being forty-five minutes late everywhere you need to be—that I invoke Consequences for the disrespect and the arguing that comes in response to my requests. Screen-time privileges get revoked in thirty-minute increments until you are mute, distrusting the voice that got you into trouble in the first place. Other times, blame pours out of your mouth like a faucet. It was my fault that you lost screen time. It was my fault for starting the conversation with you that led to your displeasure, which led to your yelling and sass. You’re Never Talking to Me Again. You’re Not Going to Listen.

Sometimes I lose focus and I argue back—a losing, pointless conversation that makes me feel as old as you. I should know better than to argue, even with my calm, quiet Grown-Up Voice.

There are mornings you march off into the garage, grabbing your scooter and refusing to look me in the face or say goodbye. I swipe at you in an attempted hug; I say something like I Love You Even Though it Might Feel Like I Don’t and I Hope You Have a Good Day. You shake me off, won’t give me a backward glance as you scooter down the driveway. And I feel sad and heartbroken that you are starting your day this way, that I am starting my day this way.

I watch and wait for the weather you will bring in after school. It’s usually breezy and warm after picking acorns or leaves on the way home.  You sing hellos and you regale me with stories of bee chases on the play ground, of dogs that were visiting the class. Cautiously, I bring up the morning: Do you want to say anything about what happened this morning? I’m genuinely curious. 

And then, so quickly contrite, you soften your voice in the way you do with your littlest sister when you're getting along and say, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For yelling.” You let me rub your head and your back and shoulders and draw you close and I say I Forgive You like it’s no big deal.

“Can I earn screen time back?” you always ask with such hope.

“I don’t know. Maybe, but probably not. You have to get through something difficult with a good attitude in order to have screen-time again.”  I say this every time, thinking about Homework, After-Dinner Chores, and the Morning Routine the next day.

After this process gets repeated for several days in a row, after the starvation for Minecraft has gone on unbearably long, you wake up a different girl, all ready to cooperate, all ready to Do First Things First and all ready to Yes, Mom your way through breakfast and flossing and vitamins. And it’s like the sweetest relief because, from all appearances, I don’t seem to have wrecked you or destroyed our connection, despite your comments from the day before.

Some day, we will get to the other side of this canyon we are crossing; we will have taken our last shaky step on an unsteady bridge. That other side is where, I think, I will sigh in relief that we made it. We won't have lost our footing too terribly much. And I'll be calmer--because there won't be any more fear of us falling.

Monday Must-Reads (Monday, September 22)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Well, in case you were paying attention, I missed posting must-reads last week. I was jet-lagged and a little windswept by an amazing trip and conference at Higher Vision Church in Valencia, CA, where I had the opportunity to speak at their Masterpiece conference. In between and amongst all my travels, I enjoyed reading:

For you mamas struggling to love yourself: Sarah Bessey's Dear Body.

For you theologians: "Act Like Men": What Does Paul Mean?

For you Christians who want to compassionately understand the "other" side: What I Learned About Atheists from God's Not Dead. (And, thank you, Neil Carter, for putting into words what troubled me so much about this movie.)

For anyone alive: Glennon Melton's How We Live a Hard and Good Life.

For you bloggers: insight from Jamie the Very Worst Missionary on how Not Everyone Likes You.

Dear Seventh Grader, (Epistolary Wednesday, September 3)

© 2011 Enokson, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

It's a bit overwhelming, all of the flyers we are handed at Back-To-School-Night for parents, as we race through a two-hour version of your day--no time to introduce ourselves to your teachers, just enough for them to get halfway through their presentation on Expectations and Rules and Late Work. It seems, at times (maybe because of the lengthy lists of homework assignments sorted by date on their slide shows) that they are expecting us to do this work, to keep track and get things handed in. You'll want to make sure. You'll want to check. These are phrases I hear over and over throughout these first two weeks of junior high when teachers and administrators talk to us parents and I think, I don't have time to manage the full-time job of a seventh grader who is also in cross country practice for an hour and a half after school. Who has time for that? Also, I'm not sure I want to sign up for the texting service that will remind me of Global Studies projects and science assignments. 

I know that some of your classmates' parents have to, in order to help their kids succeed. That's a hard, hard job. So I'm thankful that, in so many ways, you are prepared for all of this responsibility. You know how to keep track, make lists. Your upbringing has cultivated in you just the right amount of anxiety by which you're driven to fill out worksheets on time, hand in two-paragraph "essays" (Although, newsflash: two paragraphs does not a real essay make!).

Still, this Junior High is a New World where it doesn't necessarily matter how diligent you are or how responsible. What matters is your score. What matters is the "work." No more points for just doing homework. Points are for getting homework right. The difference between an A and a B on math homework might be that when you carried the "one" you forgot to add it into the other numbers in the column. Boom. B.

While grade school was so full of mercy, this New World is not. And I sometimes wish you'd been a bit better prepared in other areas--in sentence mechanics, for example: run-on sentences and missing periods never cost you so much as a point or a missed recess in sixth grade. Now you get As for periods in the right places and you get points taken away in their absence. (Finally, finally, someone is going to convince you to take the sentence seriously even though I've been trying since you were eight. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.)

While it's a all bit overwhelming for you, I must confess I find myself swimming in a small pool of relief  All those skills I've been watching you develop and waiting for you to master--to be motivated to master--are within mastery's reach. Think: typing! Think: practicing the trombone with more regularity. Think: taking the long way when deconstructing a book plot rather than short-cutting through worksheets. So much is on the horizon. All because of Seventh Grade. The whole world has opened up to you, taking you quite seriously for the first time: hard practices, hard drills, missing points, consequences. I've always taken you seriously, of course, but like grade school, I've been brimming with mercy, shielding you when I could from Discomfort and Unpleasantness and, as parents are sometimes guilty of doing, shielding myself from the Unpleasantness of your displeasure.

Now you have all these other adults in your life who will work with me to expose you to rigor and discipline, which will result in your broadening your horizons and your scope for critical thought. I could have wept with gratitude--your Language Arts teacher talking about the greatly detailed feedback you will get on your writing ability this fall, your Literacy teacher saying she is going to push you to "prove" your interpretations now with textual evidence. This is so good. It's the stuff I live for. I'm a little bit of a language arts nerd, as you know, and I'm so glad we can share this now.  And I'm secretly as delighted as you are that you got an A+ on that "essay" I helped you with.

That's my daughter-of-an-English-major girl. 

Monday Must-Reads and Watches (September 1)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy September to you readers! I've got a great list of reads this week, starting out with something reminiscent of a topic we'll be covering at our women's retreat this coming October (all ya locals are invited!)--it's What I Want You To Know About Being the Stepmom.

There's also a humorous account of a parent's "back-to-school" experience in 2014 vs. 1970, which dovetails nicely with Health, Home, & Happiness's post about helping children feel content without feeling deprived.

Kate Conner has a great meditation "On Ripening" and Sarah Bessey writes to her husband about their married love, which will go down in the family history books as the stuff of legend. 

Owlhaven is challenging us all to spend less and save on groceries this month, something I will have a hard time doing because of all the back-to-school extras we've been buying. 

On a more serious-but-funny-to-make-a-point is Jon Stewart on White Privilege.

Also, Matthew Paul Turner's Lingering Effects of Fundamentalism is for those still raw from harsh religious church cultures and, speaking of church culture, this is the latest on Seattle's Mars Hill church: the board of elders are asking for Mark Driscoll to resign and seek personal help. 

Until next time!

Monday Must-Reads and Watches (August 25, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Back-to-school week is kicking my butt--in a good way. Hope all you parents out there can say the same! Here's what I noticed this week on this here Internet Web Thingy:

Not sure what happened in the Michael Brown shooting? Watch these eyewitness accounts spliced together that create a very consistent storyline. 

I haven't read Kate Conner's Enough: 10 Things We Should Tell Teenage Girls, but I am digging this blog post where she shares the best advice offered by her readers.

Also from Kate Conner: why exaggerating the story about ISIS's persecution of religious minorities in Irag is not helpful: The Truth Does Not Need Your Help.

Turns out that doodling during work meetings promotes better processing of information.

Also, Ginny at Random Acts of Momness interviewed my friend and fellow Ovenbird author, Tarn Wilson--all about her new book and how we gain perspective as we write about our families. Tarn's book is ah-mazing, moving, and profound! I highly recommend you head over to Amazon and buy a copy! 

Dear Summering Girls, (Epistolary Wednesday, August 13)

Dear Summering Girls,

Recently, my blog feed exploded with posts from various mom-bloggers about "How To Stay Sane During the Summer When Your Kids Are Home" and "How to Set Up a Routine When You’re a Work-At-Home-Mom." I know these songs by heart, I've sung them so much.

If it was just me and you at home for the summer, it would be delightful. Pure magic. But it’s not. I’ve got this thing called "Work" and these things called "Expectations" (that you’ll know not to interrupt me at certain times; that you’ll really clean your room when you say you will) that mingle with us like houseguests that just won't leave, spoiling all our fun. And these last few weeks of summer, Work and Expectations have been at each other's throats. Some mornings it's just chaos and anarchy and I have to tell Work to hush up because Expectations are just being ignored like a cast-off friend.  I mean, how can you get worse at following your Morning Routine (i.e. brush teeth, dress, empty dishwasher, eat, do math facts, read for 20) now that you’ve had the whole summer to practice? And those pink shoes on the bathroom floor--the ones that have been sitting there for over a week, the ones I’ve asked you three times to pick up--are still sitting there.

The "after" picture.

Here's a typical conversation about Expectations:

Did you clean your room?

Yes.  

Let me check it.  [Gasp] Your laundry EXPLODED in here! What happened? How could you say you cleaned your room when it looks like this?

But I did! I did clean it!

But don’t you see the dirty underwear on the floor? What about the Kleenexes wadded up next to the garbage can? I want you to Clean This Room.

I have this naïve belief that come August 19, the first day of school, you will magically and suddenly become innately disciplined human beings once again; you will pull Expectations out from under that heap of clothing and wet towels on your bedroom floor, dust her off, and allow her to accompany you through your day: you will get up on time;you will eat more than a smattering of Cheerios for breakfast; you will put on fresh clothes and change your underwear and empty the dishwasher all without me mentioning these things to you. A mom can hope, can’t she?

Until then, I don’t even work in the home office most of the time because if I were to do that, you'd be leaving wrappers and tissues all over the living room and I wouldn't be able to catch you in the act. Best to have you deal with it immediately, before the candy wrappers and tissues become the next pink-shoes-on-the-bathroom floor and a month goes by before I see the carpet again. I wish I was that mom who didn’t lose brain cells at the sight of garbage on the floor, wish I could just sit right among the muck and play tickle fights and video games in the evenings when I'm done working, but you didn't win that lotto, girls. You are not those children and I am not that mom and someday, when you live in your own house and you’re all grown up, if you want to never flush the toilet and let it back up and let fruit flies reproduce over your left-out glass of orange juice, if you want to sit in a dark room all day and play video games, never seeing the sun, so be it. I will love you then as I do now. But I won’t live with you.

This is just to say that I really love you and I'm really looking forward to school next week, despite the fact that junior high and fourth grade are on the horizon, whole new worlds of Work and Expectations that I don't have to manage on your behalf. Instead, I will just be Mom with Milk and Cookies at the end of the day. I'll be a Good Listener and Your Biggest Fan and I will leave lunch clean up to the lunch ladies.

Monday Must-Reads (August 11, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

It's been too long! And I missed a week of Must-Reads because I was either traipsing all over the country or recovering from the traipsing. All that means is that there're more links than usual today.

I really appreciated this post by Sarah Markley on road-tripping with her kids without her husband because that is exactly what I just got done doing this week. Strange, yes, but empowering all the same.

Reality-check post for the week: How to Get Rich by Blogging.

Most grateful for this one: "Monsanto Ordered to Pay $93 Million For Poisoning Town." Thank God, thank God, thank God. This company needs to be held accountable on so many levels and stop getting free passes at every intersection for the impact they are having on communities and economies. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it's something.

I sent "The Parenting Books Were Wrong" to a new mom of a newborn this week:

"Jesus has said, 'Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself.' And, yes, I find that each day does have its own trouble. But far worse than the particular trouble of each day is our despair when we believe that all we can hope for are storms."

Helpful during my work-at-home/parenting-kids-at-home summer was this from the Nesting Place: "Because Choosing Your Battles Saves Your Sanity: How Having One Decent Space Makes All the Difference."

And here's some heavier stuff. Have you heard of ISIS? An Islamic extremist group that is systematically taking over towns in Northern Iraq and targeting religious minorities? There are reports of beheaded children and mothers and forced "conversions" and other terribleness. Right now there are thousands taking refuge in mountainous areas without access to food or water. Meanwhile, the U.S. is dropping a few bombs on ISIS and airdropping water to the refugees. Google for more info. If you are the praying type, pray.

Because I've been such an avid observer of all things Mark Driscoll, it's been interesting to see the Christian community's response to a growing understanding of some of his poor behavior from 14 years ago. I met Mark right about that time, toured his then-little church building in Seattle, spoke with his worship leaders. The man was "edgy," he was someone who had the vibe of us Gen-Xers, a prophetic voice, and I claimed him as a leader of my generation for a couple years, until I was stung and stung again by the continually vicious comments against different demographics in the body of Christ. Some feel his most recent apology is not enough to heal the wounds said to have been caused by his leadership. Others are asking what "grace" means for Driscoll in this context. The church network he founded (Acts 29) has recently decided to remove him and his church as members of the network. Honestly, I'm thankful that he is being called out by a wider array of the Christian community and not just those of us on the fringes who have been disturbed by his leadership tactics and his message for so long. The last thing I want is to see this man destroyed, but I would like to see him restored and to see relationships with the wounded restored as well. What would create restitution for those who've been harmed and for those who are hurt by now reading these latest comments, albeit 14 years old?