PearlS | The Average Pearl

Your Kids are Eating Lychee

This Spring, my boys came home with a small ziploc bag filled with something I’d never seen before. My kindergartner came running across the field to greet me, his arm extended, waving the treasure excitedly.

“What have you got there?” I asked him, as he pushed the baggie into my hand.
“I don’t know what it’s called,” he said, “but there were a lot left over from snack time, so I asked Mrs. A if I could bring them home so you could try one, and she said yes! Remember, you said you like to try new things.”

Of course I do. Straight from the grubby paws of kindergartners.
Our school has a health initiative–or mandate, I’m not sure–to provide healthy, diverse snacks twice a week to our Title I students. Michelle Obama wanted to inspire a new generation of Americans to a healthier lifestyle, and I guess this is what it boils down to: passing out lemon quarters and frozen, rotting bananas to elementary kids. How fun! How novel.
This particular day, it was lychee. I’d never seen the little brown squishy balls before, but as I bit into one on the field in front of the school, a grandmother nearby warned me there was a small round pit in the middle, and to take care not bite it. “It’s a slippery thing,” she said, “and it’ll slide right down your throat.”

Indeed, the perfect tropical snack for five year olds.
It tasted like squishy, juicy coconut eyeball. But the seed was scary slippery, and this sparked my concern over school snacks (though the lemons were always in the back of my mind). Of course I googled lychee.
Last summer in one city in India, over 100 children died from encephalitis by ingesting lychees with toxins.
If my kids hadn’t brought lychees home, if I weren’t a mom uncommonly curious over what snacks they eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays–I simply would have never known.

There are many things a parent can worry about. There are many things we will never know. I wonder if we only consider what is in front of our faces, how far we can let things spin into hysteria. But nevermind–those days are here.

My email inbox is filling up with school plans for the fall–except they are as far from normal as they can possibly be. Two weeks of remote learning, to begin with–even though our state department of education recommends those under 11 have no more than 1.5 hours of screen time a day. Followed by, potentially, maybe, a return to school. Cohorts. Masks. No school lunch. No flexible seating. No air circulation. Recess as a “mask break” and “social distancing will be enforced”. Disinfecting the playground. No parents or visitors allowed.

I’m feeling my hands clench, the adrenaline fight-or-flight rush. One evening, I’ll tell Joe I’m ready to buy some land in the middle of nowhere and grow strawberries. The next, I tell him I’m standing my ground. I’m disappointed with school leaders. My Vietnamese buddy called me and says his kids are losing their English from being at home so long. I’m sad, because school is where we make friends and now we’re lonely. I’m upset, because kids need non-virtual teachers and grownups who speak hope into their lives.

As for my family, we will be just fine. We are English speakers, my kids are bright, and we can live on one paycheck. I can stay home with them.
Aside from science and good judgment, I simply don’t have much of a choice to put myself and my kids in the hands of God. This has actually been a huge relief. In fact, I can see ways where I have tried to control things and God has gently pried my hands back open. I trust Him with everything I’ve got.

But then I remember my kids–lots of kids–eating lychees at school. Someone higher up than me thought that was a great idea. And even if I’m called to live a quiet life, I’m also supposed to not look out for my own needs, but also the needs of others. This calls for sticking my neck out once in awhile. The Lord has done some prodding in my soul on that, and I’m learning to trust Him there, too.

Below is a letter I penned to my local school board, who, after pressure from teachers’ unions and dissatisfied parents, plan to begin school with remote learning.
I am posting it for anyone else who needs to voice their concern to their own school board in a respective manner. Copy, delete, and add your own words as necessary.

Dear School Board,

I want to begin by saying how much I love public school and how I support the initiative to get our kids back in an appropriate learning environment. My gratitude for professional, dedicated, outstanding and caring teachers and administration is unrivaled. I am the first to show up at our own Title I school with kind words, food, volunteer hours, and every encouragement I can muster as a mom. Teachers and support staff are amazing, and one of the biggest blessings in my life.

In my observation, those working in public education are severely under-appreciated, even as they are forming the next generation of thinkers and doers. As parental responsibility is increasingly shifted to the shoulders of educators, teachers and administration carry an additional burden of addressing behavior, safety, mental health, inclusion, mediation, equitability, and differentiation to the already heavy load of inspiring a love of learning.

I have been made aware, as both a parent and active observer, that this is hardly feasible. It is certainly unfair to saddle educators with our jilted personal responsibility. I think this is why, during the Covid crisis, the stakes appear to be higher. The lines were already blurred; boundaries were already beginning to shift. We are each consumed by our worries and seek to lay blame on whomever was bearing all the responsibility for raising our children in the first place: schools.
It needs not be said, public school has been incorporated into our life something like a basic right. We’ve become dependent on it as childcare, education, structure and support system–and there is a communal sense of panic we might lose it. Thanks to social media and the everyone-gets-a-megaphone attitude, there is hardly a place to discuss this reasonably. I want to assure you, the loudest, angriest voices do not represent many of us.

School board friends, I recognize it is not any administration’s personal responsibility, but mine, to adequately prepare my child for the future, academically and otherwise. It is my responsibility and honor to support, keep them safe, facilitate educational experiences, inspire and equip them in every way possible.
All along, public schooling has only ever been a wonderful piece of that puzzle. It’s helped me understand my GT kids, rather than toss up my hands in frustration. It has relieved the pressure of having to figure out fifth grade math and grammar. It has opened doors to compassion and community.
Up until now, I have been happy to incorporate public schooling as a life discipline.
And I am sorry. I apologize for myself and behalf of other parents for the burden placed on public school to assume my responsibilities. I’m sorry for the times I have blamed and complained, when teachers and administration were keeping my plates spinning.

I mean this sincerely: I am letting you off the hook.
You don’t have to keep my kids healthy and safe–that’s my job.

You don’t have to teach them mindfulness and how to control their emotions–that’s my job.
You don’t have to worry about the food they are eating–that’s my job.
So is civic duty, appropriate behavior, discipline, morality, respectfulness, and a thousand other extras you have taken up as your responsibility.

I want you to send my kids home when they don’t act like school is the utmost privilege. Send them home every time you feel like you’re closing the gap into parent territory or crossing the nebulous boundary of teacher versus mom/dad responsibility.

It is only a modest proposal, but it seems like the only attainable one: loosen the reins and return some of the burden back over to the parents.
Let parents decide. Let them assume their proper place in society where they raise their own children. Perhaps this seems an odd suggestion amid such dire times. But schools have over-promised, and angry parents and teachers are desperate for a line to be drawn. Instead of casting blame, it is time to humbly pick up the pieces and rebuild a broken system–one where kids succeed because parents–and educators–care deeply about responsibility.

Let teachers choose, individually, if they ought to be in schools. Let us choose, individually, how to stay healthy and safe. Suffer us the consequences, because we are all born risk takers. Life is not a promise, but a gift.

I love public school–it has been a gift to my family.
I’m terribly sad I am withdrawing my children from school this year in order to homeschool. It will be a tremendous and difficult lifestyle change.
But I see no other choice. Remote learning, as I understand, will tie young children to their devices–and even the Colorado Department of Education recommends children under the age of eleven get no more than 1.5 hours of screen time a day (https://www.cde.state.co.us/learningathome/gettingstarted). In-school learning will close the doors to any and all visitors, effectively eliminating my privilege and responsibility as a parent to support learning and hold administration accountable. I do not think public schooling was ever designed to demote parents to second fiddle grownups in a child’s life.
Imagine if, instead of trying to manage and control this crisis, we banded together as responsible adults! Imagine if we called on concerned parents, educators, and community members to either step down or step up, rather than trying to make everyone happy? What if we called on healthy, willing parents to volunteer their time in serving our children and teachers instead of locking them out of the building? What could it look like if we pool our energy and resources into cultivating exemplary academia? What if we drew a line and told parents, “Your health and your children are your responsibility”? What if we drew a similar line, permitting educators to pivot?

I think it would set an example for the dissatisfied and unhappy among us. It would spark a curiosity–the world might wonder why we choose the greater good of our children over an unspoken, debilitating fear and the futile attempt to satisfy everyone.
It would spur them on to responsible living–which is sometimes painful, but necessary.

I do not envy your position as board members. But I advise you not to think you can solve a bevy of problems in the hopes of making the general public happy. Surely you have discovered that these days, we are a surly bunch. We will ride waves of disappointment and contentment, we will suffer the blows of natural disasters and sickness. We will need to repent, again and again, for heaping up expectations and standards when life itself presents a risk to all who dare live it.

But we cannot abandon our children. They are our greatest responsibility.
I stand by, ready to join again in this noble pursuit.

Sincerely,

Pearl

Jen, Sidney, and a bully’s gospel

Yesterday, I referred to a podcast I’d recently listened to–one that won’t leave my mind. It was an interview by Jen Hatmaker of her nineteen year old daughter, Sidney.

Where were you at age nineteen? Were you super wise and full of insight? As a nineteen year old, I myself had a serious boyfriend. I didn’t know what I wanted from life (which happens to be a pretty typical nineteen-year old-conundrum), the options overwhelmed me, and I was an anxious mess. They say the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until the age of 25. My twenty-one year old self would argue this, as she had been married five years by the age of 25. But my older self looks back more honestly. I know I had some awfully immature thinking well beyond age 25.

Sidney Hatmaker is nineteen. She is gay, so the podcast announced. It was no news to the elder Hatmaker, who, six years earlier, at about the time she rearranged her faith worldview, was deciding how to raise a homosexual daughter. Thirteen–she would have been thirteen.

This guts me. A child going through puberty, a girl wondering about her place in the world. Asking questions, curious, a bit lost, suddenly being introduced to new feelings and ideas. Doubting her barely-established principles and belief system, shaky at best, prompted by the culture to model adult feelings and expressions. At thirteen.

The Hatmaker interview was a first public plea of sorts, an emotional mother-and-daughter co-urging for acceptance. The mother asks what she should have done, what we should be doing now, and how she can support Sidney now, and encourage others to row the same boat. As Sidney responds, I am thinking of my own daughter, the little girl I forced to go to her room and lay down for a nap today, even as she kicked at the door and pounded the walls, angry I suggested such a thing.
I am thinking about me at thirteen, full of longing to be accepted and loved.
Me at nineteen on anxiety meds.
I am thinking as a 36-year old woman who has years of maturity on my side, thankful my prefrontal cortex is developed.

And I am disturbed.

Sidney Hatmaker’s words are petulant and bitter. She rails at the church and Bible teachers who cite Scripture to show what God says about sexual deviance. She is mad. She says how it destroyed her, as a young teenager, to hear Christian leaders teach what the Bible says about sexual sin. She just wants love and acceptance. She cannot fight, she says. Her fight is all gone.
And her mother is proud. She says she cannot wait to meet the woman Sidney will someday marry. Jen Hatmaker warns the listening audience:

I want us to have a reckoning together…that…when we refuse to cherish and affirm the LGBTQ community including our kids, we are literally breaking their hearts. We are breaking their bodies. We are breaking their life. This is not neutral. This is not a difference of opinion. This is causing harm and trauma and suffering.

Let me explain why this ought to make Christ-followers shudder:
Hatmaker is not suggesting you agree with her. She is drawing a corollary between the rising death rates of LGBTQ teens and churches refusing to pat them on the back for their troubles. In other words, this morally despicable situation is your fault. This mess of sexual deviance that leads to abuse, confusion, and self-loathing is actually your fault. You are killing them.

The blame is palpable. The hate is thick. The lack of personal responsibility is unbelievable. Jen Hatmaker is a bully.
I hope you recognize this particular tree by her fruit.

When you leave the door wide open, all the flies get in the kitchen. It is no wonder the Hatmakers are swatting everyone within range.

Maybe it looks like freedom, to form an identity so young. Maybe there is a sense of actualization, a coming of age responsibility in modern times, to be “out”. But in Song of Solomon, the much-read, racy love song of the Old Testament, there is a warning. Do not awaken love until it desires.
Attraction, infatuation, misunderstanding–these are hallmarks of adolescence, aren’t they? But they are not necessarily markers of love. In a young adolescent, they merely indicate development, hormones, growing up. Thirteen must be a safe place to lean into maturity, not a time for sussing out sexual feelings.

It makes me wonder–could it also be the result of irresponsible parenting–not equipping our kids, not preparing them with a solid foundation that recognizes wickedness in the world?
There is no greater harm, trauma, and suffering than that faced by a child sentenced to hopelessness, forever cheated out of abundant life. There is nothing that will devastate our children more than a culture norm of nihilism, void of morals and boundaries, where sex is cheapened, lust is encouraged, and suicide is prescribed as relief from pain.

This takes energy and awareness on a parent’s end. It is up to mom and dad to protect, monitor, and manage that which an older child is still too young to handle…whether they want to or not. What is the world saying? Where are my feet planted?–these are the two fundamental questions a thirteen year old can handle. And we, as parents, have the honor, the special, intimate duty to remind them. You are loved right here, and there’s no need to look anywhere else.

We build, little by little, safely and securely, into our kids, that they will understand someday what Solomon wrote: Do not awaken love until it desires.

We cannot truly say we love our children if we do not equip them for life in this world, if we don’t allow maturity to take its time and prepare its way. We cannot say we love them if we manipulate our precious kids away from God under the pretense of what is culturally acceptable, or where the wind is blowing. After all, there are still places in this world where fathers and mothers don’t bat an eye when burning their children in a fire dedicated to Molech.

But we share a Father who made them and loves them and has a purpose for them, no matter what the world is saying. And when we focus on this one singular goal, to glorify God, we do whatever it takes to keep our kids out of the fire.

We become parents who model our perfect, loving Father. And because He is a strict, holy Daddy, God “disciplines those he loves” (Proverbs 3:12)–we do, too.

“Discipline your child, for there is hope. Do not be party unto his death,” another proverb warns (Proverbs 19:18).

This is not punishment for having a naughty thought, but dusting off their bottoms when they fall and gently, sternly, setting them back on the path. This is age appropriate, contextual learning, always driven by a desire to honor God and respect the child we are training. This is erecting boundaries for your thirteen year old, assuring her she doesn’t need to worry about sex right now, doesn’t need to infatuate over feelings, doesn’t need to awaken love until it so desires.

Boy, did I need to hear that when I was thirteen.

Mrs. Hatmaker feels quite liberated to preach an anti-Gospel. It is opposed to Christ. Millions of people listen to her and are swayed by clever wording and a false message. When Paul was met with opposition who tried to turn people against the faith (a spiritual bully of sorts), he looked straight at the man (Elymas) and said,
“You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?” (Acts 13:10)

I want to be clear: I am not railing on folks caught up in sexual sin. We all struggle with living in the flesh, pounding the same dirt. I’m railing on those who promote it, those who tie millstones around necks and direct folks off the nearest cliff.
I am railing against the Prince of the Powers of the Air. The King of Liars. The one who has an official title of destroyer of souls. The one with a ticket for our arrest. The Accuser himself.
He is whispering in the ears of people you love, making them captive to their own emotions. Love parades? He “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).

This faux-angel delights in twisted words and double standards. He loves holding the bar of equality, social justice, and many lofty, humanistic pursuits–every false idol–in his hand.

When we join his ranks, he feeds the lies right into our mind and out our lips. approving and accepting homosexual behavior is kind. That it isn’t soul-destroying, but life-giving.

But we are to preach the Gospel–the one and only, where Jesus’ blood was spilled and our guilt is wiped out. How we are given power over our temptations. How sex and lust cannot control a person entrusted to the Lord. How we are given new life and promised a new body of our own after this life is over.

There is a big difference.
I wonder–in what other ways are we being bullied into believing another gospel? In what ways are our kids open to the flaming arrows aimed at their very soul (Ephesians 6:16)?
What are some truths you needed to hear when you were thirteen or nineteen? Can you share them with someone you love?

Keep on Bible-splaining

Don’t Bible-splain me, Jen Hatmaker warns. Don’t shame our family. We are throwing a party over her queerness.

These are the words of a Christian writer in 2020, after a podcast interview with her teenage daughter who has come out as gay.
This is the voice of a hard hearted, hard headed, unrepentant mother.

Hatmaker’s first published book dove into the whys and hows of Bible study, declaring the importance of God’s infallible Word.
God’s desire for us is to encounter His Word truth by truth until there isn’t a folded piece left, she writes (A Modern Girl’s Guide to Bible Study, 2006).

I wonder where she closed the good Book. I wonder what triggered her “faith evolution”. I wonder why her very enemy now is a person like me, doing exactly what she asked us to do in her Bible study books a decade and a half ago…encountering truth.

Matthew Paul Turner is another progressive Christian author. He announced a few days ago his intention to divorce his wife because he is gay and can no longer deny his gayness. Social media threw a party, blessing his un-coupling, applauding his identification as a gay man. Nevermind the heartache of his three children, the promise he made to his wife, the unraveling of a family. Nevermind what God says about the union of two souls–what God has hewn together, let no man separate.

If you have been on the fence about how to approach these modern messages, let me be clear: it’s not about gender equality and sex, like these modern prophets would like you to think. It isn’t about identity, being true to oneself.
Iit is a sign of the times. It is indicative of judgment.

In those days, men will be lovers of their own selves…boasting…proud…Without natural affection…despisers of those that are good…Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness but denying its power.
2 Timothy 3:1-5

The thing is, fifteen years ago these messages would have been very influential to me, a young wife who was looking for any way possible out of a difficult marriage. I would’ve leaned hard into the idea that I needed to seek my own truth, celebrate my uniqueness, and free myself of matrimonial chains. I was depressed, directionless, and any rope tossed my way looked pretty appealing.

But the Word had already implanted in my heart. My despair was swallowed by a knowing sorrow–the absolute Truth that I would not be happier outside of His providence. I had to face the fact in my own life that ultimately, God was not going to give me what I wanted.

Truth hurts. In my case, it nearly crushed me. It was hard to believe. I let God believe it for me when I couldn’t. I told Him–my face buried in my pillow in the spare bedroom because I could not share a bed with my husband–that I didn’t see any way out, but I would do my best to trust Him. I would sign up for the pain if it meant He would lead me to holiness.

Having conquered those times, having come out in every way a winner and in love with my husband and family, I can’t begin to explain how heartbreaking it is to watch the social influencers of the day lead people astray. The instant gratification of folks applauding from somewhere in the nebulous Twitter atmosphere almost rings sincere. But it is no more than a scratching of ears (2 Timothy 4:3).

I have a brother who is twenty-one. I have teenage nieces and nephews. I have children who haven’t reached adolescence. Truth must be handled, it must be rightly divided. It cannot wait.

Hatmaker and Turner, along with many, many others, mirror the false prophets of the Old Testament. They dole out haughty messages and then plug their ears.

“Do not prophesy,” their prophets say. “Do not prophesy about these things; disgrace will not overtake us!” (Micah 2:6)

In other words, don’t Bible-splain me!

If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for these people! (Micah 2:11)

We are throwing a party over her queerness! Hatmaker says.

Yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us.” (Micah 3:11)

They call themselves Christian authors and influencers.
It is a party on Twitter. False prophets, more than anyone else, think they are leaning on the Lord. Their mouths are wide open, applauding and assuring, blind and ignorant to their fate.

What is better?–is it to read truth and believe it, how God speaks it even when it hurts, to lean into the promise He will conquer your todays and tomorrows? For me, I can say yes.

The Jen Hatmaker of fourteen years ago wrote that God wants us, more than anything, to encounter Him, truth by truth. I agree with that Jen. But truth doesn’t become the modern Mrs. Hatmaker:

If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin and does the same detestable things the wicked man does, will he live? None of the righteous things he has done will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness he is guilty of and because of the sins he has committed, he will die.
Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear, O house of Israel: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust? (Ezekiel 18:24-25)

The guilty person will die, and all those who oppose His holy ways. The words from her mouth are dead, rotting words. The Truth about God–He is just.

And He is loving:

Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, dealers the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live! (Ezekiel 18:31-32)

He doesn’t take pleasure in judging, but the truth is, He will. Repenting is hard, but it leads to Life. He loves you, and because He loves you, you won’t always get exactly what you want (ask any parent of a four year old to explain how that works, exactly).

Folks, read your Bible. Let God change you, no matter how impossible it seems.
Keep on Bible-splaining.
People like me need to hear it.

For a time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
2 Timothy 4:3

With Such a People You Can Do What You Please

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

Hannah Arendt, 1974

I am observing the swirling current of today, trying to find a foothold, but coming up empty.

Isn’t it interesting how folks who were rioting elbow-to-elbow only a month ago are now pressing their concern for social distancing onto our consciences?

Those who railed on guns are arming themselves.

Those who made their kids hold signs promoting life that matters are once again numbing themselves with legalized drugs and trash TV.

Those with anxiety disorders and emotional support animals plunge daily into the very animosity that caused their problem in the first place.

Those who want freedom of speech are the first in line to silence the person who challenges them.

Those who want government protection are obliterating their local enforcement agencies, destroying any sense of justice.

We want laws, but only if they are bendy.

We all want privacy, but every cell phone video that captures a public evil is simply “holding people accountable”, so we have ours handy.

We point fingers heavy with blame, but we deny we are the ones who have gotten ourselves into such a pickle by ignoring the small fact of personal responsibility.

We applaud others for finding their own truth, when finding one’s own nuanced truth only ripples out, effectively destroying another’s truth.

We whip up sweet, lovely, kind and benevolent versions of ourselves to parse out, but just under the skin our blood boils hot hate, unfiltered.

I am one-hundred percent certain you can identify with one of these sentences.
I’m afraid it smells fishy. A flood of contradictions. It seems like there ought to be a great reckoning, but all I hear is anger. Anger aimed at people who don’t budge, don’t bend, don’t follow whatever rules seem to be “saving lives”.

I’ve been reading some Hannah Arendt lately. She dipped her toes in book reviews for magazines and eventually pumped out the massive tome, The Origins of Totalitarianism. (If you think I spelled that word right the first time, you are wrong. If you think I’ll read anything but the Cliffnotes version, you’re wrong again.)

But Arendt came to a particularly interesting conclusion when it came to ideology. She was Jewish, writing post-Holocaust, English a second language, sorting out thoughts into words that could be digested by the American public (especially the ones who were enamored with Communism). It’s pretty striking to read 75 years later, when we think we’ve really progressed.

She did not think life could be simplified to a set of rules enforced by the government, nor could a society be healthy with only one particular “code of behavior”. Once banded to this ideal, the individual spirit is lost.

You are coordinated not with the powers that be, but with your neighbor—coordinated with the majority. But instead of communicating with the other you are now glued to him. And you feel of course marvelous. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.

This, more than anything I’ve yet read, speaks to our modern times. I spent a sweaty hour on Facebook Live this week, listening to our school district’s plans on reopening, and had to turn it off because the comments were so heated. No one is communicating, though Twitter might like you to think everyone has a voice. All have been physically isolated at one point or another, and fear is pulsing through our veins. More than one person commented (ahem, sneered), “Who do we blame when our Grandma dies because you weren’t careful enough in reopening schools?”

Arendt warns of a totalitarianism evil that isn’t limited to regimes, but becomes a way of life because people are reduced to a “bundle of reactions” and therefore find a common anchor in politicism. If that doesn’t scald the conscience, what will?

And here I am, trying to keep my kids from sneezing. Here I am, a white, stay-at-home mother stifling every little instinct to clear my throat in public.Trying to take up less space than ever before, lest I step on a toe and offend. Maintaining my distance, discreetly taking precious sips of fresh air. Slinking around the parking lot of grocery stores and libraries to retrieve the small necessities: food and books. Retreating to my house, minding my business. Withdrawing my children from the local school because the rules have become oppressive for both teachers and kids, the public arena a vicious screaming match, a la damnatio ad bestias.

This is what is becoming oppressive: it is not the wearing of masks.

It is the silencing of the fellow man, the regime totalitarianism. The lie of making things “equitable”, when making things “equitable” inevitably forces someone to be stepped on, someone’s mouth to be covered.

I’m finding out that, for a person like myself (and quite possibly you), a rule-follower, respectful to a fault, ever conscious of how one should act responsibly and committed to the greater good–we can not be good enough. We are labeled fragile and unaware.
And if you are tired of this (like I am), you cannot, obedient as you try to be, equivocate or distill it to a passive turning of the cheek maneuver. You cannot afford to be idle, a cop-out Christian. We are given marching orders to “not grow weary in doing good”–and this forward motion compels us.

To do good, not to be better. To do. To let our light shine before men, that they may worship God (Matthew 5:16).
This is what began revolutions. This is why the Israelites left Egypt.

But we must not wage war the way the world does. As much as we’d like to, being in the flesh and tempted all the same–the old man (and woman) has died. The reflexive nature, reactive, hateful, spiteful–has been crucified with Christ–she is no longer welcome to throw a pity party or daggers or sulk in the corner, bemoaning her circumstances. She is not fragile. She doesn’t need to rant or add comments or doubt and feel ashamed.
The new being has been brought forth, Spirit-controlled and lovely. She hopes. She endures.

I have often quoted G.K. Chesterton, because I can think of no one who can put it more aptly:

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Despite what the world is saying, there is more freedom to be had in every oppression.

And when I remember this, I’m fully aware: no matter the circumstances, I know what I believe. I believe in God’s rule and order in my life, that He has made me a new creation. We weren’t meant to swallow lies. We weren’t meant to argue with the old creature, the nature of man who loves to hate and hates to love. We are not a people who, as Arendt puts it, cannot believe anything or make up its mind.

And it is right here I can finally understand it, in the eye of the storm where everything around me is topsy-turvy: there is still capacity for us to think, act, judge, and not fall prey to reactive, nervous messes. There is still plenty of darkness to let my light shine–and that, indeed is what we’ve been called to do.
There is still plenty of room for good things to run wild.

Notes to a 13-year old self

Sometimes I sit on a blog post like it were an egg, coaxing it to hatch. I love it, love writing as a form of expression. But, “the making of books is many and much study wearies the body”–my friend Megan (and King Solomon, the dear chap) wisely reminds me. I regularly pay no attention to this proverb. I’m obsessive, a veritable cliff jumper, plunging into stacks of notes and quotes and verses and thought. Then I abandon them and fuss about my scattered ways. I get lost in another hobby and mosey my way into my paint, my music, my garden, my books, kid stuff.

But lately there have been several turning over for awhile, warming up in the incubator of my brain. It takes us space; it won’t vacate the premises. I’ve got this image of my younger self, wishing someone would explain things to her, holding out for a nonjudgmental person to unleash some explaining. I had a million questions and I was too afraid to ask them, thinking I ought to know it all intrinsically, as if it were a matter of human experience. If I didn’t know the answer, perhaps it was just because I was stupid. I doubted my own ability to become a person who held any water. I doubted I mattered. I thought I was a menial, unimportant consequence inflicted on the earth.

Then I grew up.

I found I am not unimportant, inconsequential. I’ve been bought at a price; my life is not my own (1 Cor. 6:20). I learned asking questions is a good thing. I learned I wasn’t stupid, wasn’t just a silly afterthought. And I haven’t forgot there are other people out there who need to be reassured the same thing.

In the front of my mind are the people who read the posts now; in the back of my mind, I am trained on my children. I am out to refute the false messages the world is pouring in my ears, my children’s ears. I am pounding a stake in the ground and pouring a firm foundation. I’m asking you to grab a hold and hang on, because a deluge is in progress.

Two months ago in lockdown, I dumped a load of seeds onto our front lawn. My little girl wanted to sow “crazy flowers”–wildflowers–so I tossed out a mix I had saved from the previous fall. We watched them grow, and surprisingly two un-wild-flowery looking plants stole our attention. The leaves looked like watermelon leaves. We laughed and supposed we had somehow mixed up a packet of watermelon seeds with the flowers (not unusual for us). Sure enough, blossoms. Yellow and cup-like, promising fruit. But the stem was spiky with thorns, and it shot up out of the ground instead of crawling like a vine. We watched closely, and small green globes appeared where the flowers died. Watermelons, we smiled at one another. Lucky for us, we had another growing in our back garden, no doubt the sowing of a child’s hand. It was near the squash and corn. It had plenty of space to grow. A week went by. I watered faithfully, marvelling at the fruity pebble conglomeration of zinnias in every hue, the secret promise of watermelons sprawling beneath the wildflowers. Only us, I chuckled to myself, only our little fun family would grow fruit in the front yard.

It was one night after I’d taken the dog on a walk and picked up the mail that I paused in the flower bed and examined the watermelon plant more closely. It was a curious sight, next to the bunny-nibbled zinnias. The rabbits were leaving my fruit plant alone, and now I saw why. Bright green balls covered the stalks, and each sphere was studded with vicious thorns.

Alarmed, I had a sudden thought. This cannot be a watermelon plant.

Three proofs stood in favor of my hypothesis:

Watermelons aren’t poky. Watermelons are big. Watermelons crawl on the grown.
I did a quick Google search. The results confirmed it. We were not growing watermelons, but a nasty, prickly buffalobur nightshade.

Take care, the article with a matching picture warned, and do not mess with this toxic plant. The prickles with cause long-lasting pain. Buffalobur’s innately evil nature is apparent in its ability to cause solanine and nitrate poisoning.

Here I had let it grow to a foot tall, gleefully thinking we had watermelon just blooming on the vine. I was proud. I’d let my precious little girl meander in the zinnias around it, never having a clue what we were tending.

I love stumbling upon metaphors. Apparently my oldest son does, too. I caught his scribbling words down in the corner of his dot-to-dot book during this morning’s sermon, and he relayed it to me over lunch.

“I thought of a good one today, Mom,” he said. “People are like cats. They try to climb to the top of their scratching post to show dominance. Then when they fall, they scramble to their feet and look around and pretend nothing just happened.”

He is catching on. And both metaphors are timely: beautiful, dangerous weeds and haughty, self-possessed humans. Our world is full of both.

In The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis, the characters suddenly enter a new and wondrous world, one that is “more Narnia” than the last. A group of grumpy Dwarfs have also somehow entered into this post-life Heaven, but they perceive they are in a dirty, dingy and dark stable. They roll and gripe, each complaining over the situation, even as Lucy and Tirian try to awaken them to the Truth.

You are in paradise, the friends assure them. Look! Beauty and perfection surround us!
Distressed, Lucy pleads with the lion, Aslan.
“Aslan, could you–will you–do something for these poor Dwarfs?”

“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.”
He then provides a great feast for the Dwarfs, but to them it only appears as rotting vegetables and goblets of dirty water. The whining and groaning gets louder. They are outraged.

Aslan turns to Lucy and says,“You see? They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

In a few words, Aslan is saying this: diseased perception is diseased reality. Getting caught up in the ruckus of this world, going along with the flow–is the worst kind of ball and chain. It perpetuates malcontentment. A chasing after the wind. A futile grasp at happiness. A stroll through a field of prickles. Those who see will become blind. They won’t know a weed when they see it.

Friends, we are living in the burr patch, glorious zinnias intermingling with toxic thorny bushes. Confusion reigns, and some are satisfied being dissatisfied. It is confounding, but we might not convince folks of the danger. We might not shake everyone to life while we are here on this earth. We might not coax them into reality, because they have chosen to close their eyes and remain in the dark.

But we can still point it out, for those who are compelled to yank weeds and those not content with just a cat’s social reflex. We can ask questions, we can find answers. For those who want to believe, but need help seeing in the dark.

For the thirteen year old me, who thought she was just plain stupid.
For the thirty-six year old me, who knows she’s not.

There is truth. It is worth clinging to. And you deserve to know it.

Warts and all.

Oliver Cromwell had a massive wart on his chin. If you were to zoom in on his 1656 painting (as I have), you would be astonished that he paid to have such a realistic portrait made. But there he is, chest puffed out, proud and prominent, the nickel-sized bump displayed in its glory.
“Paint me warts and all,” he famously said, “or I won’t pay you a farthing for it.”

I have heard that Abraham Lincoln quoted him in 1860, ordering the artist to “flatter me not”. He, too, had some striking facial features, not to mention a possible diagnosis of Marfan syndrome. These two figures demanded accuracy, and I think it was partially due to their appreciation of history and the value of preserving clues for all posterity, but certainly it was a nod to their integrity. Lincoln, of course, shines brilliantly in history, his emancipating, martyr’s life and death provoking praise nearly two hundred years later. Cromwell, we know, comes out a tad less distinguished in remembrance: He might be best known for his quip on warts.

I bet both men would be surprised today–surprised about the photoshopping, the adjectives added to journalism, lengths of extortion, our disdain for flawed people in history. The truth is, Cromwell hated the Irish and helped murder a king. Abraham Lincoln, like it or not, made decisions that contributed to the death of thousands of soldiers–surely his presidential foe, Stephen Douglas, tried to smear him for provoking the Confederacy to secede.
People die as a result of any and every noble and ignoble cause. No one is left unaffected by poor decisions, especially in politics.

(I suppose if there had been potential to exploit these men, the modern media of their times tried to find it. We just have more efficient ways of digging for dirt these days, and sneakier lawyers for finding loopholes to the law. Plus the payoffs are higher.)

Our warts will show, like it or not.

Several years ago a gorgeous, talented singer vowed to stop wearing makeup. She was beautiful without it–no surprise there–but for some reason it was a huge deal for her to make this notion public. Those Dove soap commercials, they wanted to display natural beauty, too. Sure I saw women of all sizes and color, but I never saw any warts.

These aren’t good examples of what we need. It is a marketing of false humility, the kind where one looks angelic on the outside but filthier than a pig on the inside. Totally on brand for our culture, don’t get me wrong–just dangerously courting insincerity.

That said, I think it is time, now more than ever, to live as transparent lives as possible. By this, I mean: show your warts.

Don’t go off growing new ones or plastering on cosplay makeup. There’s no need to tattoo, pierce, brush up,or put on display. Standing out is a secondary concern, a discretionary pursuit of fools.
But go ahead and show your warts. Let them be a part of the portrait.
Live a life that doesn’t flatter.

The world is flawed, more flawed than a Dove commercial, and we are all a part of it.

The warts must show, the body must age.

The kids and I have been carving rubber stamps as a new hobby this summer. On my first try with the Speedball tool, I realized just how difficult it is to carve out negative space with a tiny craft knife. Around every curve, whittling out an imprint of an image, scratching bits of texture into the rubber. This is an exercise in tedium, but if I eliminate too much material, the stamp won’t print my image at all.

Likewise, beauty is in contrast to that which is ugly, and we are losing sight of what is truly lovely by erasing the warts. In fact, we are erasing ourselves, because negating every sin doesn’t make us look more adept–it makes us look fake.

I’m not sure a graver sin exists.

Where to begin? How do we undo the image we have carved of ourselves? How can we become honest when we’ve been fake? How can we add back the warts we once edited so the world would be fooled into thinking we had it all together?

This will turn to Jesus, like I hope every post always does. Jesus, a man in whom was found “no beauty or majesty to attract us to him; nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” For us, He was “marred beyond human likeness”. (Isaiah 52 and 53 are the best chapters in the Bible to memorize.) This is the God-man we are encouraged by Paul to imitate.

Follow His example, as dearly beloved children. Walk in love, just as Christ loved you and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5:1-2

How can we possibly imitate a person so selfless He let men mutilate his body to death?

I’m so genuinely grateful to say it: we can’t.

We cannot do this upright, holy, blameless, perfect, spotless, wartless life. He did it for us. That master Painter put his portrait on top of ours, covering all the blemishes, creating a new image of us; His very own image superimposed on ours.

He carved a new stamp. We are his righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).

The warts are simply where the light gets out. They are conversation starters and pivot points. It’s true, you might have married the wrong person. You cared more about alcohol and sex than your kids. You lied. You fell into that old habit. You had an unhealthy relationship with food. You battled with depression and blamed your parents for it. You said something, did something, are somebody that is very, very warty. Guess what–so is every politician, every activist, every parent and child, every historical figure who has ever lived.

But you are holding on to Jesus and letting Him put His image on you, every day. In Him, you are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).
This is how we follow Christ’s example. We are obedient to God, we agree we need Him to make atonement for our sins. We say yes to Him creating beauty out of our ashes.

Old blemishes don’t make us more beautiful–they make us real.
Keep this in mind as the world airbrushes its way into faux freedoms, as it tries to flatter itself into a waxy, two-dimensional version of real Life.

Show your warts. Jesus paid for them.

P.S. You should already know it, but for what it is worth, the stamp is Benjamin Franklin, not Oliver Cromwell. Or Lincoln. Nope. I’m working on it.