Toward a Table Theology or Why I Am Reading Cookbooks

One late weekday evening, I found myself putzing around my kitchen – feeding my sourdough starter, thumbing through a cookbook, copying a recipe onto a recipe card, waiting on baking muffins, checking my pantry stock, perusing a serve ware catalog. To my surprise, I realized – I’m enjoying myself. 

It was striking to me, because I don’t come from a culture of kitcheny-people. That wasn’t really a big interest among my girlfriends, classmates, or parents. I didn’t come to adulthood, marriage and motherhood with an arsenal of skills or recipes. As a new bride it was kind of a big joke that “I don’t cook” – only it wasn’t a joke when it came to 5pm each day.

I never really hated the kitchen but there has often been a big stress point at the meeting place of my under-developed abilities in the kitchen with my heart desires to care for my family and provide hospitality to others. When my comfortable skills range would be a modest, simple dinner (largely-catered!?) about once a week, my life has actually demanded three meals a day plus snacks for a small home crowd, and a heart tugged by the Word of God and the Spirit of God to embrace all the richness of a life characterized by love and deep connections that are often carried on the wings of a meal shared together. 

Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash

As I learned some meal-time survival skills, more tension points came up. I wanted to eat and serve delicious and healthy food, but I felt like maybe it was wasteful to spend the time working on that. Books like “The Life-giving Home” and “The Life-giving Table” inspired me like crazy, but then concerns like several children with food allergies and a super tight budget and my own struggle to achieve a healthy weight would offset my eagerness to throw myself into caring to grow as a homemaker at least in hospitality and cooking. I kept growing, but in a haphazard way. 

And of course, I kept reading. “The Gospel Comes with a House-key” painted a beautiful, but completely foreign picture for me. I realized that my home would always look and feel different than Rosaria’s (as it should), but in reading her words my heart grew to be a little more like hers, and I think, a little more like Jesus’s. I loved Shauna Niequist’s love for food and people in “Bread & Wine.” Time would fail me if I began to sing the praises of Nancy Wilson, Rebekah Merkle and Rachel Jankovic and their assorted books and podcasts on similar topics (oh but especially “Eve in Exile”! And “Fit to Burst!” And and and.)…

Being a beginner cook and a millennial, a lot of my exposure to recipes and general cookery-thoughts came from food blogs and Pinterest and Instagram. There is some great stuff to be discovered, but it can also be so hit-or-miss, so I’m learning to be a little choosier with my sources, and I’ve found that I like the tangibility of physical recipe boxes and cookbooks. I don’t think it has ever been really about the food itself that interests me, because the food isn’t The Thing for me…it’s the magical marriage of food and Home. Food and Hospitality. Food and service to Christ. The tangibility of a cup of water offered in His name is just thrilling. 

An oft-quoted line that I’ve heard from Ruth Chou Simons has lingered with me and inspired me in many areas of life. She says: “Learn to love what must be done.” I’ve pondered that for several years now…homeschooling must be done! I should learn how to love it. Cleaning must be done! I should find a way to make it enjoyable. Laundry must be done! (Still working on it…ha!) And so with cooking, I find myself in a position where it is my duty to ensure that a houseful of people are regularly fed something decent, with love and care and perhaps not too many hotdogs. It can be a miserable drudge, a situation in which I am constantly slinging frozen pizzas and insisting that “it’s cereal night!” again…OR…it can be something that I allow myself the time to actually begin to be good at. The grocery budget can be an area of our lives that my husband and I find worthy of some investment. Maybe I should read through some cookbooks and ask some friends for ideas and give the sourdough-starter-baby another whirl. 

Having or not having homemade bread is not the point. Miserable mealtime legality is not in view here. What I am learning is that I can find great joy in doing my duty. I can throw myself into learning how to cook with all the energy and intentionality and creativity I can muster by the grace of God. Some days loving my children is grabbing donuts at a drive-thru, but more often it is scrambled eggs and turkey bacon, and some days it’s a little extra, with thick cut bacon, real napkins and a fancy sparkling juice concoction in my mother’s wine glasses. 

When we were registering for dishes and things before our wedding, I felt quite righteous in saying WE ONLY NEED four of this, we are just us! Look at me being simple and unselfish and minimalist and godly! That may have been the best course at that time, but now I am scouring thrift stores for MORE dishes, because we’re caring for MORE people, for the glory of God. 

Sometimes it seems like – should I go to this effort? Does it really matter? Baby bellies will be filled tonight whether I pull myself together and bring my A-game or cop out with my laziest crummy option (on some nights that is my legitimate A-game!), and if I can’t even muster that, they’ll surely find their way to a bag of animal crackers and finish that off! ….but I have a growing conviction that even the simplest meal of the humblest fare ought to hint at the extravagance of the love of God. A good meal reminds you of goodness in Creation, of provision for you, and it can be a foreshadowing of the wedding supper of the Lamb.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

….in having the nerve to write about this, you might be deceived into thinking that I am so competent as to make quick weeknight Baked Alaskas (not once in my life!) or that I would know what to do with any given cut of meat (on my to-master list!). Or that I own – or can differentiate – salad forks and dessert forks. Nope, Wrong, Lies. I host multi-course meals pretty much never. But, I am calling the effort to grow in this area worthwhile, because people are worthwhile and meals are a tangible blessing to them, and I’m ready to put in the time, effort, money, etc…to take some baby steps in owning this area of my calling. I want to develop of handful of recipes that will taste like ‘Home’ to my family, that will taste like love to them.

And in this small step I have been captured by a great joy…I have found, once again, that in surrendering to obedience to Christ, in humbly accepting his easy yoke, there is immeasurable treasure. There is fruit to be born! There is good work to do! And someone needs to set the table.

I don’t know what this will look like, and that’s half the fun. What will we have? Who should we invite? Will there be queso involved? It’s a real dangerous situation too, because I am simultaneously learning and teaching a gaggle of children as I do (how delightful).  Today it might be trying a new recipe or planting some more herbs, practicing up-scaling a crowd-pleasing recipe or teaching my little ones how to juice a lemon. And while we’re at it, we’ll celebrating the goodness of God in creating so many good things to enjoy, in giving us the ability to be creative and try new things, and in the sheer pleasure of being in fellowship together, until the day when we enjoy fellowship in Zion. 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

aftermath (and things I need to remember)

One evening, I took stock, as a mother does. The disaster around me, the disaster that I myself appeared to be – it all seemed like it should have been alarming, but in a moment of unusual clarity, I realized, “This looks like a war zone because it absolutely was one today.” 

My taking stock included my son’s crochet needle left in my room, various books and chargers strewn about, a package of diapers ripped into and left askance in the bathroom, clothing from yesterday, clothing for tomorrow, clothing for mending, clothing for returning…and my own ragged messy bun and weary reflection. 

Weary, but happy. We did it.

Maybe it’s the military history that I’ve been reading, but in my mind’s eye I could suddenly see the mess as an absolute disaster, YES, but also as a representative aftermath of a worthwhile battle we had survived (yet not without a ferocious sweat broken); maybe we’d even won! 

Perhaps one of my biggest struggles as a wife, mother and homemaker is this: I constantly divorce the practical, daily life from the bigger-picture Why. It is a thousand percent natural to me to fixate on the much more straightforward tasks like keeping a clean and tidy home, while the primary things, the Life being lived by the family, the efforts of the heart and mind and soul – these are nuanced, and willy-nilly, and sometimes hard to pinpoint, and can almost never be checked off one’s to-do list. 

Mopping the floor and banning all potential trespassers? Doable (with a very angry, mean Mom voice and face. Good thing I CAN DO THAT. CHECK). Cleaning the floor, for the sake of the trespassers, and joyfully accepting that it will need to be done again tomorrow? Best done with a heart that has learned (slash IS learning!) to discern the better things. 

The children are the better things. The fellowship, the heart-work, the joy and the comfort and care for wounded souls, these are mission-critical things. My husband, my neighbors, my friends – they rank. It isn’t that the chore-efforts or the state of the home doesn’t matter – it’s that the home matters because the people matter.

I can accept the casualties of my just-cleaned floors and the dinner that didn’t turn out ‘quite right’ because the toddler’s needs and the math tutoring ranked higher. Sometimes an exquisite dinner really is the thing, or a clean house becomes the urgent necessity. But they are tools and servants, not the ends in and of themselves. 

Sometimes meeting the physical need is actually accomplishing heart work too. Who knows what subtle layers of love one might be laying down by cheerfully filling and refilling the maddening sippy cup and water bottle parade of the youngsters’. 

At the end of the day, I can handle a disastrous place, though I prefer a clean one – and yet either one might represent a battle well-waged. May God grant us strength to see and to choose the better things. May our homes be well-ordered, at times, but our hearts, always. 

Health & Weight Loss 2019-2020

 

I’m the last person who wants to boss you around about how to be healthier or lose weight or how to eat and exercise to be happier. But, in 2019 I found a lot of peace and joy in some simple changes that I made and so I thought I would write about what has worked for me (so I can remember!), and maybe you can have some inspiration and ideas if improving your health is a goal for the new year. 

There are myriad options out there for diet and exercise, and I really believe in finding what works for you and what is a match for your season of life…anyway, here’s what has worked for me! Of course it always starts in the mind…

Mindset Reboot

Probably the biggest change in losing weight started in my mind, and I can really only attribute that to God busting through some faulty thinking patterns I had. Basically I was kind of hopeless, feeling like my body was broken and with my busy stage of life I was kind of “stuck” with it. But in His graciousness, he helped me to identify and take down some of those lies: 

False narratives I believed (consciously and subconsciously!):  

• I can’t lose weight without killing it at the gym and/or starving myself
• i will always be this way…my fate is sealed in being overweight and unhealthy
• I can’t lose weight while breastfeeding. If I try to focus on that, I’ll forfeit my baby’s milk supply.
• I can’t have a healthy relationship with a scale…the numbers will always torment me and I’ll be an obsessive person defined by imaginary judgment from my scale 

I won’t get into it a lot more, but I also had some deeply entrenched shame and feelings I had to confront about God having hard feelings toward me or believing that I was a failure as a person because I was carrying extra weight. In fact, as my compassion for myself and my body has increased, and my fullness of joy in God’s tender love and joy in me has increased, so has my ability to lose weight and be happy. He’s a good Father and he never despised me for having gained weight. I know it sounds crazy, and it looks crazy here on the page, but I was living from a place of feeling that way.

The First Forty 

I had Titus in June, and did not weigh in until my 6-week post partum appointment at the very end of July. From there, I lost a little over forty pounds in about four months (Aug-Nov). Then through the holidays I went up and down a bit and mostly attended to maintaining my loss and learning to enjoy a season of feasting in a healthy way. Now in the new year I am eager to get back into a more disciplined, focused weight-loss and health-gain mode…but first, I am pausing here on what worked for this first stretch! 

Weigh-Ins. One of the first changes I made was purchasing a home bathroom scale for the first time ever. In the past I have avoided weighing in and even knowing my weight because I have struggled at points in my life with a disordered way of eating and thinking about weight. But God has graciously enabled me to view the scale as just one tool, just one feedback number, that can serve and help me without having any bearing on my value as a person or my performance as a child of God, a wife/mother, etc. It’s just a number – but it’s a helpful number. 

Weighing in almost daily or at least several times a week has been essential for me in staying focused on my goals, and it has been helpful in observing how different things impact my weight. I’ve tried to weigh in at the same time every day, immediately after nursing (lets be real – I’ll pee, blow my nose, and check my face for any pop-able acne too! LOL!), and first thing in the morning, to limit the amount of variation. I still see a lot of ups and downs and I’m learning not to freak out about it, but I am also able to tell if I overdid the dark chocolate that I love to consume pretty much daily, or if what I ate really helped me to meet goals while still feeling satisfied. 

It’s just feedback. It’s just a number. If I felt overly emotional on a certain day, I could skip my weigh-in with no guilt…but usually my curiosity about what would happen the day after a long walk or eating lower carb, etc…was interesting enough to me that I wanted to weigh in. 

I keep a note in my phone tracking my progress toward my goals. Seeing the numbers changing is a tangible sign and keeps me feeling motivated.

Going Dairy-Free. I’d like to say this was with an open heart and without any begrudging thoughts…but truly, I cut out dairy for the sake of my baby who was screaming for hours in the evening. For the sanity of all of us, I have completely cut out dairy. I miss it at times, and will probably eventually add it back in, but I know it’s helped with my weight loss goals as well (I think my skin is clearer and I have less stomach aches too, possibly linked to this?). Anyway I know it has removed the temptation to overeat some of my favorite foods like fettuccine alfredo and cheesecake and ice cream! 

Intermittent Fasting. For a few weeks I just tried to focus on whole foods and not eating too much, and once I was certain that my milk supply was stable, I started experimenting with some 16/8 fasts (meaning I would have an 8-hr window during which I would eat, and then start fasting around 3:30 or 4pm and fast for 16 hours). These fasts aren’t overly intense but it was imposing some boundaries and discipline on my eating habits and it really paid off. Initially it felt kind of hard not eating dinner at 5:30 and not snacking in the evenings, but I grew accustomed quickly and I think it reset my appetite into a healthier zone. It also made me feel some freedom and ease during my eating window, like I could enjoy a full and satisfying meal and not stress about it…I just tried to focus on filling up on healthy foods. I think it has enabled me to feel like HUNGER IS NOT THE BOSS OF ME! And that is really freeing.

For a long time I had believed that my blood sugar issues and hypoglycemic symptoms would prevent me from being able to use fasting as a tool, but in fact, I have found those things improved with the practice. I really enjoy my fasting pattern and my body feels better when I fast in the 16/8 way about three times a week. I could probably push it more with longer fasts and more days, but I haven’t wanted to or needed to up to this point. 

Also, I was prepared to completely drop the fasting if it impacted my milk supply, since this is a higher priority for me and it is only about 12-15 months that I plan to nurse. Only once have I felt like I had a drop in supply and it recovered in less than a day. I have found that rest and hydration have a bigger impact on my milk production and I don’t have to overthink eating enough for the baby’s sake (incidentally, he’s in the 92nd percentile for weight). I also love Mother’s Milk tea and when I push for longer fasts I will make sure I have some on hand. 

A side benefit of IF is how empowered I have felt just by having a victory in one effort. I have suddenly found some new confidence that I can overcome, in Jesus’ name! The discipline is spilling into other areas of my life. I have grown in my ability to enjoy other things besides eating too. Whereas formerly at the end of a long day I would want to unwind by snacking or treating myself to special foods, I have learned to be restored and refreshed by taking epsom salt baths with essential oils, walking in the evening, drinking hot tea or decaf coffee and enjoying books or movies or music or trying new skin care products.  I’ve simplified my to-do lists, and it has a huge impact mentally. If I feel really deprived during an evening fast, I just tell myself how much I will enjoy eating whatever I am craving – tomorrow. Not having to make a meal some evenings has also been stress-relieving and has helped our grocery budget!

What I’m Eating. The main thing I focus on is having a ton of veggies on my plate…salads, roasted veggies, sautéed fajita veggies…all the delicious colors and nutrients! I feel I can really safely fill up on these without much worrying about a calorie count or portion size. I love pairing my veggie-focused meals with good protein from a variety of sources with meat, fish, eggs and nuts. I still enjoy other food groups, but in more limited quantities. I may eventually go lower carb (my husband has had success with that), but simply limiting sugar and refined carbs has felt really good thus far, and I value healthy carbs for the sake of protecting my energy, hormones, and milk supply. I’m learning to listen to my body and answer what I’m craving with healthy options. 

In the past months some of my favorite easy and healthy meals have been:

 –  chicken thighs roasted on a sheet pan at 400 degrees with another pan of seasonal veggies, all topped with organic cajun seasoning or just salt and pepper and a dash of avocado oil.

• grass-fed ground beef taco salads with all the fixings. My kids love this meal and it couldn’t be easier…plus my oldest two kiddos have learned to make some stellar guacamole to go with it!
• turkey or beef kielbasa sautéed with a rainbow of peppers and onions or cabbage. 
• A huge bowl of roasted broccoli with everything but the bagel seasoning, whatever other leftover veggies or meat I have on hand and a fried egg on top.
• Lunch time salads or low-carb wraps with deli turkey or a roasted salmon filet. I like a dash of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and salt and pepper as a quick dressing. 

I rotate buying cashews/almonds/walnuts for snacks (and brain health! Fighting depression is a big factor for me!), and love having cucumbers with guacamole or hummus for a snack too. I often make big protein smoothies with collagen powder or pea protein powder. Having some healthy desserts on hand really helps me to stay on track. I like Halo Top’s dairy-free ice cream, non-dairy dark chocolate, or homemade treats made with stevia, and the occasional Zevia soda or kombucha.

As far as splurging or eating ‘off’ my typical diet, I try to keep it to just a meal or two on a weekend and then try to get right back into my routine. If I’m going to “cheat,” I prefer to make sure its a really enjoyable, satisfying experience and not just a random stress-eating situation (but that happens plenty, too). 

Going Forward 

I’m really, really thankful for how far I’ve come. I know that God has enabled me, strengthened my mind to be disciplined and positive, and helped my body to respond to the steps I’ve taken even though I typically struggle with losing weight while I’m breastfeeding unless I workout a LOT. I feel better in a million ways.

That said, I do have more goals and I want to continue progressing. I am encouraged by my increasing energy, positivity, and comfort in my own skin and I’m looking forward to building on my progress so far. To that end, my plans in the coming months include…

• Resuming 16/8 fasting 3-4 nights a week
• Resuming daily or minimum 3/week weigh-ins
• Experimenting with slightly longer fasts or bone broth fasts 
• Adding more walking and other physical activity into my weekly rhythms 
• Trying new healthy recipes and supplements 
• Celebrating each 5lb loss increment in some way 
• Take pictures at each 10lb loss increment
• Limiting sugar/refined carbs to one treat a week 
• Focus on limiting my stress or relieving/reducing it in specific ways, especially prioritizing a regular Sabbath and lots of sleep (i see this directly impact my ability to be happy and to make healthy choices)
• Reading four health-related books over the year

In summary, I know that fasting may seem extreme to some people (although this form is so gentle I can hardly call it “fasting” – just an ordered life, to me!), and at a certain time in my life it probably would’ve been…but right now I am thankful for the right tool in the right season, since working out a lot like I would have preferred ten years ago isn’t as feasible with five children and homeschooling, etc etc! I’m thankful to have the blessing and camaraderie of my husband who is also diligently working on improving his health. Though it wasn’t our intention specifically to clean up our kids’ diets, I’ve seen our disciplines have their natural effect in their lives too – and that healthy heritage may be the best pay off anyway! 

What helps you when you’re making changes in your life? any tips for me? what healthy practices are you hoping to begin or strengthen in the new year?

 

Blessings!!

Jordan

Carlson Family Update – Sept ’19

Just writing a few updates on our little family of seven, for my memory’s sake and for anyone else who might be interested! We are always surrounded by trials large and small, but I truly feel that by God’s grace we are in something of a precious ‘Golden Age’ with our houseful of children, and with opportunities every day to bear witness to the goodness of God. 

Nels continues to serve at First Southern Baptist Church here in Hutchinson in various roles. He has recently loved ministering a few times in the prison system, sharing from God’s word and through song and being encouraged by the faith and sincerity of the inmates there. Hunting season is different when you’re a daddy of five and don’t have much time for being in the woods, but he enjoyed a sweet couple of days with friends and his brother in law in Western Kansas and brought home fresh meat. 🙂 The highlight of my day every day is having coffee and devotions with Nels, usually on our back deck as weather permits! He is such a wonderful, devoted husband and father and makes our life so sweet…especially bringing me that fresh cuppa most mornings! He keeps my heart inspired and encouraged sending me new worship music to listen to and praying the kids and I through our challenging days. 

Kaya Abigail is making my heart ache daily, growing up too beautifully and too fast! I realized recently that she will turn 10 in a few months and I was desperate to go wake her up and cuddle her! She is in 4th grade, and loves reading and singing and being outside. She is strong and beautiful…every day a little more “young lady” and less little girl. The baby is particularly smitten with her and for good reason! I refer to her often as my “right hand girl” and she truly is. Kaya is a joyful presence and encouragement in our home, a diligent worker and an imaginative, bright spirit. Kaya is FUN…so, so much fun. She has contagious energy for life and the sweetest disposition. I am so thankful that she loves the Word of God and cares tenderly for people.

If Kaya is my right hand girl, Hudson Nathanael (almost 8) is certainly my right hand boy. He is turning into such a sweet little man! He takes pleasure and shows initiative in all the little “manly” chores around the house, taking out the trash and helping mommy with random things. He is his Daddy’s mini in so many ways – except that he easily triples Nels’ daily word count! He is a chatty kiddo who knows no stranger and loves people so naturally and easily. Hudson has been devoted in prayer for several of his friends and people who he knows need to know Jesus. He shows signs of maybe possessing a spiritual gift for evangelism. He is a diligent student (2nd grade), loves reading with me each afternoon, enjoys fishing and playing ball and being with people. Tall and blue-eyed and handsome, he melts my heart regularly with kindness.

Ezra Neal celebrated his 6th birthday and a few weeks later lost his very first tooth! It was only slightly loose, but his big brother is a savage about such things and yanked it out, to Ezra’s delight! These brothers!!! Ezra’s shock of white-blonde hair is so striking and sweet, and his strong little frame is so full of vim and vigor! He leaps and dives and barrels around, but loves to cuddle with his Mama too. He recently learned to write “Mom” and “I love you” and writes me a note with those words almost every day along with a picture of us holding hands (this might be why I feel like we’re in a special ‘Golden Age’ stage!). Ezra has a flair for the dramatic, often quoting from different movies he loves and easily storing up poetry and songs and scriptures in his sharp mind. He is in Kindergarten and spends a lot of his day playing with his little sister Aspen. They are moment-to-moment either best friends or acting like full-on opponents (they remind me of their mom and dad – ha!!!). 

Aspen Raye (3) is huge amounts of joy and delight packed in a tiny little preschooler body! I feel like exploding with happiness just watching her skip around for the sheer pleasure of it. She tells lots of stories and demands that she be allowed to do almost everything her older siblings do. Being a big sister is the pinnacle of joy for Aspen in her life right now, and she literally shakes with crazy love for the baby and longing to squeeze him. In the last year she has really exploded out of her shell and is no longer the clingy, ultra-shy and reserved Mama’s girl that she once was – she connects a lot more with family and friends at church and shows signs of maybe being our wild child…but she still loves her lengthy afternoon naps. 🙂 She is crazy in all the best ways! Her antics make Nels and I laugh almost every day (often away from her seeing us! haha!!). 

Titus Theodor is the quintessential cream baby. His rolls and all-over pudge bring so much hilarity and joy to our home. I am so thankful for his good health and mellow personality. Sometimes I look at him and can hardly believe that he was once inside my body, that I was puking so so much…he is completely unaffected by that! What a dream boat my little “Teddy” bear darling is! He’s a perfect squeeze, an easy smile, a drooling-teething mess! I adore his blue eyes and his 98th percentile chunky, soft bod. His life has brought a lot of healing to my heart after miscarrying our baby last year. Who will he be? We wonder…and we love who he IS right now. C.S. Lewis said “in each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets…”I have seen this played out with little Titus joining our home…him bringing out new things in his siblings, and each of them showing something about him in their relationships with him. 

As a mother, I feel like a totally different person with our fifth baby, so much more relaxed and maybe in some ways able to soak it up more. I look at him and think that everyone should have “just one more” baby! How are our hearts able to just expand like this? God is so good. 

I am daily delighted and exhausted (okay also demoralized sometimes!) by the demands of my life as wife, mother, and homeschooling teacher. God has given me a work that has so much variety that I am never bored, which suits my personality well. There is a really happy fullness with having five kids. It has been a season of stretching and growing, and I am so thankful for the grace of God as we make all the necessary adjustments. Over the last year I have faced some personal suffering through the intensity of morning sickness and fourth cranial nerve palsy (affecting my vision, balance, ability to drive, etc.) and various stresses and sometimes depression. In all that I have seen God prove himself so profoundly loving and faithful, over and over again, that in spite of the struggles I am fully grateful and also have the special joy of seeing my own growth as a person and having certain breakthroughs, spiritually and physically. For the first decade of my motherhood I think I struggled to keep an understanding of how this work mattered even though it felt so hidden, and now I have a hard-won, underlying “neutral” mode that is peaceful and just accepts it as true and I am able to operate out of that in a healthier, happier way, knowing God is glorified in our faithfulness even in the hidden places.

In the coming months we are all anticipating with great joy our family trip to Colorado, the wedding of a dear friend, my brother’s wedding, and more. Life is never without it’s challenges which we struggle with always, but I truly am thankful for this little ‘Golden Age’ and all the sweet details of our current life. We trust God that there are better things even (!) to come, as we walk with Him – ‘Further Up and Further In’!

Titus Theodor: a birth story

After a March 2018 miscarriage, the Father led me kindly and gently through a season of grieving and processing and addressing fears. The following autumn we asked the Lord for another baby and He answered our prayers in the form of a little boy on the way! The pregnancy was difficult with severe, all-day morning sickness, exhaustion and other trials, so I was especially grateful to see my June estimated due date drawing nearer and nearer, and our whole family was eagerly anticipating our precious new arrival. And yet, as that date drew nearer, certain concerns were amplified too… 

With four other children to think about plus limited days off and some upcoming travel for my husband, I was having some stress and concerns about how to plan and prepare for the birth and it’s imminence and unpredictability, especially with our family living several hours away. My most recent labor had been very quick and intense and while that was a great experience, Nels and I were both concerned that this labor would possibly be even quicker and it could be challenging to have our childcare-help friends arrive while still getting to the hospital in a timely way. 

We started to think and pray openly about being induced – which was strange for me, because I have grown to treasure and affirm the value of minimally medical births and have had good experiences along those lines (see previous birth stories here!). The appeal for us was largely that my mom would be able to get off work and drive down and possibly be present at the birth, but certainly be with our four older children while we were in the hospital for a few days. In the past our due date came and went and the delivery date was 5-11 days later. My exhaustion with the pregnancy was increasing and the appeal of *not* going very far ‘overdue’ was growing with it. 

I spent some time agonizing over the pros and cons, feeling conflicted about the various options and not wanting to make the “wrong” choice…I really knew what I wanted to do and what felt right, but struggled with strong doubts and anxieties that were amplified by the intense hormones of later pregnancy. Finally with Nels and my mom both leaning toward inducing, with prayer and trust I decided that I was open to inducing if my doctor affirmed that my baby and body were in good shape for opting that way, showing effacement, dilation, etc. It almost felt like an out-of-body experience to schedule to induce a day after our due date because it was so contra- my beliefs about the nature of childbirth, but I felt led in that and convicted that I needed to have faith that God would walk with me in the process of childbirth whatever the surrounding circumstances. 

A few days before our June 12 induction, I was wrestling with fears of the pain and all that “could” go wrong, and was so grateful that the Lord gave me a phrase from Paul’s letter to the Philippians to stay my mind and heart – “with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body.” I have viewed all of my pregnancies and all of motherhood as my spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1), and it was comforting to consider that this birth would just be another chapter of trusting God and offering up my body as a living sacrifice. He is infinitely worthy! Love for Him gave me faith and courage. Scared faith and courage, but real and true all the same. 

The morning of June 12 arrived like a dream, and miraculously and in answer to prayer I was able to sleep the night before and woke up literally one minute before my pre-dawn alarm went off. We were scheduled to arrive at the hospital around 5:30am. 

The process of inducement began not too long after we arrived. They started an IV, drew some blood, began a little bit of pitocin. At my appointment the day before my doctor had stripped my membranes and checked to see that I was about 75% effaced and dilated to a 2. We met our main nurse for the day, who was like the sweetest, cheeriest little fairy godmother – predicting my wants and needs and working tirelessly to keep me comfortable and our baby safe. 

I had decided to go ahead and get an epidural since we were having a more medical labor and delivery this time, and so we got started with that process with the anesthesiologist. Truly, for me this was the absolute worst and hardest part of this labor. I had been dreading it. The last time I had an epidural was with my first baby almost ten years ago and it hadn’t been the best experience (and it had worn off before delivery so I hadn’t had the full payoff of a pain-free birth!). This time placing it was very painful as I was extremely sensitive every which way she tried to place the needle, and it seemed like the process would never be over. Once it kicked in however, the effect was lovely. I had no pain the rest of the day, and only very light sensation of contractions. Shortly after the placement the doctor came and broke my water. 

My mom joined us around 9am and we spent the morning enjoyably, chatting and catching up, with my nurse bringing me ice chips. The progress was slow, and it was strange to have to ask about my contractions, to not really be feeling them or to have the ability to quicken labor along by walking or trying different positions. I didn’t feel any urgency though, and while I had hoped to have a baby by lunch time, I wasn’t surprised when the time came and went and we were still in process. I was content and a bit sleepy, and praying that God would help our nurses and doctor to have wisdom as we went. Gradually through the day they were increasing the pitocin, and checking the effacement/dilation progress that was slow but somewhat steady. Keeping an ear on baby’s heartbeat was challenging because he was really buried in my back.

After a while mom went home to relieve our babysitter and I drifted off to sleep for a while. I started to feel contraction sensations on only my left side, and my left side remained more awake while my right leg was just heavy and not responding to my commands that it move! That sensation eased some but never totally went away. Nels and our nurse helped me into a more upright position, leaning slightly on my left side, to encourage the baby to further descend. When she checked on him she could tell that he was turned a little crooked, but finally he was descending properly, except for a bit of cervix that wasn’t fully out of the way. 

Later in the afternoon the baby’s heartbeat was dramatically escalating and then dropping. The nurse called my doctor who was unable to come and another OB joined us as the nurse told me, “it’s time to get this baby out.” I had worried off and on all day that this labor and delivery could end in a c-section, and at this juncture I wondered if we would end up there, but I didn’t have much time to fret over it because they were encouraging me to push. 

It was strange to try to find the muscles to push when I wasn’t really feeling the contractions or anything in my lower body for that matter. I had a vague sensation of pressure where his head was, and when I was instructed to push during a building contraction, I was able to find the right muscles and in just a few pushes he was out. They actually told me to slow down and take a break, but I had realized that we were so close to getting him out and I just kept pushing because I was eager to meet him and I was worried if I stopped pushing I would lose track of where exactly I was supposed to be pushing! But out he came, head and shoulders and a gush of chubby body and fluid – a perfect chubby boy, covered in creamy vernix and crying so preciously! What a joy and relief! Finally. Our hope and faith and prayers all answered in a moment of ecstasy. Already I could breathe more freely. His birth came at 3:47p.m. Titus was a daylight baby.

Just a moment later the Ob showed us with amazement that he had two true knots in his umbilical cord – something she and the other Ob’s on staff had never seen. One true knot is rare (and dangerous) enough – but two! Almost unheard of. I was filled with thankfulness that God had kept him safe when at any point of the pregnancy, labor and delivery that could have caused a major issue. The placenta was delivered also with no problem and I had a small tear that she stitched up while I was still feeling no pain. 

Titus looked so alert and interested in both Nels and I right away. He had such an expression of trying to understand and process everything that was happening. It seemed obvious that he knew our voices and that he was trying to study our faces to put them together with the voices he was already familiar with. He nursed almost right away with a strong suck and sweet healthy appetite. Maybe an hour later they weighed him and found him to be 9 pounds, 1.5 ounces! He was 20.5 inches long, just like both of his big sisters. Such long fingers and toes, perfectly round cheeks, and strong body for one so new!

Just 24 hours later we were packed up and heading home with our new perfect tiny bundle of a baby…only to find out that we had sick kids. At first it seemed like it was just the toddler with a stomach bug but it turned out they had all been exposed to hand, foot and mouth disease at VBS the week prior and were now showing the symptoms – fever, outbreak of rash, fatigue, sore throat. I started researching more about HFM to understand how to help them and how long to expect it to last and found that it was especially dangerous for pregnant women in the last two weeks of pregnancy and could result in stillbirth. While I was so sad to have to keep my sick kids away from our new baby for his first days at home, I was thankful that God had led us to induce and that our baby had already safely been born before that illness posed a threat to him.

“As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people…” Psalm 125:2 

At times in this journey of pregnancy, labor and delivery, I could not feel the presence of the Lord, but depended upon him anyway, praying for faith and more faith. Now looking back I see that the Lord surrounded us, his people, and he was present as he promised at every step. I pray that our Titus Theodor’s life would be a light and blessing in the world, an offering back up to our faithful God. 

Titus (pleasing; title of honor) Theodor (gift of God)…we are so, so honored by the gift of your life to us! You are absolutely adored by every member of your family and so many others. Your presence in our world brings us an overflowing joy. 

On Starting a New Homeschool Year

If I include my firstborn’s preschool and kindergarten years (and I do!), we are starting our FIFTH(!) year of home education this week! I am amazed and thankful about it.

It’s been a happy preparation for me this year, even more so than past years, even with it being a more challenging curriculum and the growing need for balancing my time between my 1^st and 3^rd graders and two preschoolers. Graciously, the Lord has led me to a philosophy of education (heavily influenced by Charlotte Mason and some traditional Christian classicism) that I am passionate about and find to be very biblical and inspiring, and he has led me to resources and provided for those resources that will assist in our educational goals for each of the grade levels.

I rely heavily on Ambleside Online‘s amazingly rich, robust, Charlotte Mason-model curriculum and it is the core of our studies. However, this is one of the first years that I have felt the confidence and freedom to allow that curriculum guide to serve me, rather than feeling myself a slave to it. Now, in years past I have loved using AO and maybe never truly felt subservient to it, but this year I happily cut and pasted what I will use and have had minimal anxiety about deviating from the book list when I think something will suit my learners and our home school better.

Ironically, I am probably following the heart of AO even more this year, having finally added in a timeline, more fully understanding narration and being committed to pre-reading our texts, but as I cut a few books and added a few others, I relished the freedom that I engaged – which has always been there, but seldom used – and it was a joyful thing to make it work for us.

For example, my son is doing Year 1 largely as written, but he will follow along in certain books with my daughter in Year 3. That will be more challenging but also better schedule-wise, so I dropped a book that we didn’t particularly enjoy when I taught 1^st grade a few years ago.

Sarah MacKenzie says curriculum is not something we buy, it’s something we teach. I think that is a huge paradigm-shifting thought.

My obligation is to nourish the minds of my students, not to press through certain books or check certain boxes. Lord-willing I am introducing them to all that is good and true and beautiful, and helping to order their affections.

This year I have also had the least amount of spinning my wheels, second-guessing my curriculum. After starting out in this way and having read and studied various methods and philosophies, I love the certainty that I have found our niche.

While I have felt more secure in our path, I have also felt as dependent as ever on the Lord (and probably more!).

As much as I am no longer looking over my shoulder to see what everyone else is doing or if there is something better to try out – I sense ever increasingly how we labor in vain unless the Lord builds. I rely completely on the Holy Spirit for the vision and the execution of all of our plans. I have joy and courage in my dependence because I know how faithful He is and how He shows up for us!

So with that said, here’s a little bit about how I’m structuring our school this year! (I get a lot of questions about how to use Ambleside – Brandy Vencel has a simple explanation here!)…

Morning Time – I love Morning Time/Circle Time…we typically start the day all together, covering some of our most important, most fun and most-easy-to-skip subjects. I have planned for about an hour but I think we will spend more like 45 minutes on this (with little ones joining in while coloring, etc!). Bible-reading, Memory work, Hymns, Read-Aloud book, Church History, Spanish, Artist or Composer Study, Shakespeare, Poetry are some of the things we will cover (but not all of them every day!).

Daily Work – Every day my older two will have Copywork, Math Lessons, Math Drill and Piano Practice for their daily work. They can do some of this independently, at which point I will have a bit of designated time with my preschoolers.

Preschool Loop – The little ones join us for Morning Time and participate at age-appropriate levels, but each day I have a minimum of 20 minutes set aside to do some special school time with them.

For the first term we will loop through Counting, Alphabet/Letter Sounds, Reading, Workbooks and Art/Shapes/Colors. I may switch up their subjects for Terms 2 and 3.

Ambleside Readings & Narration – There are a couple of blocks throughout our days that are set aside for the assigned AO readings in Literature, History, Natural History, Science, Geography, etc.

Kaya will do some of her Y3 readings on her own this year so I will be pre-reading all of those texts each week so we can have more interesting discussions afterwards. I will be continuing Phonics lessons with Hudson and sharing the reading load with him for his Y1 studies.

The key for us with these readings is that the kids will be required to interact with the material and re-tell it in someway. Often this is a simple oral narration, sometimes its a drawing and oral narration, sometimes they will be mapping (Marco Polo’s journey for Y3!), and sometimes they will write about it or dictate to me and I will record their narration.

I’m currently reading (& loving) “Know and Tell” by Karen Glass to grow in this key area of a CM education!

Extras – There are several other subjects that are important but that won’t fit into our day, and so I’ve placed them on an afternoon loop. Drawing and Watercolors, Handicraft, Spanish, Geography, etc. Nature Study has it’s own block on the schedule (and on a nice day I don’t mind ditching our other plans for nature walk!), and so does Poetry Tea Time and our Keeping Hour (designated time for recording whatever important things they want to record on our timeline, extra things they want to draw in their nature journals, more time for drawing their narrations, etc.).

 

Here are some more of the details for our school year:

Math – Horizons for 1^st grade, Teaching Textbooks for 3^rd

Picture Study – I love the portfolios from SCM. We will study 3 different artists this year. These don’t line up with the assigned artists from AO, but I appreciate the ease of using the SCM resources.

Reading – 100 Easy Lessons! Simple and straightforward. It has worked well for us.

Composer Study – deviating here from AO, using Music Study with the Masters from SCM. Ambleside has a lot of free resources and links online for Composer study, but since I don’t have internet at home it is easier for me to use CD’s and other resources.

Watercolors – I borrowed the book Everday Watercolor from the library and used it a bit over the summer and enjoyed it so I decided I wanted to buy it and try with the kids.

Drawing – I have used several different things for drawing but this year settled on the sweet and simple Dover “how to draw…” books. These are just simple line drawings, but it’s perfect for our current stage and interest. Many of these can be found at the local library, but they are only $3.99 on Amazon. We’re starting with “How to Draw Flowers” and I know the kids will enjoy “How to Draw Insects” next.

Maps – There are free printable maps online through the Ambleside forum.

Apologia Astronomy looks incredible (although rather pricey!). I love the idea of learning the skies, one of the original classical seven liberal arts. I decided not to throw it in just yet because of the expense and because I hate feeling like we have to rush through our school day when we are trying to do too much…if the schedule feels spacious and generous enough I may add this in later in the school year! Otherwise we will look forward to it next year. 🙂

My husband generously blessed us with a Kindle Fire this year for audiobooks and math fact practice for my older kiddos during quiet time and we are all excited about it!

It sounds a lot more complicated than it is…mostly I am just enjoying being a learner alongside my children, fostering a conversational atmosphere in our homeschool where we are always talking about what things mean, who God is, what is required of us, etc. It is challenging and it is a marathon, but it is so full of light and joy and I am learning and growing and finding myself more alive for engaging with the great books and ideas and new skills that we are encountering.

This passage from Pilgrim’s Progress has inspired my courage for this marathon:

“This hill, though high, I covet to ascend; the difficulty will not me offend. For I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear. Better, though difficult, the right way to go, than wrong, though easy, where end is woe.” 

I have great courage in this calling, because He who has called me is Faithful! He takes my small, imperfect offerings and He brings about a greater harvest than I could’ve dared to hope for. Glory to Him now and forever, Amen!

Processing Grief (Miscarriage): On Losing My Light

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

I wonder when it subsides. The dullness, the achey inward groaning.

So many others have losses that far surpass mine. I feel like I don’t really deserve to grieve, and yet it is happening in my heart and my body, regardless of my allowing permission or denying.

I feel, as Tolkien said in the loss of a beloved comrade, “…immeasurably weaker and poorer now.”

Will I see the world in full color again after October? When the would’ve been (should’ve been?), but is-no-more due date passes? Do I even want to “get over it” – when “it” is my own baby that I ache for as only a mother can ache?

I gave you that name I love, the one meaning ‘Light’…

And my Light stole away from me in somber, freezing March.

You were my small companion, fairy-sized, tucked in beneath my heart.

Your sister’s appendix burst, perhaps the same moment that you burst from this life into eternity.

Her tiny body, could it be that it ached with mine, as I ached for you? For what would never be for us?

Will I know you when I see you, in your perfect, healed state?

Will your face be familiar? Will your teeth have ‘the Carlson gap’ like your brothers and sisters?

When I’m there, will I grieve the years and the moments we never had? Will eternity be healing enough, making all these sad things Untrue?

You are my little one, my heart’s Light, stolen away from me.

I fear the darkness without you, my little Light.

The apricot-colored rose, planted for you, is budding..

I wait expectantly for it’s blooming, and I dread it too.

I’m just missing you and flowers won’t fill the void.

But that little plant that I carefully tend feels like some small connection to you, beloved Light of mine.

It is one small token, a mark in the world, a little statement on this piece of earth we should’ve shared and loved together.

It is my emblem to say – “my little Light was here.” But no more.

My Light is there – swallowed up by Life, kept safe for me.

“I have seen death fairly often and never yet been able to find it anything but extraordinary and rather incredible. The real person is so very real, so obviously living and different from what is left that one cannot believe something has turned into nothing.” – C.S. Lewis

puppy days

we’ve been having such fun with our darling baby polar bear puppers.

born just days before Christmas, watching their birth and development has been a sweet wintry gift to us all! teeny wet noses and puppy breath and little tiny paws – oh my!

hope you enjoy these pictures from an outing the puppies enjoyed this weekend with the weather being so nice! isn’t our creator kind to bless us with such charming, loving, loyal companions? ❤

(daddy & daugher ~ )

(mama checks in ~ )

 

Carlson Update – Sept. ’17 edition

I have never mailed a Christmas letter, which is maybe a #Momfail, but family updates at random intervals as they come to mind has been more my style…well, we will see, maybe this will be the year?! lol Here are a few updates for those of you who may be interested, and for my own memory-keeping. ❤

Nels just celebrated his 35^th birthday in Colorado while we were enjoying time away on our family vacation. ‘Vacation’ with 4 children, one of whom refuses to sleep away from home, is a sort of relative word, but it was refreshing to have a change of scenery and a week of time together. A highlight for all of us was a moose sighting in Rocky Mountain National Park! Nels also enjoyed taking the kids trout fishing and going hiking and visiting various mountain towns. He is in his third year at First Southern Baptist Church, being ‘Associate Pastor of Miscellaneous’ (Worship & Youth). As we looked back on his 34^th year and its themes and events, we decided this was the “Year of the Pyrenees” as earlier this year Nels traded in some firearms for our two big, beautiful Great Pyrenees pups (that is true love).

Kaya, the leader of our sweet pack of kiddos, is 7 years old and in 2^nd grade. She is a model student who has made our entry into homeschooling smoother than I could have hoped. Kaya (usually) loves sharing a room with baby sister Aspen, and she takes such great care of her, as “Mommy’s Right Hand.” Kaya is a reader, a nurturing soul, a music and worship-lover, a wild and free outdoorsy girl, and an outgoing, sweet friend to many. She’s excitedly preparing to accompany me to Guatemala next summer for a mission trip to a children’s home and so Spanish has been what she’s most excited about in school this year.

Hudson will turn 6 next week. He has a special place in all of our hearts as the firstborn son and big brother – he is just adored by his siblings and parents. This is Hudson’s first “real” year of school, Kindergarten, and he has been so eager to learn to read, but math is what he looks forward to most each day. Hudson leaves a paper trail as he is always drawing – usually dragons, sometimes wild animals, and often sweet notes and scenes. We call him our “little scientist” and “little professor” because he has great attention for detail and is quite spacey at times as well. Hudson has really grown in the last year in his role as big brother and leader, caring tenderly for Aspen and helping his brother Ezra too.

Ezra – “I’m 4 years old and I already listen to God and Jesus and even my mom and dad!” Ezra randomly told me this as he was climbing into the car the other day. It made my heart so happy. All of our kids have been incredibly verbal (surprise, surprise), but especially little Ez. He constantly overflows with big, emotional, grandious statements, and often bursts out in spontaneous praise or prayer. His “faith like a child” has been a blessing to me. He loves somersaults, great shows of strength (!), building forts, playing with blocks and cars, and he always wants to watch a movie – and has a special knack for remembering lines and songs from his favorite movies. Our sweet towhead toddler is growing into such a fun boy.

Aspen Raye (21 mo.) is our wild, cuddly, sparkly, sweet blue-eyed girl. She wants to do everything the “big kids” do, except for when it comes to eating everything on her plate and adhering to bedtime. In the last month she has started saying so many recognizable words that one of our new hobbies is being the first person to discover she has added something else to her vocabulary. She is one of the biggest challenges and the most wonderful joy of our days! She loves sitting on the kitchen counter and keeping me company while I’m working. She is such a sweet buddy, and I treasure her baby-companionship.

I have been stretched and enriched through the rigors of homeschooling 2^nd grade and Kindergarten, with two little ones along too. I am loving running our home, though many days it looks like it is running me. 😉 My heart is longing for and missing my many friends back home and around the world, but God is helping me to put down roots and build friendships and community here in Hutchinson as well. I am learning more and more always about how to live well and whole-heartedly before the Lord. There are no easy days, but they are full and fruitful, and for that I am thankful.

I would love to hear updates from you and your family, sweet friends! ❤ What are you eager for this fall?

With love,

Jordan

The Death of My Dream; the Birth of My Calling

For many people (including myself just less than a decade ago!), the birth of a child can be the death of a dream.

Having a new, small person in the world who is almost entirely dependent upon you for their well-being can certainly be a complicating ‘life factor’. Research is truly just beginning to show what seasoned mothers and grandmothers have known for generations (even if they haven’t been telling you): children need their mothers, and not just in infancy.

Photo by Jenna Norman on Unsplash

This is no moderate inconvenience – becoming a mother is in many ways a radical redefinition of life, right down to your body chemistry. It’s an irreversible alteration, and for the Christ-following woman, it is also an enormous spiritual responsibility, and one that most just try to ‘squeeze in’ to their already full and overflowing lives.

I was married at 20, and gave birth to my first child exactly 9 months and 2 days later. When she gasped her first breath my heart ached for the beauty of our moment. I was shocked when we received her social security card in the mail. They sent this to us? They think we are responsible enough for this? As if ‘they’ had any say in the matter: the Lord had entrusted to us a gift.

I was delighted with my new little ‘accessory’ – this charming, darling little girl who would add a little sparkle to our life that would otherwise remain mostly the same – right? Her sweet birdie lips and apple cheeks thrilled us; but we were already happy and fulfilled, on a path toward ministry, chaplaincy, missions work, writing. Motherhood didn’t seem to quite ‘fit,’ but modern women can have it all – right?

As I began to live ‘normally’ again, I found that everything that had been normal to me was completely at odds with caring for my child in the way I began to realize that God was calling me to. When I wanted to ‘get my body back’ and work out the way I always had, my milk supply would dry up. When I packed our schedule full of activities and ministry while leaving no time for walks and baby’s nap and unstructured ‘face time’ hours, I had a profoundly fussy baby and a vague dissatisfaction and anxiety in my heart.

We had our second child not long after the first arrived, and while I was thrilled to celebrate my son, still I balked against the ‘new normal’ that God was calling me to, that I didn’t quite understand yet. I had my first serious season of post-partum depression, in part I believe, because I was racing back to normal, and not allowing myself or my baby to bond, rest, recover, enjoy. I ‘didn’t have time for sleepless nights’ and felt overwhelmed by a clingy baby who interrupted my life. How I wish I had known to slow, slow, slow down. If I could go back I wouldn’t push sleep schedules on him, I wouldn’t resent his need to be near. I would hold him and breathe deeper, and take more walks outside. God is a loving Father of redemption and restoration, and he turns the hearts of the children back to their parents, but it is a heart breaking thing to do wrong to your own beloved.

My son has been such a gift to me, and the more time I spend with him, the more the Lord speaks to me through him. Once we were out on a hike as a family when he was just shy of two. We were far from the city and it’s sights and sounds – but he suddenly stood up straight, with wide and bright eyes, and said “Train, mama!” His ear was so trained to the sounds of his favorite thing – trains – that he could hear it even faintly and from afar off. Instantly I was convicted that that was the way I wanted to hear from God – to be so trained and intent on hearing from him that I heard the faintest whisper in the distance if it was from that voice I loved.

Through this time it began to dawn on me that my children, my home and husband, were not just additional responsibilities on a very full plate. Perhaps, instead of being another responsibility, another fulfilling work – they were the work that God was calling me to.

At first that felt too small and quiet, like it wasn’t enough. Being ‘only’ a stay-at-home wife and mom felt confining, or maybe like a waste of an education and some of my unique ministry hopes and dreams. I grew up not wondering if I would go to college, but where? I wanted to do ‘big things’ – and I felt unsure about this new life path and if it could live up to the hype of my hopes.

But God in His great mercy began revealing to me what a crucial work it was, and what a beautiful thing it could be to devote my life to serving my family. Instead of wrestling to have it all and truly leading a fractured life, I could perhaps joyfully pour every ounce of energy, creativity, skill and talent that God gave me into being a mother and homemaker. This was incredibly freeing, as I suddenly felt relieved of the stressful Tetris-like game of trying to force the pieces of my life to fit. As I laid certain things down, I did feel the weight of others’ disappointments – even those that weren’t voiced (family, friends, professors – anyone that I suspected might be disappointed by my choices), but increasingly there was a deep conviction, shared with my husband, that God was the one to please, and I was seeing more clearly in His Word exactly what a Christian family could be.

I read in Titus 2 about the priorities for young women in the church, and how living rightly was actually adorning the Gospel of God. I felt the spiritual importance of raising my children up in a godly way, and was repeatedly drawn to the instruction of Deuteronomy 6. While I could perhaps keep trying to force my outside aspirations to work with the family God had given me, I began to feel like for me it would be extremely proud to think that I could accomplish all the lofty things God had challenged me with in his Word in just my ‘after-hours’ time. I thought I was called to many things, but here were God-given children right in front of me, with straight-forward instruction from the Bible about my life.

Through godly Christian writers and teachers like Sally Clarkson, I began to catch an enticing glimpse of what our home life could be: “Every day in each inch of space, each rhythm of time, each practice of love, we have the chance to join God in coming home, in living so that we make a home of this broken and beautiful world all over again. Love is enfleshed in the meals we make, the rooms we fill, the spaces in which we live and breathe and have our being.”

At the same time, my picture of homemaking and motherhood was growing and changing. Suddenly the Proverbs 31 woman and her diverse interests and skill sets were a thrilling picture to me. Maybe I could garden and teach my children about the goodness of God and His provision? Maybe I could learn more about natural health, or how to hand-make some of our household items? As our family continued to grow, I was inspired by all the areas that I could learn and grow in – budgeting, baking, home maintenance and décor, early childhood development, philosophy of education, etc. And most importantly, I had a deep and growing conviction that if I was to teach my children to know God, I needed to know him so much better! I could hardly keep up with all the things I wanted to read and I started making big efforts toward becoming the woman I knew I needed to be to serve my family and the Lord with excellence.

As I share these things it is with a bit of hesitance, lest anyone view this testimony as another weapon thrust into the never-ending and vicious so-called “mommy-wars”…but I hope instead to be one voice, suggesting – Dear Christian women! Have it all! But have exactly the Lord’s best for you and your family! Pour yourself into what is highest, what matters most for eternity. Consider with fresh, honest eyes what a deep-dive into biblical womanhood, motherhood may look like for you. Sometimes the very highest good, in God’s upside-down economy, looks on the outside like something rather pedestrian. But don’t concern yourself with whether a certain lifestyle will be gratifying – trust God and look to His word rather than society or your peers for inspiration in how to live a godly life. Hold your dreams loosely, and trust God to use your life and to walk with you in each step.

This truth is unpopular, but you are limited. By design, by the grace of God, you are finite in every way. The enemy of souls entices us to kick against the design of our souls and bodies, in a futile attempt to have and to be “it all”. In her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren writes, “Resisting limits isn’t new for the human race. From the very beginning we’ve had an animosity toward finitude and boundaries. In their rebellion, Adam and Eve wanted to be “like God.””

But God uses us, in humility, in our ordained limitations, and he blesses the work of our hands.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

A dear mentor and friend has often said to me, “There is no quality time apart from quantity time.” I have been a mother for nearly 8 years and every good fruit from our life and home has been the result of much quiet, steady, patient investment. And still I get too busy, I botch things all up, I fail in my motherhood and homemaking efforts. Worse, I lose sight of the purpose behind all the hard work. But the Lord gives so much grace, and allows me to keep pouring my heart and soul into ‘professional motherhood’. It is so rich, rewarding, and profoundly fulfilling. I am seeing, as G.K. Chesterton wrote, that “the business done in the home is nothing less than the shaping of the body and soul of humanity.”

One day my preschool-age daughter got up from her nap, all eagerness and joy, and asked me “What beautiful thing are we going to make today?!” I loved that she viewed our homemaking projects as our attempt at making the world a bit more beautiful. That is how I see the work of home – doing what we can to make our lives, our home, and in one small way – the world – a bit more beautiful.

The Holy Spirit’s peace continues to confirm to me even in the challenging days that this work matters, and these eternal souls that I care for are precious to him.

Sometimes the death of a dream means the birth of a better one.

As I laid down my dreams, reluctantly at first and later with increasing intention and resolve, I was given a new vision and a new calling – one more eternally beautiful than what I could dream up – a life I was made for. By the grace of God, I have found my place of deepest loving impact and influence, and a calling in which I can grow daily to be more like Christ.

“But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean.

To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness” – G.K. Chesterton.