The rules are: you may recommend a favorite book in this category, giving a description and any other appropriate embellishment to encourage us to to read it. Recommend one book at a time, then after someone else has given has had a turn, you can be “it” again with another suggestion. This category can include a wide variety of books.

My first recommendation is Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Housekeeping by Cheryl Mendelson, an encyclopedic handbook on housekeeping. Books about housekeeping used to be popular when most women considered being a keeper at home their calling. For too long, women have trained for everything but taking care of a home and family, and even the basics of how to fold a sheet or how to boil an egg are mysteries akin to how the pyramids were built. I had to learn many simple housekeeping skills after I was married, and I still have a long way to go. I figure that I may be able to give my granddaughters a good education in the basics of running a home smoothly and efficiently.

Yes, my boys do know how to fold laundry and do some cooking. They can even change diapers. But we direct our sons toward occupations which help them in their manly role of occupying and gardenizing this weed-infested world, and we train our daughters to be helpmeets to godly men who will be busy at their occupations. Are we old-fashioned? You can call it that, though we believe that there is a biblical division of labor and separation of roles that is evident beginning with the created order and pictured all through Scripture, culminating with the marriage feast of the Lamb. It is most beautifully modeled in the Trinity.

So my girls all have copies of Home Comforts and dolls, and the boys have tools and a copy of Backyard Ballistics. However, we are {{popup girlsshooting.jpg girlsshooting 542×480}}founding members of {{popup momshooting.jpg momshooting 640×480}}Second Amendment Prairie Muffins.

For a family who had two children and struggled for several years with infertility, until they were blessed with another baby. Their little girl was born seven weeks ago with a congenital heart defect, and she died today.

For a prominent woman scientist who, as a Christian, speaks eloquently about prolife issues, who is expecting a baby with Down’s Syndrome.

For those who are not from “hearty stock” whose families are afflicted with sickness, a reminder of our frailty and of our need to trust in God’s strength, not our own.

From Frances Ridley Havergal:

Lord, speak to me, that I may speak
In living echoes of Thy tone;
As Thou hast sought, so let me seek
Thy erring children lost and lone.

O lead me, Lord, that I may lead
The wandering and the wavering feet;
O feed me, Lord, that I may feed
thy hungering ones with manna sweet.

O strengthen me; that, while I stand
Firm on the rock, and strong in Thee,
I may stretch out a loving hand
To wrestlers with the troubled sea.

O teach me, Lord, that I may teach
The precious things Thou dost impart;
And wing my words, that they may reach
The hidden depths of many a heart.

O give Thine own sweet rest to me,
That I may speak with soothing power
A word in season, as from Thee,
To weary ones in needful hour.

O fill me with Thy fulness, Lord,
Until my very heart o’erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word,
Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.

O use me, Lord, use even me,
Just as Thou wilt and when, and where,
Until Thy blessed face I see,
Thy rest, Thy joy, Thy glory share.

It may have been a case of “love the one you’re with,” but in my first unscientific poll, the season which received the most votes was fall. That’s the season I voted for, too. I love the wood smoke, crisp days, colorful leaves, pumpkins and Indian corn, hearty stews and homemade breads, back-to-school resolutions, and the celebrations, including the one on the last day of October.

Reformation Day.

We’ve never done Halloween. There are arguments which say its origins are based on pagan Samhain traditions, and there are those who claim that it’s from a Christian holiday on which the various traditions were used to mock demons. Of course, most don’t care about its origins at all. They just see it as a fun time to let their children dress up and go trick-or-treating. For our family, we see the emphasis the world places on evil symbols and practices during that celebration, so we have chosen to sit it out. Besides, there is something so much better to celebrate on that day!

Most reformed Christians know that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church on October 31, 1517. Sadly, few know the sacrifices made by the reformers in Europe who contended for the faith once delivered to the saints. If the Reformation had not happened, ignited by Martin Luther’s bold and, dare I say, quixotic act, we most likely would not have this country today. It was a small band of Protestants, who were still part of reforming the church back to the Bible, who came to America to have a place where their children could worship the Christian God in freedom. They knew how to make great sacrifices because they had the example of the reformers who had come before them. With their Geneva Bibles in hand, the Calvinist Christians created the first American government with the Mayflower Compact, and established Christian governments in each colony they formed.

A motto of the Reformation was post lux tenebras lux, “after darkness, light.” However, as R.C. Sproul, Sr. points out, the church has lost the vision of the Reformation and Christianity has again fallen on dark times. A friend recently regaled us with tales of a visit to Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church (for the baptism of his wife’s nieces) where he watched “the best rock concert” he had ever seen, but nothing resembling a Christian worship service. He didn’t even see a Bible in a congregation of 7000 people (at the Saturday night service). What would the reformers think of Christians who don’t use the Bibles they shed their blood to obtain?

Of course, there are those who are RINOs: Reformed In Name Only. Sproul says of them, “We have spawned a generation of Reformed leaders who, perhaps caused by the forces of political correctness, are satisfied to affirm the positive elements of their Reformed faith, but are loathe to deny the antitheses of it. They embrace the moderate position for ’strategic reasons,’ eschewing the conflict inherent in the thoroughgoing standpoint.”

I hoped to have a Reformation Day present for you all, but it’s going to be a little late. One of our elders loaned me a rare book called Famous Women of the Reformed Church by Rev. James I. Good. He gave me permission to scan it and put it on my website. It’s full of stories about extreme Prairie Muffins like Anna Bullinger, who was fleeing the city of Bremgarten with a baby and a toddler (briefly separated from her husband who had already escaped the city). The gate was closed and the guard refused to open it, “but nerved by a mother’s superhuman strength, she wrested the key from him by force and opened it and fled.” Mrs. Bullinger eventually bore eleven children and helped raise other children, took care of her in-laws and made a home for Zwingli’s widow and children, all with very limited resources in a time of great danger and turmoil.

Our Reformation Day celebration will be modest this year since it falls on the Lord’s Day and we still have some sick children. We always have German sausage, sauerkraut, dark bread, applesauce and homemade doughnuts with wassail. We’ll either read some stories of the reformers or watch a movie about one of them. We will sing together, probably our favorite, “A Mighty Fortress.” “We Gather Together” is also a good Reformation hymn as it was sung by the Dutch Reformed when they gained independence from Spain. And we’ll pray for our family, the church and our nation, that all will walk in the light of God’s truth without compromise, remembering those who sacrificed everything for the sake of that “impossible” goal. Because with God, all things are possible.

Taking a deep breath (*in*, *out*) and posting an uncontroversial link to Valerie Jacobsen’s revised article about how to tackle book sales.

Good advice:

Remember that for many local families, these sales are their only source of books. Picking the sales clean in the first twenty minutes in order to sell the books online for as little as $2-3 each means a low hourly wage for a bookseller in exchange for a very cluttered office or basement at home and lots of disappointed children in the families that attend the sales with us and after us.

I generally do reserve very valuable books to supplement my family’s income, but when I find a $3-5 book that I know is wonderful and I know that I don’t need it for our library, I often look for another family at the sale to share it with.

I love finding people at book sales to visit with and help find books.

Do you have any good book sale stories? If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine!

My friend Izzy alerted me to a two-part series in an Oklahoma paper about large families. In this case, large refers to families with a mother and father who have stayed married to each other and produced a clan of nine or more all by their lonesomes, though, with that many children, believe me, you are never lonesome. I have lost count of the times I have not only been asked, “Are they all yours?” but it has been followed by, “From you and your husband?”

The nice thing about the two stories by Chris Jones is that she (or he?) didn’t treat the families as if they were freaks from the circus sideshow, but she penned an informative and encouraging series about the realities of life with lots of children. One family is expecting its 10th child, and the father has a job which some would say justifies either a little planned barrenhood or a visit from a social worker to advise them of available government programs:

As the chief financial support of the large family, R.C., a window clerk at the Norman Main Street post office, said he and his family rely on their faith in God and hard work.

He said people ask him how he is able to feed nine children, and they wonder if he accepts food stamps or welfare. He does not. Strangers make comments about birth control, shake their heads and tell him they can’t imagine how he manages. Stares are not uncommon when the family goes out together.

That father is wealthier than a Rockefeller Republican, with a 13-year-old daughter who says she is “thankful for having the best parents a kid could have.” A couple of my friends, who see children as an asset rather than a liability, because they welcome babies into their wombs, have had folks say to them (or in their hearing) that God gave us brains and we should use them, i.e., using birth control is smart and not using it is dumb. Yet over and over the Bible tells us that to have many children is a wonderful blessing for a family and a nation, and that God’s wisdom is foolishness to the world.

For a deeper look into the ins and outs and idiosyncrasies of large family life, Vision Forum has just published a book about a real-life big family, the Arnold Pents, who did carschooling before carschooling was cool. Think about the debt we owe to the pioneers of the homeschool movement who put their freedom on the line to teach their own children, then be in awe of people like the Pents, who were the Lewis and Clarks of the homeschool movement, mapping the trail that the pioneers followed.

Even though that trail was mapped and blazed, it’s still the road less traveled, and having a big family to take on the journey is, despite growing numbers of growing numbers, a path few ever find. It is not an easy path, but it’s not just for spiritual giants who have life’s great problems figured out. It’s for humble folks who know that they can’t figure out anything without the help of their Father in heaven, who knows all the answers and provides the groceries for those hungry mouths and the strength for our weary arms.