I was blessed to come out of “retirement” to speak to Central Valley Presbyterian’s Women’s Encouragement Day yesterday, and the theme for the event was “First We Have Coffee.” There were tables decorated with favorite books, and such creative ideas they used!

I spoke on the life of poet Anne Bradstreet before lunch, then I spoke about the importance of poetry after lunch. While re-reading about the life of my favorite Puritan poet, a truly godly woman, I was inspired to write a poem about her, using her common style of couplets throughout. Here is my tribute to Anne Bradstreet:

Of her time – not past – lived Anne,
Her intellect equal to any man.
She loved her books, but her family more,
And by men’s praise she set no store.
Her dear husband head, and heart’s delight;
In adversity she walked by faith, not sight.
Alone so oft, her life mundane,
Yet Anne so seldom did complain.
She poured her thoughts out late at night;
Resolved on God to wait – not fight
Against providence, His sovereign will –
Submitting to that, she was fulfilled.
Let’s emulate her sweet disposition,
Not rebel and view it an imposition
To be constrained, a woman born,
Nor rant and rail and be forlorn.
Think of Anne, make this your story –
To use your gifts for God’s own glory.

This is written by my daughter. I wish I could write like this…and I wish I could take pictures like hers. I’m grateful for the gifts God has given her, and more than that, I am grateful for her! I needed to hear this after a couple of hard days that I made harder by my petty whining. Perhaps it will help set someone else’s sore feet back on the narrow path. Persevere.

God’s grace is relentless and untiring… it will never stop pursuing His loved ones all the days of their life. We may forget it in the daily moments of life, in the wearying and monotonous moments of living, but He is working His most powerful grace in our lives during these oft disregarded and unnoticed tiles that create the mosaic of our lives. The weight of these moments will break our backs if we try to shoulder them on our own strength — they can’t be shouldered by any but the shoulders that carried the cross for us.

So look back even over this week and see His omnipotent and all-sovereign hand in every step that you took. He was there walking with you with feet that once walked long, dusty miles on this earth. And He was present even in every plan of yours that went awry; and every heated and impatient word that you spoke, and every fatiguing trial that you endured. He endured every conceivable trial, and was patient with even the most infuriating of people. He was there with you even then, working to draw you closer to Him through it all, and conform you more to His likeness… admit your need for His daily grace, even on the sunniest of days, but especially on the days that bruise and batter our hearts and hands and feet, when all the aggravating moments of the day build up to explode with the force of a powerful storm. His love and grace will not let you go until you are sanctified and changed from a child of darkness, who is a self-worshipping lump of clay, to a true child of His kingdom, fit to serve Him forever in glory on the new heavens and earth.

Lovely from the inside out

Indeed when people object about my wife and me homeschooling our children they often accuse us of “sheltering” our children. I often ask in response, “What are you going to accuse us of next, feeding and clothing them?” –R.C. Sproul, Jr.

Soon it will be Baby Braveheart’s eighth birthday. My baby is not a baby any more. His knobby knees and lanky awkwardness are a reminder of this. He can even read a story to me with more expression in his voice than I have when I read to him. So I wait semi-patiently for grandchildren and enjoy the little boyishness that still likes to cuddle with and please his mommy.

We are probably going to see Toy Story 3 for the birthday celebration (in our family we usually do family outings, not parties, and the birthday child gets to pick fun food for the day, including sugary cereal, ick). Pixar is popular here. When Disney was about to purchase Pixar, Steve quickly purchased one share of Pixar stock. It is the only stock we now own, and the framed certificate, with a picture of Woody and the gang, hangs on the wall of the library.

This evening I stumbled across a story about a young man who is a story board artist and animator for Pixar, and he is also a Christian. I was impressed by this man’s desire to help make stories that his small son could see…he wants to protect his little boy. Since this article was written, he has also worked on the the latest Toy Story movie and Up.

Many years ago (and if anyone knows how I can find a copy of it please tell me…it was written sometime in the late 1980s or early 90s) we read a Reader’s Digest article that was very profound. Yes, profundity in Reader’s Digest! It reported on an extensive poll that examined people’s views on various topics, and the curious conclusion was that the tendency to be more conservative or more liberal in one’s worldview correlated not with gender, not with age, not with socio-economic status. The greatest differences in people’s beliefs depended on whether or not they had children. Those with children were much more conservative in their outlook in every area.

I wonder if such a poll were taken today, if the results would be the same. I’m hopeful that most people with children have an innate desire to protect them and will willingly sacrifice for their little ones. But there is a strong Siren call in this culture to jump into the treacherous waves of self-fulfillment, sacrificing duty to fleeting pleasure. I’ve even seen those who began well, jump ship and wallow in that deceptive morass. The God-given desire to protect our children needs to be nurtured if we are going to properly nurture the precious treasures God has given us.

Sheltered children are loved children who grow up to be strong people who can withstand worldly onslaughts. And they will need to be able to stand strong, so they also need to be prepared to face those battles. But the school of thought that throws a baby into the pool to sink or swim is not found in the Bible. Praise God for discerning parents. Families will differ on the details of how this is to be lived out, but we ought to agree to ask God for wisdom and for hearts that love our children sacrificially, something which should come naturally, except that sin comes naturally, too.

I have been inspired to blog again because of an event taking place next month in San Antonio, Texas. Christians from all over the nation will be coming to affirm the importance of life over death, to proclaim the blessing of children, to encourage one another to not grow weary in the well-doing of raising a godly seed.

Oh, how we need this encouragement!

Thinking has become muddled in this entitlement culture. Even Christians are about the business of pursuing what Francis Schaeffer called the idol of “personal peace and affluence.” We too blithely accept what the world presents as good solutions to hard problems. Worried about having the time, energy, or money to take care of more than 2.1 children? No problem, we have a Pill for that. Is Grandma forgetting things and putting a kink in your lifestyle, just when you thought that empty nest meant more ME time? No problem, there are places to send her and you can count on Obama’s death panels to make the hard decisions if her care gets too expensive. What about organ donation, infertility, genetics, health care, and the daily trials of life with children? How do we cope when we don’t have support from family or church?

Our minds need to be renewed. We need to wrench our thinking out of the ruts to which we’ve grown accustomed, and ask the hard questions whose answers can be found in God’s Word. This conference will help us do that. I am really looking forward to it. I hope I will see some of you there.

When he proposed to me 30 years ago, Steve and I discussed children. He wanted to know how many I wanted to have. “I think four would be nice,” I told him.

“Four! Wow, that’s a lot…” he blurted.

Now that we have ten, Steve’s pat encouragement to younger parents with a growing family is that once you have three, you might as well keep going, because you’re already outnumbered.

We are sometimes asked at what point we began to feel a bit overwhelmed (yes, it happens to the best of us). My standard response to that query is, that point came for me after we had six children, because it was then I realized I was not in control any more. I should have realized it much sooner.

Today is the 17th birthday of that sixth child, our third and youngest daughter (three boys, three girls, four boys). Before she was born, I was a pretty confident mommy, disciplining diligently, homeschooling with gusto, and confident that my efforts would result in a crop of well-scrubbed and well-behaved youngsters who would march in line behind me like a scene in one of our favorite picture books, Make Way for Ducklings.

Those were the days before we graduated from a mini-van to a green 15-passenger van (aka, “Moby Pickle”). Those days are a faint memory.

I ought to say right away that it is not because of my birthday girl that I had a reality check. She is a dear daughter, a delight to her parents, and we are very grateful to God for her. She has always been, though, a lively girl from a young age, and when I once expressed to my father in a moment of weariness that I wished she had a little less energy, he wisely told me that one day she would be the family party planner and that I would be grateful for it. He was very prescient and wise. But that is not why I say that six was the magic number that transferred us from a state of being self-appointed parenting experts to the position of daily dependence on the manna of God as it sometimes seemed we were wandering in the wilderness.

It is not uncommon for people blessed with children to make this transition, but it is uncommon, I’m afraid, for parents to realize that the latter state is preferable to the former. It is where the blessings are found.

When dark trials come and my heart is filled with the weight of doubt, I will praise Him still.

We are used to tidy TV dramas with conflict resolution within an hour, minus commercials. When we have the ongoing difficulties of daily life, multiplied by the number of people in our household, we might wonder if it’s time to change the channel. We might even want to cancel the program. But we are not in charge of the script; it has been written before the world began, and we are merely players, as Shakespeare, the playwright, so famously noted. The point of the cliffhanger is not to jump off the cliff. If you hang on just a while longer, then the denouement explains all that was mysterious, and the resolution (in a well-written story, and we know that this story we are in is the best that was ever crafted, don’t we?) is worth waiting for. Wait on the Lord.

As I spent the day with my daughter and my other children, I remembered all the times I have had to wait and I thought about the times I will continue to wait. But looking back, I know that time is a tricky thing. In the thick of the moments that vex us, it does seem to drag, but I know that it’s soon gone like a vapor, and I wish for even some of those long days as a young mother with a house full of little ones. That spurs me to make more memories now, and cherish the children God has given us. I am so glad I am not in control.

My three girls at our birthday picnic today