The lower room: non-experts in basement education.

Public school is a great teacher. I think grownups forget just how microcosmic it is: a tiny, identical reproduction of real life.

The quote I admire so much from Francis Shaffer about how “Christians should always actively seek the lower room”—I am quite literally in the basement of our school, boarded in by windowless walls. I couldn’t get any lower. I’ve gone and done it, made a fool of myself—making a fool of myself every single day. Like every job I’ve ever had before, I’m making it up as I go.

What does it take to become an expert on something, anyway? More schooling? Life? I’ve always wondered, never quite reaching the expert level at anything.
I have a parks and rec degree—this is the truth. It’s what I told the visiting cooperative learning coach when he popped in my room earlier in the week.
“I didn’t know you could play guitar,” he commended me warmly.
I don’t, not really, I’d thought. I know five or six chords. I just happen to be in the basement with children who also don’t know any better.

I don’t know how to explain music theory, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The last teacher made the rookie mistake of asking the kids what they liked and didn’t like about the previous music teacher. It rapidly turned into a free-for-all, as things do when you let the kids boss you instead of the other way around. So I’m working my way out of a situation where kids have not had to sing or even study music theory for the past couple years.
I’m more of a music room archeologist, digging through decades of leftover materials and broken instruments to scrape up something useful. There are millions of worksheets and outdated transparencies and vinyl records.
My best resource is YouTube, where creative music teachers with boundless energy have posted ideas and original songs with which I can teach.

I use a Sharpie to write up an original worksheet and copy them to pass out to students. The quarter note is a pear, the half note is apple, watermelon for the four-count whole note, and cherry for a pair of eighth notes. I draw pictures of smiling cartoon fruit on the whiteboard for the kids to copy onto their paper.
My own children have benefited not from fancy worksheets but from intentional, experiential learning. This means we read a lot and do millions of projects. It’s messy and loud-ish and caters to a smaller class size. So how do I translate real learning into real life public school?


Fortunately I discovered a stash of 20 ukuleles in the cabinets.
I listened to a podcast, a conversation between two music teachers who marveled at how engaging kids actually called for less passive screen-staring activities. They settled on ukuleles as the perfect non-Orff instrument for engaging screen-weary kids.
But making music—which should never be less than joyous—is the least of my worries. I’ve got students who handle an instrument with the same care they handle a Snickers bar.
We spend the first ten minutes of class talking about showing respect, having a good attitude, following directions. By the time we finished tuning and got to fretting chords, most were already checked out.

I’ve worked on building blocks of learning—stamina, for one: learning how to sit still and listen. My kindergarten students can now listen to (almost) a whole book without interrupting me (once or twice). I’ve got them to where they’ll sing a call-and-response song—my crowning achievement so far.
There are so, SO many behavior situations that ruin every third direction I give. The fatigue that comes with classroom management and handling whiners, gripers, meanies, and needies of every shape and size—it really is a wonder we cannot send these kids home to stop ruining the learning atmosphere. Positive reinforcement on the whole doesn’t do a lick of good unless the child is already behaving. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s an inch at a time and I might be one of the only responsible adults in their life.
If no one reads to them at home, if no one sings with them at home—why should they think it a natural thing when I do it in front of their eyes at school?

Basically I have no idea how this is going to fare long-term, but I never promised a long-term solution. All I knew is the situation could be better and it looked like if anyone cared at all, it must be me. The old camping motto, “pack in, pack out” and the general attitude from my mom, “leave things better than when you arrived” have both been fairly applicable, if not downright inspirational.

So this is the lower room. I actively sought it, I suppose. At thirty-eight years old, I haven’t even built up two days of sick leave in my short career. An expert would’ve stuck it out in this field for longer than me, would’ve racked up 17 years in this business by the time they got to my age. Maybe they would’ve earned their masters and be one of the school administrators by now.
There are no answers to the standard, pervasive issues, only the pledge to have a good attitude and take it day by day. It helps when I remember that they are all just kids. Kids who need directions, need someone to encourage them, need someone to give them hope.

And as Gretty reminds me, “you can always write a book about it someday.”

Turn on the Light: smuggling Jesus into the public school.

There are times I think I’d like to have a snarky Twitter account so I could spit out pithy one-liners. I resist this urge because one, social media has never done me any favors, and two, the anger of man does not bring about the righteousness of God (i.e. the pithiness of Pearl does not make for justice in the world). Rather, it makes for a slow-to-listen, quick-to-speak, know-it-all smart aleck.

The blog forces me to think it out, spell it out, work it out. But I have had some 140 (and 280, thanks Twitter for upping the limit) character-limit thoughts that have been boiled down over the first month of school with hours of car-ride time to junior high basketball games.
Like, interesting how church people get excited about stories of smuggling Bibles into forbidden countries but won’t set foot in a public school.

It’s too pithy, I know, but it must be admitted: it’s easier to stand in a booth at the fall festival handing out free water bottles, or volunteer to bring snacks to VBS and hoping that’s as far as Jesus expects me to “let my light shine before men”.

I recently sent a thank you note to a local church for providing lunch to the district during one of our professional development days. I asked them to also pray the Lord would call more folks of character (Christians, I meant real Christians) to the public school missionary field…not because children need to be better institutionalized but because people are bumping around in the dark just waiting for someone to turn on a flashlight.

Just ask the kid who doesn’t own a pair of matching shoes, the one who accidentally squirts ketchup right onto his cigarette-burned shirt but doesn’t even stop to wipe it off because he’s always dirty anyway. Ask the single parent who doesn’t know why her middle-schooler is suicidal even though she spends every off hour scrolling Tik Tok and comparing herself to other girls.
Ask the teachers who are overwhelmed with IEPs, behavior issues, state standards, curriculum, make-up work, parent concerns and complaints and the constant emails asking them to add more to their plate.
The problems are already too big to be solved, but it’s not too late for the Jesus-following crowd to let their light shine.


I myself never wanted to be a school teacher. It was familiarity with the public school scene and out of a sense of duty I felt compelled to become one. But I can tell you with confidence that whatever short-term “missionary” role I play (as it seems awfully doubtful I can sustain it full-time and long-term)—it has been far and above effective in amplifying this little light of mine.
The love of learning—curiosity—is a substantial component of Christian faith—seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened! Is it too big a stretch to reimagine Christian adults setting healthy examples and boundaries for children and other grownups? Teaching them how to be curious? How to succeed, how to fail, how to treat one another?
If one wanted to initiate change, wouldn’t it benefit them to begin building rapport amongst a circle of educators and pupils? To challenge one another to excellence in academics and civil duty? To engage with some of the 49.9 million public school attending youth in America who make up the next generation?

Here’s another limited-character thought:
What if all middle-age Americans (post-children) or young adults (pre-children) were drafted into a mandatory teaching service for two years? Would it promote a sense of duty? Would it make public education patriotic?

If big government wanted to solve this problem, I believe they’d be on it. But they have never really cared about children, only power. This is why sweeping changes to education these days are agenda-driven, not child-focused. If flaws are revealed in education (and there are many), voters would bail.
Truth is, you wouldn’t be so worried about the “indoctrination” of your kids if you saw the bigger picture—that as a parent, you have the biggest influence. Your kids are actually looking at you to learn how to listen, how to react, how to live.
They are waiting on you to lead them, to teach them.

What if parents who say they truly care showed up as classrooms reinforcement? What if dads came on campus to make sure no one was smoking pot in the bathroom or messing around on lunch break? What if you took a day off every month to volunteer? What if you taught for a year? It’s happening to me, and I’m not sorry about it.

I want to think Christians could see and seize this opportunity to show up in our American schools as light-bearers—taking turns to lessen the burden. But I get the feeling it costs far less to pass out water bottles and listen to the heroic tales of Bible-smugglers.

When You Walk By the Way

Last year I began writing a few chapters about one of the best habits I’ve ever happened upon. I initially thought I could turn it into a little series or book read-aloud, kind of like In the Closet. When I began teaching at school, I put down my notes, but I still maintain the habit—which I am now going to share with you.

It’s one of those life-disciplines that changes everything—but you have to be turned on to the idea before it occurs to you how important it is—like eating healthy food, or exercising regularly, or keeping a budget. Immensely beneficial, but sometimes you need a kick in the pants to get going.

I was driving my kids to school every morning, a fifteen minute drive on a good morning. They would fuss over who got to sit where, then they’d gripe about someone’s hand crossing the line on the seat, or a water bottle touching someone else’s backpack and I’d have to threaten to pull over and set them straight.

I’ve been convicted for a few years with a verse from Hebrews (5:12), “now, at the time you ought to be teachers, you are still infants”—in other words, believers need to grow past the point of gnawing on teething biscuits to sooth our gums. The concern Paul had for his friends was that they’d become complacent. He didn’t want them to be satisfied with just fellowship and the swag bag that brought them into the church in the first place—he wanted them to grow up and teach.

This is a still a problem, isn’t it? Many issues would be solved it the goal were to mature beyond spiritual teething biscuits. And why is teaching so important, anyway? Because it’s the natural next step in passing on a way of life. It is what grownups are supposed to do with the wisdom that distinguishes them from children.

So as my kids bickered in the back seat, I decided to pop in my audio Bible CDs. They immediately fell silent, absorbed in story.
We began in the fall; Acts. It turns out fifteen minutes is more than enough to cover two or three chapters, depending on the book. We’ve since read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, skipping in and out of the letters of Paul and breezing through Revelation. (“It’s an allegory, right Mom?”)
In the Old Testament we’ve made it to 2 Samuel before flipping back to the New Testament. Jesus keeps blowing our minds.
Now the ride to school is silent.

GK, first grader, said on the way home from school last week,
“Mama? You know how Jesus said not to ever swear, no matter what? Well, Miss Polly made us raise our right hands today and swear to be kind. Can you believe it?”
We have inside jokes, like when I got an eyelash stuck in my eye and Luke said, “if your right eyelash causes your right eyeball to sin, cut it out—it’d be better to enter heaven with one eyeball!”
Or when kids get out of the shower at night and huddle on the bathroom floor in their towels, procrastinating at putting on their jammies—a kid will joke, “Is _______ also among the prophets?!” (Gotta love a good King Saul juke)

Obviously there are folks who think it irreverent, but I can promise this: the Word is hidden in their heart. It’s common language and a familiar reference point in our family. Countless times my kids have asked me questions and I’ve referred them to what we listened to in the car that morning. Turns out the teaching part isn’t so hard when Jesus does the talking. All we have to do is keep pointing at Him.

It is not beyond the sea, so that you need to ask, “who will cross the sea and get it and proclaim it to us, that we may obey it?” But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may obey it. Deuteronomy 30:14

Here is the thing: parents have been handed the task of when you walk by the way. I think sometimes we get the idea we’ve got to sit down and really spill our guts for a conversation to count—not so. I have felt pressure to dedicate them as babies in the church and pray a sinner’s prayer to “get” them “saved”. These are not failproof for salvation, nor are they even biblical. Your children aren’t a checklist to mark off. Your job isn’t to save them; your job is to get them to the point where they have ears to listen. God can handle the heavy lifting.

Teach them diligently. Talk about things when you lie down and when you arise. When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way (Deut. 6, 11). This was the template God established for teaching kids: spackling paste in the cracks of life. When you fold clothes, when you pick them up from practice. As you go get the mail, on your trip down the grocery aisle. In traffic. After bedtime stories. Sitting on the edge of the tub as they play in the bubbles.
Apply generously and often.


God’s Word acknowledges the fact that you as a parent will be parenting as you work, as you earn a paycheck, as you pursue grownup endeavors. You, as a parent, will likely be doing things that often prioritize earning a living or completing daily chores above explicitly evangelizing your children. The intentionality is not misplaced—rather, it is delicately woven in to the fabric of your everyday life.

Think critically about the in-between moments: how are you spending them? How many minutes in the car on the way to where you’re going? How many moments are happening in the bedtime and morning hours? Have you set down your phone, turned off the game, removed your earbuds long enough to teach them diligently?

Are you the person they are asking questions? Let it be you they come to first.
I marvel when I listen to the Bible audio in my minivan on the way to school. In our ears this morning Jesus told the pharisees that the prostitutes and tax collectors were entering the kingdom of God ahead of them.
So we talked about prostitutes (people who sell their bodies to be abused by other people). And tax collectors (people who use their use their job description as a license to steal money). And Pharisees, people who talk a lot and judge a lot but are straining gnats while eating camel soup (Matt. 23:24).

I’ve never had to bring up an awkward topic before to my kids. All I’ve got to do is listen along with them and then answer questions. For some reason, God made it so every bit of the Bible can be chewed, swallowed, and digested by children.

What an awesome foundation.
What a cool job it is to be a parent, cracking open the spackle and applying liberally.

See to it that you don’t despise one of these little ones, because I tell you their angels are always looking into the face of my Father in heaven.
Matthew 18:10

Rhett and Link and the key to Undeconstructionable Faith

One of the Average Pearl posts that gets the most traffic to this day is a summary I made of Rhett and Link (Good Mythical Morning) a couple years ago. I’d listened to their podcast about why they’d “left the faith” or “deconstructed”—the more edgy way of saying the same thing—and I retold their history and what most likely led them down that particular path.

As a quick review, Rhett and Link are well-known worldwide as a comedy duo on Youtube. They do ridiculous but usually PG-rated music videos, short series, silly challenges, etc. My twelve year old begs to watch them eat things while blindfolded or debate the merits of Nerds versus Snickers.
We were introduced to these guys via Buck Denver, a Christian children’s DVD series created by the same guy who created Veggietales, Phil Vischer. Since then, they have abandoned Christianity and detailed it publicly on their podcast, Ear Biscuits.

When I check my website stats, it is a constant reminder that folks are searching the internet for Truth. They look at friendly guys like Rhett and Link and are curious over the details of their breakup with Jesus. I have a hunch most are genuinely seeking meaning in their own life but coming up dry.

It seems like along with a thirst to know more about “deconstruction” seekers tend to be on the hunt for real spiritual meat. If this original Christianity wasn’t the real thing, or at least not real enough for PG super YouTube stars like Rhett and Link—what, exactly, is real enough?

I’m a thirty-eight year old woman with half-grown kids. I’m younger than Rhett and Link, but definitely in the same cohort that grew up in the nineties with a serious Baptist influence. I know about burning bad CDs and purity culture and WWJD everything. I remember camps where teenagers were “called to the ministry” and promised, as a fourteen year old, to become preachers and missionaries. I know concerts and long van rides, confessions and crying and altar calls and everyone close your eyes and raise your hand if right now in this very moment if you were to die tonight, you don’t know where you would go.

The thing is, however sincere it felt at the time, it wasn’t the real deal. Emotionally-charged ultimatums have never been what Christianity was about. Following Jesus is a daily act of joy-inspired self-denial— for the joy before Him he endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2).
I recognized smoke and mirrors when I saw them as a teenager.
Many, many people did not.

It is all thanks in large part to uncool people, the ones who get the least credit—now this truly is the way of Christ, having no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him (Isaiah 53).
The unattractive, true Jesus-following examples in my case were my folks. Unattractive, because they were older, wiser, anti-idiocy advocates with an ultra practical lifestyle. Nothing in their appearance that I might want to emulate them because what teenager wants their peers to think of them as a forty year old?
My own parents (brilliant and loving and supremely attractive in hindsight) never bought into a youth group culture where we had to go along with twenty-something Brads who made us all draw straws to eat packets of mayonnaise and relish in an attempt to bond with other teenagers on Wednesday nights. They knew the battle was more real than that, and they made sure we were aware of it. There were no late night, soul-baring conversations at my house. We didn’t stay up until midnight and watch X-Files with cool parents. They were too tired for all of that and firmly believed it wasn’t in their job description to makes us happy or keep us entertained. Our family didn’t go to church to make friends; we went to worship and study the Bible, and if the church didn’t do those things, we went somewhere else.

My parents paid their bills on minimal funds. Mom wrote checks in the name of Jesus just like the Macedonian churches (2 Cor. 8), “giving out of their poverty” and “beyond their ability.”
Coincidentally, we didn’t have the money or influence to show up looking like groupies at youth group. It wasn’t intentional, it was just an unvoiced understanding that some of our values didn’t align with the church, or at least their methods of attracting youth. As a teenager and after years of not fitting in, you sort of start to give up.

My mom and dad fostered joy and an absolute reliance on God’s provision. Our close-knit family dynamics weren’t cultivated by vacations, sports teams, hobbies, or “making memories”—rather, the opposite. We were on the same team because we were all facing the same giants. We each took on the world and returned at night to the safety of a home where Jesus was alive and present.
Under these circumstances I think the inability to fake it helped me spot the real fakers and ultimately avoid becoming one.

It’s really no wonder Rhett, Link, and their like-minded friends have abandoned faith. It wasn’t real to begin with, and jerry-rigging Christianity to be more Saturday-night-live-ish is a headache. It’s far easier to abandon ship than keep up the carnival games under the pretense that this is how we win people to Jesus, guys.

But there are people out there still doing it, micro-celebrities and YouTubers and influencers who water down Jesus until he’s hardly Living Water. People who have become so tolerant of and comfortable in the world that they enjoy life in a gray zone, full of incongruities and misnomers—the very trap Paul warned believers not to fall into: you were called to freedom, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh! (Gal.5:13)
Until very recently I listened regularly to Knox and Jamie, two southern-Baptist pop culture experts, on their podcasts, The Popcast and The Bible Binge. They get some things right. But they sow a lot of confusion by wading into today’s culture and cherry-picking what supports their liberal worldview. They want to be the type of Christian who can watch and recommend violent, explicit movies and also teach 1 Samuel while doubting the historical validity of the Bible.
(If everything is so up for debate, I’d wager they are on Rhett and Link’s path of “deconstruction.”)

I’ve seen other grown-ups my age who are trying to right the ship by steering modern Christianity in another direction—the direction of reformation. It is well-intentioned, and I applaud the energy that is directed. Lots of books are written and purchased, plenty of social media and podcasts. It’s the kind of Christianity you can get on board with, where parents want to be parents and the family is the focus. There’s quite a bit of banter over schooling and raising up the right people into the proper political positions. Unfortunately, it seems to be a faux-Puritanism that avoids any and all reality. Martin Luther also did some reforming and came to the realization that sitting on the bench wasn’t spreading his light very far. The facts are this—a dumpster-fire world exists: “in this world you will have trouble,” Jesus promised (John 16:33), and we’ve been put smack into the mess of it.
With purpose—we are put into this world with purpose. Just probably not the kind that sees believers changing the world through politics and Charlotte Mason.

Where do you lean? This is my question. Are you playing carnival games, having abandoned Christianity completely? Are you toying with grace as a ticket to do whatever you like, the Knox and Jamie-type teetering on the brink? Are you a Christian soldier, marching solidly in the opposite direction, hell-bent on keeping your nose clean but conveniently ignoring the mess we’re in? Are you a Puritan who won’t touch sinners with a ten-foot pole but preach your how-to-save-the-world convictions regularly on Twitter?
It would be nice to identify your type, at least so the younger generation can have a better shot figuring out how to construct a faith that won’t implode someday.

There are people still looking for real meat. They see hints of it in those nice guy types, pretty pictures of happy families on Instagram, news headlines that mention kindness, generosity or any hint of self-denial. These are all poor substitutes, but seekers like the flavor. They’re looking for more. Some are even hungry for a full meal.

Jesus told his disciples that He was the real meat.
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them…the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” (John 6:56,57)

When He said this, many people left.
Many of his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60)

Friends, people leave Christianity because either they never tasted the real meat or they did but the “worries of this life, the deceitful news of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word” (Mark 4:19).
Following Jesus isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not for people who are full, but people who are hungering and thirsting (Matt.5:6), hanging onto Jesus’s words. It’s a life of dying to self—putting off the old, putting on the new—but the death feels right because the former life was all gross little packets of mayo and relish. There’s no room in this life for worthless endeavors or even worthwhile self-focused endeavors. It is for those who want to be sober, want to straighten up, want to be delivered—but admit they can’t do it on their own. It isn’t for the righteous, but for the forgiven.
This is a faith that cannot be deconstructed because it’s firmly built on the Rock.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
Revelation 12:11

Toothpaste on the elbow: tell us pleasant things.

I have become busy this summer planning a whole new music curriculum for school on top of my general mom duties. It was a swift, no-turning-back decision and I tend to get overwhelmed by the scope of the project.
Firstly, my music theory chops are severely underdeveloped. I just like to sing and strum a guitar, and it doesn’t seem like that could get me a whole job. Yet here I am, contemplating the merits of color-coded solfege and Orff and the difference between glockenspiels and xylophones.

I was thinking aloud about the potential in overlapping subjects—fractions and meter! Rhythm and pattern! The science of loud and quiet and noise vibrations. The history of composition and instruments. Literacy and rote memory work. Shakespeare, performance, comic operettas, John Phillips Sousa, Jimmy Driftwood, local versus world. My brain is a sticky fly trap for ideas.

Meanwhile my garden is bursting with aroma and symmetry—a combination of multiplication (one seed+sun+water+time=bountiful flowers and fruit) and awe (the beauty!). The diversity in root systems, corms, tubers, sprouting eyes. Vines that trellis, male and female flowers and buzzy little pollinators that promote fertilization. When I planted sunflower seeds, they grew into the exact replica of the photo on the seed packet.

The two things I’ve homed in on this summer, teaching music and growing stuff, are completely, absolutely dependent on the standard-issued, God-provided, earth material.
Music is not produced without sound waves, and plants never spring from nothing.
The rules, though not explicitly stated, are stiff. The accuracy and reliability is mind-boggling. What you plant is what you grow. What you sing is what others hear. A new creation cannot be conjured up—you can’t mix a graham cracker with a cup of lemonade and expect it to turn into a graham cracker plant. You cannot sing by rubbing toothpaste on your elbow. No one has ever even tried these things in the name of passing the product off as vegetables and music, so implicit the rules are carved into our conscience.

Still, an original, amazing creation can be cultivated within the boundaries. The garden is unique to its climate, unique to the people who nurture or neglect it. The tone or timbre is unique to the person who vocalizes or plays the particular instrument.
One takes the seeds they have and the notes on the scale and the possibilities are limitless.

I haven’t heard people argue against this sound logic. No one is buying graham cracker lemonade plants in the produce section at the grocery store. We aren’t fooled by a sludgy mix of goo next to ripe red tomatoes and crunchy sweet peppers. No, it’s fruit and vegetables we want and expect.
No musician has ever made it onto stage rubbing toothpaste on their elbow. The audience would be weirded out and leave immediately. The liberty and expression that comes with songwriting and performing is meaningless without melody and rhythm. It’s music we want and expect.

I wonder sometimes if logic is too logical to the culture of today. Anarchy balks at logic, because rules are too rule-y. I read a book, Blackout, by Candace Owens. She muses on the state of black Americans as well as the history, present, and future of our nation. She surmises that we have become, altogether, so free and enlightened about ourselves that we’ve gone off the deep end of logic. Free—our enemies around us all defeated. Enlightened—because we are living at peace with individual rights and liberties.

Owens suggests that instead of being satisfied with our affluence, the culture of today looks for ways new ways to be at war. In short, people aren’t content to live at peace. There is always a new level to conquer, liberties that are curious and obscure to outsiders that live in other nations. Folks that would be delighted to feed their children or send them to school—think of their puzzlement over the “right” of aborting healthy babies and the “right” to pose as anything other than their birth gender.

Indeed, human nature is at war with itself, always self-seeking yet never satisfied. Always wanting what’s beyond the boundary without realizing there is only confusion beyond them—toothpasted elbows and graham cracker slop. What happens when an abortion brings you unexpected grief, regret, and self-loathing? What happens when gender-bending brings confusion, emptiness and isolation? Is it any wonder suicide plagues our young people? That a diagnosable mental illness affects one in four Americans?

It’s fairly easy to draw the conclusion that living life without natural boundaries is darkness and confusion. In the Word, God’s people try to escape the rules and fall into anarchy territory:

These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” And to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!”
Isaiah 30:9-11

Sound familiar? Our culture is filled with people who hate authority and the laws of nature to the point of self-destruction.
God warns them, “this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant. It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern.”
Isaiah 30:13

But this is what He wants for us:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion…How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.“
Isaiah 30:15,18,19

Life inside the lines is full of color, creativity, opportunity, contentment. In hindsight, it’s never been as much about rules—this and that—as it has been about order. The kind of order that makes way for healthy relationships. The kind that upholds a marriage vow as a promise so that when the waves start rocking the boat, nobody bails.
The kind that introduces forgiveness that wipes the slate clean.
It’s the kind of order that leads the way for children by example and doesn’t hedge questions about identity and sex before they are mature enough to understand it.
The order that balances the truth of God’s word (in quietness and trust is your strength…) with the crazy, chaotic world that screams, mob-like, “Don’t tell us what is right! Tell us pleasant things!”

I’ve seen it in my own life over and over—fruitful with peace, love, and self-control.
It’s abundant—like a well-watered garden planted in the sunshine.
It’s beautiful—like music.

a joyful plod: have-it-all moms.

The morning of my first job interview since I had children (a good decade and a half ago), I pulled a crocheted gray cardigan over a buttoned-up floral blouse, slipped into a pair of rarely-worn khakis, and slid into my favorite purple half-inch pumps.

When my little girl descended the stairs into the kitchen for breakfast, her hair tousled and eyes bleary, she stopped cold and studied my outfit. A huge smile broke out on her face. She ran to me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

“Oh mom,” she breathed, fingering the front of my shirt, “you look just like a teacher.”

Surely it comes more naturally to other people, and obviously I am slow to commit and reluctant to limit myself to one career-related endeavor. It’s my husband who always wanted to climb ladders or even got any sort of thrill out of trying.
I’ve been biding my time, waiting for the golden opportunity or a sign from heaven to let me know I could move on from the stay-at-home gig. After all, who will do laundry? Who will clean toilets? Who will roast the chicken and mash the potatoes? These are high on the list of things good mothers do, and I love clean things and delicious food.

I spent one summer in college working for an old lady who, every day, wanted me to clean her windows with vinegar, newspaper, and water–the outside of the windows, mind you–where she hung the suet feeder. There’s nothing more demoralizing than scraping big globs of fat off glass you cannot reach (the windows being on the second story) with the wrong tool for six dollars an hour. (Demoralizing well describes every job I had prior to the age of 26.) I also weeded the pitiful zinnias and polished the Civil War-era silver on the mantel. The latter felt to me like a chore better left to professionals (also, do I look like a person who has ever polished anything in her life?). This was confirmed when the tiny, marble-sized handle on the sugar bowl popped right off the lid and bounced out of my hands and onto the hardwood floor. I pretended I never saw it happen. (Lord, forgive.) 

The lady’s name was Win and she so happened to be a professor emeritus at the University–a skilled writer known nationally for her rhetoric-plus-composition curriculum and literary translations from Spanish into English. I didn’t know I was in the presence of anyone great. It was later, when her obituary was in the paper ten years ago and my mom sent it to me, I felt a kinship toward her instead of dread over window washing and the nagging guilt of the sugar bowl incident.

The article described her life and accolades, a writer, teacher, mother–hugely successful and beloved by students. She was 38 years old when she earned her master’s degree and 53 when she got her doctorate. (These are numbers you appreciate as a mother in the dregs of potty training, sleeplessness, and unending chasing-of-toddlers phase.) There was a quote she’d give years and years before she passed away. I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve tucked it away in my pocket for such times as this: “I firmly believe a person can do it all and have it all. You can be a mother, an author, a teacher. You just can’t expect to do it all at once.”

Bless Win for saying it. We get in such a hurry to do it all and be it all and what’s left in the meanwhile? But then again, what’s left behind if you aren’t pursuing at least something? It’s a plodding sort of pace one must maintain if they expect it to be a joy-filled life. But plodding forward, nevertheless.

We’ve been studying the story of Samuel at home, where a baby, pre-born, is dedicated to the Lord by his yet-to-conceive (and desperate-for-kids) mother.
Two things important to know: it was God who had caused her to be barren in the first place (1 Sam. 1:6) and it was a source of bitter grief (1:16).

When the Lord gives her the so-desired baby, she announces she will wean the baby and then take him up to the house of the Lord to dedicate him. Her husband shrugs and says, “okey-dokey!” (This is humorous to me because I’m married to the same type of guy– “do what seems best to you!” Applicable advice in every situation, from shopping to hair-cutting to child rearing! Also the same guy who says, “why are you sad? Don’t I mean more than ten sons to you?” Seriously, Elkanah?! not.the.same.thing.)
So Hannah, Samuel’s mother, stays at home with him until he is weaned. I imagine this was akin to getting him used to eating solid food–probably meat and bread (as that’s what Eli and the priests ate, but I’m getting ahead of the story) and giving him a few get-ready-for-kindergarten life lessons.

Though this must have felt like an awful ticking countdown for Hannah, for whom there was no promise of additional children to take Samuel’s place.
But, upon closer inspection–I don’t think it was so. Hannah was determined to squeeze the joy out of the toddler years, just as she was determined to keep her promise of giving her son away when time ran out. Surely this determination and boldness to keep plodding forward was a source of inspiration to her husband–do what seems best to you! (don’t you think he knew good and well he wasn’t going to change her mind?!)–and every person who knew Hannah?
She was the same woman who defended herself to Eli, the priest, when he accused her of drunken-prayer: “I am not drunk! I’m pouring my soul out to the Lord!” (1:15)

All this to say–my children have been weaned accordingly. I also stayed home until they were fit to be around other kids and grownups, pouring on some version of obey-and-respect-authority and treat-others-the-way-you-want-to-be-treated kindergarten lessons.
I’m amazed I made it through what I consider one of the sketchiest phases of my life (toddler boys on mountains near rushing rivers, bears, and mountain lions. Nine-month long winters, poorly vented wood-burning stoves, carbon-monoxide poisoning, GT kiddos with major sensory issues, scraping by to pay the mortgage, you get the picture). Weaning takes a looong time.
Win, I think, was right: you really can’t do it all at once, but it all can be done. And it can be done with great determination. Hannah knew it, too.
There’s no passive life that is worth living, but let’s not mistake passivity for patience and persistence. God closed her womb; he also opened it. He gave her a child and expected her to keep her promise; she did.

God did bless Hannah with more kids–and who knows what else! Did she get the job she interviewed for? Did she work until she retired? Did she become a writer? (If the recorded prayer in chapter 2 is any indication, I think she did!)
This second prayer happens when she drops Samuel off at his appointed destination. It’s an audible prayer this time, not one mistaken by Eli or anyone else as drunkenness:

My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance (1:1)
There is no one beside you, no Rock like our God (1:2)
Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the Lord is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed. (1:3)

This bold prayer goes on for ten verses, every one a declaration of God’s goodness to Hannah. It is His goodness to us when we don’t lean on our own understanding, but acknowledge Him in all our ways and He directs our path (Proverbs 3:6).
What a faith-filled, devoted, humble and confident mom!
I wonder, do I have that same vibe about me?

And when I put on my flowered blouse–and my kids are beaming, holding my hand when we walk into school together–and my husband gives me the do what seems best to you! go-ahead nod along with a bear hug and kiss–

When, at thirty-eight years old, the ground shifts because the babies are weaned and I’ve plodded into new ground–
I think I’m on the right path, one where Hannah and Win and other moms are cheering me on.