Charlotte Mary Yonge at 21
by George Richmond, 1844
in the National Portrait Gallery

Some of you book-savvy people may already know about Miss Charlotte Yonge’s work, but I recently bought one of her novels, reprinted by Beautiful Feet Books, called The Daisy Chain. From what I’ve read about her, it sounds like the never-married Miss Yonge proposed a tertium quid in Victorian times when many relegated women to ornamental status while others pushed for total autonomy for females. I’ll let you know how this novel deals with those issues, which have been issues for much longer than Gloria Steinem’s been around, though she’s been around a long time.

The following is from Preston Speed, which has also been republishing some of Miss Yonge’s works:

When we discovered Charlotte Yonge, and began reading her novels, we were astonished to discover that, with the exception of The Heir of Redclyffe and The Little Duke, most of her works had been long out of print. Reading further, a possible reason began to surface: Charlotte Yonge is unabashedly Christian. Her characters are often refined by fire: they suffer physically and mentally-often unjustly, but sometimes simply because of an accident rather than anyone’s malice-they learn to conquer weaknesses in temperament and the sin of pride, and they emerge from their time of testing better people, more humble, and more dependent on God than ever before. Many of the finest 19th century novels address issues of pride, and weakness of temperament; many contain characters that must deal with physical or social handicaps; moral choices abound. But in none of these books is there a specifically Christian approach to either the problems or the solutions. The 19th century was a time of much upheaval spiritually, politically, and socially. Many sincere people, among them writers, turned from orthodox Christianity and found an easier path in Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, Utilitarianism, and even Theosophy and spiritualism. And as the leading thinkers turned from Christianity, so did many “ordinary” people. Thus, one could say that the sacrifice, the refining, the self-denial, and the faithfulness of many of Miss Yonge’s characters went out of fashion-at least, they would serve as an unwelcome reminder of a way of life left behind.

If you would like to peruse some of Charlotte Yonge’s books online, you can find links to several of them here. Beautiful Feet Books is also sponsoring an essay contest, with a $1000 scholarship awarded to the winner, using The Daisy Chain as the topic.

Today at a homeschool swim party, my friend asked, “What is that word that I keep hearing reformed people use…I think it starts with ‘P’?”

I pondered for a moment, then replied, “Do you mean ‘providential’?”

“That’s it!” she exclaimed, and we discussed what the word means.

On the way home, I left the gang in the van while I ran into the store for some milk and other things we needed (big sisters in charge). I brought the cart out with my groceries and had oldest mini muffin unload the cart and return it to the store, while I checked on the rest of the children (who had been rolling down the windows and playing a Christian music CD really loud, their contribution to being salt and light in the community). When we got home, I assigned children to unload the groceries and put them away.

Steve called from his upstairs-office to see if I could go with him to pick up his car from the homeschool dad/mechanic we know who had done a much-needed tune-up. Going out the door, I gave instructions for dinner preparations. When we returned 45 minutes later, the children were eating some things other than I had instructed, and I discovered that some of the groceries had not been brought in and were still in the van which Steve and I had taken. In light of a previous grocery mishap—when some chicken got left in the trunk of the car, with smelly results—I was rather grumpy with my urchins for not getting all the bags out of the van. However, it turned out that only one bag was left in the vehicle, but several other items I had purchased were nowhere to be found. So, I called the store and found that the bagger had left about half my groceries out of my cart when I left the store, and they were waiting for me to retrieve them.

My dear husband offered to drive me the five minutes to pick up the missing bags, and he suggested that we go out to dinner, as well. My lovely, forgiving children (remember, Mommy had just blamed them for the missing items) thought that would be a good idea (maybe they hoped it would calm Mommy down?) so we did just that. After picking up the three (!) misplaced bags, we went to our favorite local Mexican restaurant. And sitting in a booth near the door was my friend and her husband.

Of course, they asked us to sit with them and we had dinner together. I couldn’t resist telling my friend, “This meeting was providential.” Of course, all things that transpire are in God’s providence, and that was the gist of our conversation for the rest of the evening.

Wasn’t God merciful to make that bagger forget to put half my groceries in the cart?

This is an article I just sent to my home school group’s newsletter, taken from the talk I gave at the home school conference earlier this month. I’ll be adding it to my articles page. It’s too long for WordPress to publish all at once, so I’m making it Part One and Part Two.

This is not your typical home school workshop: it’s going to be a pep talk. Often, home school workshops consist of lots of inspiring ideas about how to navigate the stormy academic waters with your reluctant little sailors. You leave the workshop equipped to tackle the toughest waves. But when you get home, you get a splash of cold sea water in the face. Or, to mix my metaphors, from your mountaintop moment you’re plunged into the valley of the dailiness of life.

I took the title of this talk from something I had written in the back of my Bible. Sometimes I’ll hear something in a sermon or other spiritually-uplifting talk which especially catches my attention and is pithy enough to copy quickly, and I like to jot it in the back of my Bible. At a ladies’ Bible study I once heard the teacher say something which I had to immediately add to the list, and it has stuck with me for many years because it’s so true: “The hardest trial you will ever face is the dailiness of life.”

When I first started thinking about home schooling before my oldest son was born, I went to any home school seminars in my area. The two things I wanted to hear about were why home schooling was a valid alternative to “traditional” schooling and how to go about doing it–the nuts and bolts. After over 16 years in the trenches, however, I finally nailed down the socialization argument, I can refute all the other objections to home schooling, and I figured out the best system for teaching my children. Does that mean I don’t need help anymore?

NO!!

I need even more encouragement than ever before, and I need the kind of encouragement that even the first-year home school mom needs. I need to be encouraged to persevere.

For you principle approach people, the dictionary definition of persevere is:

“Steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.”

Romans 5:3 says tribulation produces perseverance. There are other biblical synonyms for tribulation: trial, affliction, suffering. Whatever you call it, you have two options–give up or persevere.

When the Puritans went through great suffering, they would sometimes say they were “undone.” With a rate of child mortality over 50%, they knew something about being undone. We might call it “being at the end of our rope.” I personally know several home schooling families who have been “undone” in the last few years, with major trials ranging from rebellious children to marital difficulties to major illness and even death.

We must remember that mountaintop moments and valleys go hand in hand. There is no perseverance without a trial. You could probably tell me some of your own sad stories from your circle of friends and family. We will all face some big trials in our lives. But we get the warm-up for the big-time in the day-to-day struggles we all face. If we pick one or two of those struggles to discuss (Suzy won’t pick up her dirty socks, Johnny daydreams instead of finishing his math), it sounds rather petty. But when we add up all the issues we deal with each day, pretty soon we realize we’re dying from a thousand paper cuts!

If you’re like me, you’re your own worst enemy when it comes to daily trials. Whatever the struggle: the car broke down, your child can’t get his brain around your brilliant phonics instruction, the house is a mess and your dinner guests are arriving in an hour, the laundry mountain is about to have an avalanche…you get to find out what you’re really made of when the trials stack up, and in my case, it’s not true grit.

Continued in Part Two…

…continued from Part One:

These words by Martin Lloyd-Jones struck close to home when I read them:

In normal times, when life is pursuing the ordinary tenor of its way, we all succeed in making a fair show. We adopt a certain standard and a certain attitude towards life, and there is sufficient time and leisure to enable us to carry out the part. We observe the rules and conform ourselves to the various standards that are recognized. We make our professions and protestations with respect to what we think, and what we believe, and with regard to what we propose to do face to face with certain hypothetical possibilities. And thus we give to others a certain impression of ourselves and the kind of person we really are. I am not suggesting that the whole of life is just one great hoax and fraud, but I am suggesting seriously that, unconsciously, we all tend to play a part in life, and thereby, not only deceive others but ourselves also. It is so easy to live an artificial and a superficial life and to persuade ourselves that we really are what we would like to be. The actor is strong in all of us, and in times like these, when the tyranny of social conventions and forms has been so strong, one of the most difficult things in life is for us to put into practice the advice of the ancient philosopher—”know thyself.” Now if we find it difficult to do this, a time of trial and of crisis invariably does it for us. It comes to us suddenly and finds us “off guard.” There is no time to remember the conventionalities and the customs, no opportunity as it were of putting on the mask, we just act instinctively. The natural, the real, and true come into view.

Rather than collapsing in a puddle of frustrated expectations when things don’t go “our” way, here are some things you should remember when the inevitable trials come:

Remember who God is. This is foundational to how you live each moment of your life. You should study all you can about God’s character to get a good understanding of how he relates to us, but the one trait I want to emphasize in this discussion is God’s sovereignty. R.C. Sproul, Jr. talks about how there are many bottom line summations of important things in the Bible, but the bottom, bottom line is, “In the beginning, God…” Our purpose for each day needs to be bringing glory to God in our homes and families, submitting to his purposes for us. If that is not our goal, then we end up floundering in those stormy seas, which He intends to sanctify us. A.W. Pink said, “Deny that God is governing matter, deny that He is ‘upholding all things by the word of His power,’ and all sense of security is gone!”

Psalm 66:8-12 encourages us with these words: “Oh, bless our God, you peoples, and sound His praise abroad, who keeps us in life and does not allow our feet to slip. For Thou hast tried us, O God; Thou hast refined us as silver is refined. Thou didst bring us into the net; Thou didst lay an oppressive burden upon our loins. Thou didst make men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water; yet Thou didst bring us out into a place of abundance.”

Remember what God has done. The Psalms are full of reminders of how God had saved His covenant people. We repeatedly read specific recountings of His salvation of the Israelites in Egypt, of His protection of David from King Saul, of God’s victories over the enemies of His people in times past. We all have stories of God’s hand on our lives and we need to remember them and tell them over and over to our children.

Remember what God requires of you. Our measure of success needs to be with God’s measuring stick, not the world’s. And we ought not to make our standard the scope and sequence of the latest shiny home school curriculum which everyone is using, guaranteed to help your child win the science fair and the national spelling bee. Rather than fretting that our children might be missing out on some arbitrary bit of information on a standardized test, we must focus on God’s bottom line. Go back to the Bible and see what His requirements are for teaching your children.

Here are some practical things you can do to help you grow stronger rather than overwhelmed by those trials, big and small.

Pray without ceasing. The opposite reaction to difficulties would be to worry about everything, showing how little you trust God’s care for you. Jesus said in Matthew 6, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life’s span? …Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow till care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Be thankful. One thing we can be thankful for is that home schooling is a blessing is because we have more opportunities to see ourselves and our children as we really are. We are then able to immediately deal with the sin that rises to the top of our lives rather than letting it take deeper root when it’s out of view.

Give up your rights. One of my heroines is the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet. Even though she was an intelligent woman and gifted writer, she found her joy and identity in serving her family. Doug Wilson says of her, “When she later wrote down a prose account of her life her children, she did not mention her poetry at all. Our tendency is to remember her life in terms of her poetry. When she recalled her life she did so in terms of God and her family.” I’ve had to give up many rights over my years of motherhood and home schooling: the right to a full night’s sleep, the right to healthy children, the right to be appreciated, the right to a perfectly clean house, the right to be understood, the right to be in control. But as the Keith Green song says, “With each one that I lay down, a jewel’s placed in my crown.”

Be convinced of the importance of what you are doing. We are raising up the next generation of warriors for God’s kingdom. Elisabeth Elliot said, “The routines of housework and mothering may be seen as a kind of death, and it is appropriate that they should be, for they offer the chance, day after day, to lay down one’s life for others. Then they are no longer routines…A mother’s part in sustaining the life of her children and making it pleasant and comfortable is no triviality. It calls for self-sacrifice and humility, but it is the route, as was the humiliation of Jesus, to glory.”

Go with the flow. We all have to contend with “hormotions” that make certain times seem worse than they really are. Also, at different seasons of life, we are able to accomplish more than others. Make sure to allow yourself proper refreshment and breaks from the daily routine occasionally, and don’t overcommit to things outside of your home and family, as home and family ought to be the center of your activity.

Wait on the Lord. Deliverance can be a slow process, not like a 30-minute “Unshackled” episode. The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, then wandered 40 years in the wilderness. Don’t succumb to the false religion of pragmatism: “I tried it and it didn’t work!” Throughout history, people have given in to the temptation to be syncretists with their old pagan practices and superstitions when things got bad. We tend to appeal to the gods of “common sense” and give in to our emotions when we are under pressure. We must trust God and His timing.

Have compassion on others who suffer. It’s easy when others are in the midst of a trial to be like Job’s comforters and sit in the judgment seat. But God has His purposes for suffering which you may not be privy to. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Remember, too, that when we suffer it can benefit others–we have an audience, particularly our children, who need to see us responding in godly faith to our trials.

Let me leave you with a couple more quotes for you to put in the back of your Bible: Richard Baxter said, “He will use you only in safe and honorable services, and no worse end than your endless happiness.” And Charles Spurgeon reminds us, “The Lord’s mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.”

The following passage is from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It’s about the changing culture in Russia in the late 19th century and how parents were at a loss as to how to protect and direct their daughters without being too strict on the one hand and too lax on the other. Sound familiar?

The old prince, like all fathers, was especially scrupulous about the honour and purity of his daughters; he was unreasonably jealous over them, and especially over Kitty, who was his favourite, and at every step made scenes with his wife for compromising their daughter. The princess had already grown used to it with the first two daughters, but now she felt that the prince’s scrupulousness had more grounds. She saw that much had changed lately in the ways of society, that the duties of a mother had become even more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty’s age formed some sort of groups, attended some sort of courses, freely associated with men, drove around by themselves, many no longer curtsied, and, worse still, they were all firmly convinced that choosing a husband was their own and not their parents’ business. “Nowadays girls are not given in marriage as they used to be,” all these young girls, and even all the old people, thought and said. But how a girl was to be given in marriage nowadays the princess could not find out from anyone. The French custom—for the parents to decide the children’s fate—was not accepted, and was even condemned. The English custom—giving the girl complete freedom—was also not accepted and was impossible in Russian society. The Russian custom of matchmaking was regarded as something outrageous and was laughed at by everyone, the princess included. But how a girl was to get married or be given in marriage, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess happened to discuss it told her one and the same thing: “Good gracious, in our day it’s time to abandon this antiquity. It’s young people who get married, not their parents; that means the young people should be left to arrange it as they can.” It was fine for those who had no daughters to talk that way; but the princess understood that in making friends her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who would not want to marry or who was not right as a husband. And however much the princess was assured that in our time young people themselves must settle their fate, she was unable to believe it, as she would have been unable to believe that in anyone’s time the best toys for five-year-old children would be loaded pistols. And therefore the princess worried more about Kitty than she had about her older daughters.