PearlS | The Average Pearl

Falling for a Tribe.

Somewhere between the 10s and the 20s of this century there was a shift from blogs to brands. It happened while I was sleeping, or more likely, while I was not sleeping (lots of babies in that decade). Those writers who had extra minutes and change to spare capitalized on WordPress space. Already domain-savvy, they claimed handles and usernames and moved from isolated, virtual landmarks to one common social media neighborhood.
And there they set up kingdoms.

Glennon Doyle, Pioneer Woman, Rage Against the Minivan, Jon Acuff, Ann Voskamp, Smitten Kitchen, Emily P. Freeman. (Can you tell I loved “Christian” perspectives and baking?)
The men and women who were a fun read day-to-day soared into the stratosphere with a new area code. Social media was a boon to their magnetic personalities and witty words.

This is all ancient history to babies who were raised and fed a diet of social media. They don’t even question how the celebrity of such beings came about. But the Nobody-to-Somebody phenomenon was going strong even a decade before that–take, for example, Kelly Clarkson or Guy Fieri, winners of rags-to-riches contests pre-social media.

These events awed me in the moment. (I specifically remember thinking about applying for the Food Network Star–laughable now, because I didn’t even know what cilantro was back then.)
And though most of the awe has worn off and been replaced by a whole family to take care of and cutting way back on screen time, there is still a strong temptation for me to get some skin in the game.

This is the social media tumble dryer, a new and improved version of the 2010’s obsession with blogging and commenting. Log on, keep your screens lit, and always keep the conversation going. It’s exhausting, but everyone’s doing it, and everyone here belongs.

This is why I keep almost falling for the Tribe lie. You know, the one that says we belong, especially on social media, and more especially–with our own personal Tribe.

I think I fall for it because it is a taste of success via association. I missed out on making bank with my old blog and witty words, but this doesn’t mean I can’t board the gravy train and be a part of something bigger than myself.

It’s attractive. It hints at world peace and the pageant-girl, optimistic faith in humanity. It labels us as brave truth-tellers, confident in our own skin and a supreme advocate for self-actualization.
The Tribe lie says you have a home, that you are an ally who requires allies, and that a person or two ought to show up at your doorstep in minutes of a text’s notice–at least long enough to get a good photo.

The Tribe keeps tabs on emotional distress, urges you on in the things you love, compels you to reciprocate at the level you’ve been given. It validates feelings, justifies habits, encourages a cycle of me-first behavior. My responsibility is reporting on me and it never feels shameful or narcissistic.

The Tribe shares a common ideology, rebukes individuality, and passes off bully behavior as support.

The Tribe has one voice, one mantra, and generally one leader to rally the troops.

The leader usually introduces ideas that are accepted immediately, because she is Queen. The Tribe trusts her because they’ve never had a reason to doubt her. Every new declaration is a celebration, every battle cry she utters is one that breaks chains. She is the face, the picture of who we want to be. She embodies our success and represents our potential. The Tribe shakes off any accusations, any questions from the outside that threaten their cocoon.

Fake eyelashes? Whatever makes you look your best. Drugs? Whatever makes you feel your best. Alternative lifestyles? Bring them on, we believe in you.

They defend their leader, even when the queen waivers. Even when the Queen’s own personal life is in ashes, when one and one no longer add up to two. Even when reason has completely seeped out from the bottom, leaving the Tribe naked and vulnerable. Even when their fearless leader has taken advantage of every member as a stepping stone to a higher place.

Gone are blogs–we can be more real, more alive.
The Queen and her Tribe maintain a conversation so the room never gets too awkward and silent.

And I still almost fall for it, because it is lovely. I still desperately want to be a part of some conversation, and I almost believe genuine friendship is found in the Tribe. The Queen and I are just so alike! (If you don’t get the reference, this is what 50% of blog comments were to Ree Drummond–oh my gosh, we’re twins!)

But this is the Tribe lie: that human wisdom and groupthink behavior supersedes an individual’s impact on her world.

That you were never good enough on your own,
That life never held as much value apart from your Tribe.

Jen Hatmaker. Donald Trump. Rachel Hollis. For Pete’s sake, Dave Hollis. (I reckon they’d all hate being grouped together)

But let’s not stop there. History is packed with icons who gained attention and persuaded followers that their version of life was better than whatever anyone else was offering.
And millions of people hop aboard and ride their train.

Why?

Do we catch the scent of an alpha figure and ride their coattails because it’s how we tell ourselves we belong? Are we pack animals who feel safest wedged between the others?

Do we make their rags-to-riches, blogger-to-celebrity story our own? Are our Queens just better at articulating in written media, and we feel so understood?

I can almost go along with it. It’s cozy to have things in common. It’s hopeful to think we’re all on an upwards trajectory, bettering our lives together, day by day.

I’m worried that a lot of younger people do go along with it, not understanding the consequences of not thinking for themselves.

And here is why it is important to put the breaks on and let the train roll to a halt:

Because Tribe-think doesn’t transfer to real life. You don’t owe a social media icon your allegiance.

The sum of you is not attached to anyone else telling you what to think or what to do.

Some glorious things happen in secret, on your own, and it stays between you and God.

Not all beauty and pain needs to be documented in pictures and words and shared with the world, but written in your soul.

You might have to just trust me on that. But I think I’ve learned enough to know it.

For Your Own Good.

I came across a stunning news article last month. In it I read that the county health department (the county we recently left) sued three Christian schools over their failure to comply with mask mandates by children aged two and up. Let me emphasize: two and up. Two is the age of a baby still learning to read facial expressions.

I’m not sure I can express how thankful I am to be out of that county, and we weren’t even attending a private school.

We’ve gone from looking out our front window at carnage, hate, and literal signs that said Honk if you think the police are f-ing dirtbags and Don’t be a ****, get your f-ing vaccine, morons!
–to walking into a small country school mask-less where the principal passes out candy and kindergarten teachers give students hugs. They schedule fall field trips to the pumpkin patch and open the gym for kids to shoot hoops.

I’ve sat in on school board meetings. I’ve shaken hands. I’ve gone to potlucks. I’m three hours away from passing out walking tacos (gloveless!) at the school carnival. I’m actually going to use the same spoon to dollop sour cream onto chips and cheese and I’m not going to feel guilty about it.

Sure, some of it is the urban-to-rural cultural exchange that makes it so sharp, but I can’t help but believe that my own life is more humanized simply by being around other people who value people over rules. Folks who develop their own opinions apart from groupthinkers, fearmongerers, politicians, and activists. People who are more caught up in community than scary statistics.

One doesn’t necessarily get the picture of such stark differences by watching the news. Instead, the news makes us feel like we are helpless bystanders watching the world burn down around us. So here I’m going to attempt to describe what I’ve witnessed as a non-journalist over the last six months through the lens of the pandemic.

One of the more alarming things was that Denver mandated vaccinations for all employees, school staff, and law enforcement. I suppose it was a gradual incline over the last eighteen months. When there was a stay at home mandate, the next likely step was a mask mandate, and so on. We got used to people telling us what to do, they talked themselves into thinking it was for our own good. It was logical that enforcing it with an arm of iron was next.

Denver’s neighboring county, where we lived, began this strong-arm approach to this fall’s school plans.

Last year, in our city school, the new language learners were separated from native speakers. Imagine: the six year olds from the previous year were masked up and sorted out: the kids who knew English in a normal room and the Title I kids in another. Child development, mental health, and equal opportunity played no part in the division–we were trying to keep germs from being spread. It worried the parents who spoke Khmer or Spanish at home, because they knew their kids needed to practice normal English conversation with other English speakers. It devastated the kids, who missed their friends.

Of course, this was complicated by months of iPad learning at home with zero human contact. No one was allowed in the school library, no one stepped a foot in the cafeteria. When all was said and done, children had spent two-thirds of the school year at home, a third at socially-distanced, masked-up school. Some teachers quit. Parents were looked at as potential health threats and not allowed to darken the doorway.

This is complicated by non-pandemic “concerns” the district was trying to address even before the current situation, issues like inclusivity and diversity, mental wellness and school violence.

Don’t misread here–currently at our little rural school, parent volunteers are also not invited into the school during the school day for any old reason, which they were in the past. And anti-bullying and mental health are both big talking points. But the unwelcome versus welcome attitude between the liberal culture we left to the more conservative we live in now is alarming.

I detected the general feeling in Colorado was sadness, and it came mostly from the families with whom we attended school. It was a collective shrug, a well, what can we do about it? It’s a pandemic. People are sick and dying. Do what we can to prevent it–and that meant wearing masks, avoiding eye contact at the store or park, and eventually complying with vaccine mandates.

But I also detected from the decision-makers and solution-finders an air of superiority in addressing compliance. Specifically, there was a trajectory of public disdain for people who didn’t immediately jump on board with “science” and “public health”. As a parent in the public schools, I was sent emails urging us to fall in line and strictly obey rules put into place for my health and safety. If you want your kids in school, it’s time to comply. No visiting friends and neighbors outside of school. Mask up; no more than six people in your house at any time.

Fast forward to now, and the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, stepped up his iron-fist game with the declaration, “we wish their [unvaccinated, hospital patients] misery gets the message out about why people need to be vaccinated,” and “the majority of health care workers across the state are very relieved that a handful of their colleagues who haven’t yet been vaccinated will either be gone–remove that threat from the workplace–or get vaccinated.”

The non-compliant people who sign his paycheck are a threat.

Contrast that kind of talk with the new life I’m living eight hundred miles away from Denver: I am welcome to keep my vaccination status private. I am welcome to apply for a job or enter a restaurant without a vaccine “passport”. It is the same as wearing sweatpants instead of jeans–possibly curious, but certainly no threat.
My kids are welcome in the schools. I am welcome to make conversation with strangers, instead of fearing the worst or assuming I’m endangering myself or them by exchanging pleasantries. I regularly invite more than six unvaccinated people into my home.
I am seen as a person, not a statistic or a threat.

We saw the light last year, which is a major reason our family moved far, far away from the overreach happening in Denver.
Sometimes getting fed up is okay.
Leaving is okay. (Let’s not forget the whole situation with Lot’s family. Moving wasn’t an act of cowardice–it was a survival technique.)

And it is a good reminder that when humans in power come up with human solutions, it doesn’t always work to the public’s advantage. Cross that out–it never works out to everyone’s advantage. Take for example the new study that found the state’s vax-lottery was a total waste of money. That’s five million dollars–five one-million dollar “winners”–of federal dollars used for the purpose of enticing people to get a shot. Now it’s been shown it was in no way effective in achieving the desired herd immunity.
Think if we had, as tax payers, the voice in deciding where that money went! How much money I’ve donated and raised personally to assure public school teachers and students have the supplies they need!

See how leaders often lose sight of what’s important? And freedom is the casualty.

You can pretend you are good, think you are good, believe you are good, convince others you are good, enforce rules that are good. You can coerce and you can punish other people when they don’t adopt your brand of goodness. You can erode their own confidence by continually berating them as fools, and they might comply. You silence them by fear, and you tell yourself their compliance is submission. You might pat yourself on the back for the hard, good work you’ve done.

One day, your exceedingly high standards no longer allow for association with folks who cannot meet them. In your mind you devalue them till they seem sub-human.
How nefarious.

This is how freedom is lost–it is wrenched from the hands of others, and it’s stamped with a seal of approval.
It’s marked GOOD.

I’ll be serving walking tacos at the school carnival later if you want to join me, because it is most certainly your choice to do what you want in this country.
I might look you in the eye when I’m chatting with you about the kids, the weather, and anything but your vaccination status. Because you know what? You’re human, and I am too.

I value your freedom to put sour cream on your nachos, and the freedom to make a thousand other decisions.

banned books and going bald.

In the old days, when men were allowed to have many wives, a middle-aged Man had one wife that was old and one that was young; each loved him very much, and desired to see him like herself. Now the man’s hair was turning grey, which the young Wife did not like, as it made him look too old for her husband. So every night she used to comb his hair and pick out the white ones. But the elder Wife saw her husband growing grey with great pleasure, for she did not like to be mistaken for his mother. So every morning she used to arrange his hair and pick out as many of the black ones as she could. The consequence was the Man soon found himself entirely bald.

Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.

(of Aesop)

I have a bunch of old books I’ve been curating for many years now that I just can’t seem to give away. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for it, I’m told (though check me on it, because my Japanese vocabulary won’t fill a thimble)–the books you acquire that go unread for lack of time; the stacks becoming larger and more unwieldy–this is a disease in itself.
The problem with voracious readers is paradoxical: you simply become thirstier the more you read. A reader is never quite satisfied.
We wade through millions of words, thousands of stories. We have removed the lights in our kids’ bedrooms and closets because we must force sleep upon them.

Once again, it is banned books week, the week most celebrated by the keepers of libraries in the United States.
I marvel every year when my local library notifies me via email of this monumental week. They are proud of their pillars–freedom of censorship, liberty for all, loaning to the public.
I sort of have an ongoing beef with such stalwarts. They are a troublesome lot.

My current library notifies me (discreetly, at the bottom of the receipt) of the total monetary value of books checked out–it is always in the hundreds of dollars. Should I not return the books on time, should my child accidentally destroy one…Well, you can check out up to 100 books at a time, but just remember we will own you if you do.

I’ve read Mark Twain and Ruth Reichl both this month. They are two masters of story, blending and bending biography and fiction into a distilled, single, clear voice.

Twain is dead, but his voice still rings unapologetic, mocking what is generally accepted without question by an undiscerning public. The joke was always on them; their opinions fair game for ridicule. He didn’t publish his final autobiography until he was in the grave a hundred years, no doubt the words were too honest for his contemporaries.
Reichl majors in food memoir, sort of a later M.K. Fisher, but I am mostly struck by her observations on social norms in the sixties and seventies. She tells of a college roommate, Serafina, who is from Guyana, with whom a friendship immediately develops, and the two bond over coconut bread and roti. Eventually ‘Fina’ dramatically discovers her parents adopted her at a young age, and she is not of Guyana, but Detroit. Her roommate then begins to ignore Reichl, choosing instead to associate with black power movement, refusing to be seen with Reichl, a white, Jewish New Yorker.

I read another book this week, one for writers and aspiring poets. Two hundred pages in, I had to close it, because it suggested a new author always submit their work to an editor who might read it for “sensitivity”–to make sure no one who reads it is unintentionally offended. Not so one’s conscience isn’t offended (for often it is not–think of all the harlequin paperbacks!), but so that one’s mind isn’t triggered to think objectively.

I don’t like this at all–I appreciate being able to think for myself. Aren’t we all capable of reading and coming to our own conclusions? Is Mark Twain incredibly racist because he writes speech as it sounds, or was he trying to capture dialogue to preserve its integrity? Was Ruth Reichl truly being discriminated against as a white woman in the seventies, or was she just spinning a yarn? I’d like to read and discover it for myself. After all, librarians love juxtaposition and different viewpoints…right?

What is unthinkable is there are people, human beings, who think they are guardians of un-censorship, liberty, and free thought. They put on community “one-read” events, they hold book award competitions. But it must first pass their security screening before they put it on their shelves.
Imagine the idea–that fine expression and the art of honest writing must first pass through the sensitivity police before the guardians determine it uncensorable! It is the bald man wondering where all his hair went–yielding to all until nothing is left.

Cheers to libraries, for at the moment they still hold books.
Pray for the librarians, who try to pluck out gray hairs but are making us balder by the minute.
Read all you can, especially the books that make you think. Yield only when your parents make you go to bed, or when the lights go out.

Who knows when they will become antiquated, the so-called censored books that won’t even be around for Banned Books Week.

Read more in celebration of Banned Books Week!

Hives, Homeschool, and Lemonade.

Last September I was stressing out about homeschooling my kids. The pandemic gave me two harsh choices: remote learning or legit Pearl-in-charge homeschool.
Here is where I was: in a big city, not the safest neighborhood. Removed from my comfortable worldview; my only friends, folks who didn’t even speak English as their first language. They were reliant on whatever education our local school had to offer, and none of them could afford to quit their jobs, let alone “work from home”. They welcomed iPads with open arms; at least their kids would have a checklist when they were left with grandma or the neighbor, or if, forbid it, they were on their own for the school day.

One day a week I still rubbed elbows with people who looked more like me: an upstanding church crowd, wearing their Sunday best, forever befuddled with my family’s choice to send our kids to public school. I was an enigma to them, and they to me, and for the life of me I couldn’t explain how sad I was–the tragedy of being shut off from my public school community, this idea that kids were being literally abandoned to their iPads. So much for learning to read. So much for social interaction, and so much for volunteering at school.

The options weren’t great, but we were all doing what we had to do. The pandemic dealt the cards, and time forced our hand. Move, or be moved. Jump, or be shoved. It’s no secret I picked homeschool after quite some deliberation. I just couldn’t bear the idea of scheduled, intentional screen time with someone outside our four walls calling all the shots. Stick a fork in my eyeball–I know my kids, and I know the addiction of screen time–I couldn’t do it.

So I set out to do what is for me, the impossible: select curriculums, organize our space and our life, create routine, inspire greater learning. Math, penmanship, science, English. The task shouldn’t be so hard. We’d already been home, isolated in the city for six months by then. I could grin and bear it, right?

Alas, I couldn’t. My absent-minded ways were no match for my greatest intentions. My kids, too smart and fast. They read textbooks like comics, rocketing through projects and leaving hurricane-sized messes. Where I wanted them to slow down, they sped up. When I needed calm and deliberate, they gave me intensity and pell-mell. They memorized minute war details and chemical reactions, human body science, how seeds germinate. One boy disappearing to the basement and resurfacing the next morning, eyes bleary, declaring he didn’t really like Lord of the Flies but supposed it was worth reading in one shot. Their noses hidden in books until in a burst of frenzy they’d rush out to the trampoline and ram one another into the net, again and again. Always hungry for new information, followed by releasing the pent-up energy, never pausing to perfect penmanship or color in the lines. Sprinting, then panting, then sprinting again.

It is hard to lasso a tornado. Chalk it up to restlessness, giftedness, lacking executive function or whatever baloney that frames a child as more special than the next. My management skills were woefully inadequate for this job.

One month in, and my heart began racing. I felt the heat in my chest, the faint thrum of an oncoming anxiety attack. Everything required more of me than I could give. It wasn’t a surprise when my immune system started going haywire. But it was a shock.

I immediately turned into a miserable person. Moment by moment my skin crawled. I scratched myself bloody. There was no relief. I visited urgent care clinics. I saw my regular physician. Blood testing for allergies, appointments with a dermatologist.
It was chronic hives, my introduction to a backfiring immune system. A festering itch that began on a Wednesday evening after an innocuous walk in the park and bloomed and flared into red-hot screaming madness, welts and bumps up and down my arms, trunk, scalp, legs.
I curled up into a ball on the couch and begged it to go away. The madness of constant itching from my head to my ankle (mercifully not my feet) coupled with the expectation of keeping kids home for schooling was too much.
One afternoon I phoned my dad. The big kids were at music lessons and the little ones played at the playground while I slumped on the park bench, disconsolate.
It rang twice and he picked up. He’s been living with chronic illness since I was a baby (and gives solid advice on weaning oneself from prednisone).

He understood my condition. I blurted out my madness, my fear I was losing control of my body, the relentless, unwelcome urticaria that was beginning to dominate every waking minute.

He was quiet, thoughtful. Then he said,

“Well, Pearl, have you talked to Jesus about it?”

I bit my lip so no sobs could escape.

“Of course,” I said, “I asked Him to take it away.”

The line was silent. Then,

“Well,” he said, “in my experience you have to give Him a choice.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him, miserable.

“‘God, You can take this away, or…’” he began.

“‘Help me deal with it?’” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“I don’t think I can deal with it, Dad,” I admitted, letting a few tears loose.

“I know, Pearl,” he said. “I know.”

His advice was that I lay on the couch some more (“stop trying to do it all”). He assured me my kids would be fine (“they’re the smartest kids I know”). He told me how to handle the prednisone and how to talk with an immunologist (“they need to see how miserable you are, so don’t put on a brave face”).

Thankfully, mercifully, I found a doctor who was able to help me. He did more blood tests and gave me medicine that subdued the hives.
God didn’t choose to take the problem away, but He did help me deal with it.
And that was a gracious thing, because in the interim it was the toughest year of our lives. More stressors presented and compounded over the months, to a point where we asked God to take things away, or… Point us in another direction, God, or…
(Someday I will tell that story, too–once there is more ground between here and there.)

For school, I let kids read books. I laid on the couch until the library notified me we had a new stack ready, and then we’d drive up, park, and open the back hatch where the gloved and masked worker loaded us up with heavy paper bags, fresh pages to peruse.

That was the bulk of homeschooling. I’d push it now and again, insert a few minutes a day on multiplication tables, or building a diorama, or gathering science experiment supplies. I signed one kid up for an online math course. I bribed another with candy to practice his handwriting. We watched musicals and YouTube tutorials.

I refused to step in the gap and do it all. I purposefully ignored the urge to turn out perfection. I blocked all the opportunities to compare myself to anyone else.

Every time the lump would rise in my throat or the hot feeling in my chest, I stepped back, sat on the couch, and remembered the consequences of letting hopelessness and fear manifest in my body, the misery of hives flaring again all over me.

And this is what I’ve learned from the experience:
God gives us a choice, too.

Humble yourselves, under God’s mighty hand, so that in due time He may exalt you. Cast ALL your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-7

We can choose to humble ourselves, acknowledge we are inadequate for the task. We can choose to hand over ALL our worries, or we can try and manage them ourselves. We can play proud and toy around with a few worries, pretending we’ve got what it takes to manage. We can brag on our measly victories, put on a facade that we have it all together when we don’t. We can hide our insecurities and failures and poor relationships behind a big fake smile.
Or we can admit we aren’t fit for the job, and we need all the heavenly help we can get.

My big boy got off the bus yesterday (they are back in school! and riding the bus!) and he came up the steps, solemn, a piece of paper behind his back.
“Mom, I need to show you something. Now. In the back room.”
I sensed he’d gotten in trouble and needed me to sign a slip. I was a little worried.

He whispered so no one could hear him. I braced myself for the worst.
“Mrs. K made the whole class lemonade today. It was, um, really good. And so, um, I asked her if she’d let me copy down the recipe. Here,” he said, thrusting it into my hands.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“Yeah, I thought we could make it sometime. Don’t tell anybody,” he said, and rushed back into the kitchen to fix a snack.

I have talked to Jesus again and again this year. I’ve stopped asking Him to erase my problems. Instead, I just hand my worries over to Him, because that’s what He’s told me to do. I pour out my anxieties to Him like a five gallon bucket of water on a raspberry bush. I give Him a choice to fix it or to help me deal with it, but mostly I hand it over because I cannot physically take on any more.
He woos me every time. He is interested in my kids, their education, my job, my marriage, my health. He uses sickness to produce wisdom and endurance in my life. He cares for me.

I’m not sure I would’ve seen exactly all the ways he cares if it hadn’t been for a horrid, blessed last year.

He provides the lemons and then He hands me the recipe for lemonade (via a kid who is doing just fine in sixth grade, nevermind the last year of pell-mell homeschooling).
It’s up to me to make it.

the Mary years.

Here’s something I never thought I’d ever admit to anyone, not ever:
I’ve written lots of songs.

I actually never admitted the truth to myself, not till a few nights ago when my phone warned me it was running out of space. Since I can’t in good conscience delete photos and old text messages, I headed for my voice memo folder, where kids regularly record themselves blah-blah-blahing (literally, they say blahblahblah for entire minutes).

There were a handful of tunes I’d recorded in bathrooms–accompanied by ukulele, guitar, or mandolin, whatever I could attach chords to in the midst of kids splashing noisily in the tub in the background. A couple were done in the car, acapella, obviously with a fair amount of restraint lest curious onlookers discover my soul-bearing ways. I deleted an original Christmas carol and two very cheesy wedding songs. Only a lucky few made their way to the impressive studios of Garage Band.
I’ve had my phone for five years now. It’s no surprise my creative packrat tendencies show up in voice memos. But I can’t bear to delete the music.

Five years ago, I was sinking. Four kids doesn’t seem like a lot to many people. To others, it seems like an army. To tell the truth, I love kids. They fascinate me. Four didn’t always seem like a strong number–if I was tough like I thought, why wouldn’t I have more? I had a burdensome conscience no doubt influenced by a certain moral upbringing, and it did me no favors in regards to family planning (not that family planning was ever on my radar, but I digress).

The kids and responsibilities and unsure future and sleepless nights overwhelmed me, especially five years ago. Everything landed square on my shoulders, it seemed. It was too much. I wasn’t managing anything well.
I still wonder how most everyone else seems to keep things under control but I cannot. Can’t manage a career, can’t manage my house, can’t find a shred of assurance that I’m raising my kids exactly right. I’m not a worrier, but I do wonder and just downright marvel at my lack of git-’er-done in a world of folks who keep the balls spinning. Will I ever have something of value to tack on a resume, or will it always feel like I’m sitting in a trail of dust?

But then I see the tiniest bit of sun shining through the clouds, er, iClouds. I’ve been at home doing my turtle work, head in shell, scratching here and there and not making many dents.
I’m making piles of art, ebenezers of remembrance.
Art that doesn’t mean much to anyone–but maybe God. Maybe it matters–no, it certainly matters to Him.
And it has come to my attention that my kids have always been right there, as I strum and find just the right chords, as I arrange and rearrange words and then ask them to listen and tell me what they think about the new song.

I was just your average, humble, stay-at-home mom, thinking life might pass me, but also not finding the energy to fight it. I was just watching kids all along and keeping my hand and mind busy, filling in small cracks of time with notes and words and music. And all those wearisome years of changing babies and collecting dust ended up as worship.

Looking back, it has made whatever shame I held evaporate.

It is better to live in worship; shame cannot hang around.

Those songs won’t ever be an I Can Only Imagine (and thank God for that, because I’ve heard it enough, haven’t you?). No one will have to hear my voice on the radio and wonder why the tune they once thought was catchy is now a relic of an earworm. I’ll never have to explain to anyone why I bothered for two years to turn the laments of Jeremiah into memorized melodies I can sing–my very own prayers for my people who, like the Israelites, have eyes, but cannot see and ears, but cannot hear (Jeremiah 5:21). I will sing of repentance–my own, and for the people I ache to know forgiveness and wholeness.

I will sing because it helps me memorize and internalize God’s word. I’m hiding it in my heart.
I’ll write because it is art, and art always imitates the Creator.
Imitation is worship.

These are the Mary years, the years at the feet of Jesus. Maybe the Martha years come after the kids grow up, or at least when they are back in school. As I look back on Jesus, the Mary years mattered more to Him than the git-’er-done Martha ways.
He was there to be worshiped in the flesh, and Mary recognized it as an opportunity to sit and worship. Martha excused herself from the situation, chalking it up to enneagram (j/k, sort of)–she was a 2, or perhaps a 1 or 8, and Mary (probably 4, 5 or 9) annoyingly lacked energy and motivation.

But whatever you do or don’t do, or are doing or aren’t doing–all of those little pieces of time add up and paint a bigger picture of what is worthy in your life.

Martha thought she needed to do x,y,z… But Jesus told Martha what Mary had chosen was better, and even though it didn’t look a whole lot like getting things done, he commended her for it.

I had all the opportunity in the world to perch on the closed toilet seat of a weeknight and strum a guitar or read my Bible, or both! all while watching my babies stick foam letters to the sides of the tub. I spent mornings with piles of library books and crumbs on the couch, kids flanking my elbows so I could hardly move to turn the pages. I boiled hundreds of packages of macaroni, wiped down the same high chair a million times. It felt like small beans at the time, a so-what-who-cares type of existence.

But it is not.

Your Father sees what is done in secret.
He rewards what is done in secret.
(Matthew 6:4)

I do not regret a single moment of it. The hidden, the secret and sacred. The art-making and kid-minding.

What does God want you to create? What is He asking you to let go?
What could you offer to Him in your Mary years?
What if no one ever saw it but Him?

I don’t think you’ll ever regret it.

I trust you, God, just not with my kids.

We wrapped up a week of bluegrass camp in July.

This is significant, I feel.

We are at a fork in the road where a half dozen years of very expensive cello lessons–thousands of dollars–just might about be tossed out the window because my boy wants to be a flatpicking guitarist, the next Tony Rice. I don’t know why, but it scares me a little.

I have a couple of kids who can tune an instrument by ear. Perfect pitch, it’s called. They were little boys who had unending energy and I needed them to have a more focused outlet (something other than racing bikes down mountains–we didn’t have insurance at the time), so I signed them up for music. A cutie patootie ⅛ sized cello and ⅛ sized violin. They practiced their Suzuki lessons every day while I slapped my knee as a metronome. They listened to Piano Guys like they were the Rolling Stones.

We are part of a larger family that plays bluegrass. Growing up, my Saturday mornings were filled with the smell of bacon frying and the sounds of Doyle Lawson and Ricky Skaggs, my dad’s nasal tenor striking high harmonies.
But my own kids are Colorado natives, and we sure weren’t experiencing much gospel or banjo in the Rockies. Ska and pizza were the Saturday vibes in Durango, with Bach festivals and Music in the Mountains for the more refined. The old cowboy way was teetering on its last two legs over at the Bar D Chuckwagon, surviving on tourist dollars that drifted into southwest Colorado and divided itself among rafting and riding the scenic train to Silverton.
My impression was that bluegrass hadn’t ever rooted in Colorado quite like it had in my Missouri blood. And so we adapted, and we made our home among the more classy orchestral musicians instead of old time fiddlers. We ate artisan pizza and snowboarded on the weekend and joined the youth orchestra on Tuesday afternoons.

Until we moved back east and, on a whim, signed up for bluegrass camp.

He loved it. Loved the energy of fast-paced picking and grinning. He fit right into the scene, the heritage. I was excited for him, but also a little worried. It’s the investment in learning an instrument–this is exactly why I felt nervous. There’s hardly room for cello in bluegrass, and boy that cello has cost me a lot of money. I rented for the first six months before I could even afford to buy it outright. I prayed my six year old wouldn’t drop it on the hardwood floor or touch the horse hair bow with his grubby fingers. And now, right when he was hitting his stride ripping through the fifth Suzuki book, he traded Brahms for Bill Monroe.

When we started, I had pure motives: music is my favorite form of worship. If you can equip others to worship, you multiply the effect. But what happened is my kids started getting pretty good at playing–cello and violin being the instruments. And before I knew it, I had vested myself in their talent.
I was part of the investment.
Me.
It wasn’t so much about organic worship anymore, but doing what I (their mom) envisioned them doing. Naturally I thought I had a say over what happened at the fork in the road.
But the mom in charge of choosing a six year old’s first instrument doesn’t usually know the long-term plans God has for such a child.

One of my dear, dear friends has two grown boys who are very, very talented. They are genius smarty-pants but they’re also roving musicians. Their mama rolls her eyes because she would have never imagined it. The boy who could be anything is now somewhat of a starving artist.
And one thing she said several years ago has never left me. She said this:
Your faith has to be bigger than your fear.

I really do believe I’ve got faith. But sometimes the fear edges its way into view. It happens before I even know it’s happening. I get into the habit of thinking (without verbally expressing it), I trust you, God, just not with my kids. What I mean is this: I think it is complete reliance, but I’m still secretly banking on my own ability to cultivate my ideal family and their ideal talents.
When I’m persuaded I’m headed in the right direction, God sometimes turns me around and points me in the direction that better pursues Him. He wrenches my hands free from a situation I think I’ve got under control without His help–and He gently reminds me I’m not the boss.

It isn’t about dropping cello for a guitar–I’ve already decided I can tune the cello to upright bass strings and we’ll have a pretty sweet setup for the next kid in line to join our family bluegrass jams.
But I need small reminders that I’m not in control of things, including my budding musicians.
I’m not in control of how things turn out. This mom gig is a whole lot of preparing kids to spread their wings, and not a whole lot about how I think they should do it. (Something you don’t think about while changing their diapers, but something you must come to terms with as they grow.)

Some of the things I think are essential–methods, theories, manners, goals–turn out not to be quite so essential. Some day they will encounter a fork in the road and it won’t be up to me to decide which path to take. And it won’t be scary; it’ll be gratifying, because I’ll be watching new wings take flight.

My boy cellist can play any instrument, it turns out. The ukulele tunes turned into guitar melodies when I told him I’d give him twenty dollars if he could learn “Here Comes the Sun”. In an hour’s time he had a crisp twenty warming his pocket.
After listening to me painstakingly learn “Redhaired Boy” on the mandolin, he snatched the instrument from my hands and announced, “it’s supposed to sound like this–”. Okay, fine.
My dad brought over an upright bass and my kid began thumping out “Blackberry Blossom”.
My brother handed him a banjo, which his fingers took to quite naturally. He’s saving his money to buy a resonator guitar. There’s a drum kit in his closet, and he just acquired a trombone for the sixth grade band.

He hasn’t touched the cello since bluegrass camp. It made me sad for a little while, but I think I’m getting over it. There’s an instrument in his hands nearly every free waking moment, so who am I to decide which one gets the attention?
It’s better than I’d even hoped when I first rented that tiny cello and put it into the welcoming arms of that tiny boy.
Our home is filled with music, and deep down, I think I wanted that even more than I wanted control over how things turn out.
God knew–He always knows. Faith over fear.
I trust you, God. Especially with my kids.