When I Was Growing Up...

**Disclaimer:  If you have ever sent me an email or posted to your Facebook account anything that fits the description of the statements soon to be torn apart, please do not take my criticism too much to heart.  Understand that much of this post is written with a light heart.  Your sharing of such sentiments has not invoked my indignation against you on a personal level.  If I loved you prior to the reading of such sentiments, I love you still.  If we were mere acquaintances, I shall not shun you in the future on the basis of your opinions on these matters.  If however, you offer me a bologna sandwich, most intimate friend or most distant stranger, our friendship is most definitely in jeopardy.**

Every so often it happens.  I receive the email or read the Facebook status full of supposed highlights of my childhood suggesting that today's parents have wandered from the Golden Olden Days of Perfect Parenting into some dark, unnamed realm of awful parenting certain to deprive our children of every good lesson and life-affirming experience imaginable.

It goes something like this:  When I was growing up, I ate bologna, drank soda, played in the dirt, got my butt spanked, had three black and white television channels that went off air at ten o'clock, school started with "The Pledge" and got in trouble at home if I got in trouble at school.  I had a bedtime, rode in back of pickup trucks, recorded songs from the radio on cassette tapes, drank from a hose, rode bikes all day without a helmet, wandered around the neighborhood till dark, said sir and ma'am... and still turned out okay.


One even included something about how kids got calamine lotion instead of Benedryl when they got a bug bite.  As the parent of a child severely allergic to ants, it was all I could do not to shoot back a nasty email informing the sender of the idiocy of risking my child's life for the sake of recapturing a bygone era.

But I get it.  There are plenty of overprotective parents these days, and plenty of permissive parents.  My generation of parents could do much better.  We are too often afraid to let our children get hurt.  Too often we try to shield them from the pain of things within their control and things beyond their control.  We should give them more freedom to explore, to strive, to struggle, to fail and to win.  I get it.  And I agree.

Honestly, though, some of the things on these lists are just stupid.  Bologna and soda?  Really?  You do realize that bologna is disgusting and that neither it nor soda is particularly good for your body?  You've heard that our nation is fatter and unhealthier than ever, haven't you?  Yeah, let's stuff our kids full of bologna and soda.  By golly, that's what our notoriously overweight, unhealthy generation grew up eating and drinking!

Health issues aside, what's so great about bologna?  How am I damaging my children by not giving it to them?  (Actually, I have given it to them, though they rarely eat it nowadays).   I understand the whole "teach your child to eat what's put before him," but how does intentionally serving nasty food make one a great parent?  More importantly, is it effective?  I remember foods I hated growing up.  They still make me gag.  And I don't think I'd be a better parent if I dumped leather-tough pork chops on my kids' plates.  (Especially since there's no way I'd eat it with them!)  Trust me, I serve plenty of things my kids dislike.  I don't, however, make a virtue out of it.  (Partly because I don't like it, either... I'd much rather be a gourmet chef than serve my family some of the atrocities I set on the table!)

As for your three black and white stations...  Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see the merit of primitive television.  Yep, kids watch too much television.  So turn it off.  I'll keep my twenty-some channels and my Netflix.  It so happens there are some really neat, highly educational shows through which I may expose my children to images and concepts they might not be able to grasp as easily, if at all, through the written word alone.  The same goes for iPods and other newfangled electronics by which the young whippersnappers enjoy their music and games.  Technology may be overused, but cassette players and Atari aren't inherently superior to iPods and wii.  (In fact, wii is probably better since it requires players to move more than their phalanges :)).  If you want to complain that parents aren't monitoring the use of electronics, I'm with you.  If you want to smash my wii against a tree, go for it.  I've been doing Pilates using Netflix on wii and I will kick you in the head if you even look at my wii.

And now my favorite (or least favorite) parts of the whole thing...

We rode in the backs of pickup trucks.  Wonderful.  Nowadays, most states have laws requiring children up to certain ages and sizes to be in child safety restraints (a.k.a. car seats and boosters).  Most states have laws requiring adults and children not in car seats to wear a seat belt.  (http://www.iihs.org/laws/childrestraint.aspx)(http://www.iihs.org/laws/safetybeltuse.aspx) Even if buckling up was not law, we've heard about enough accidents in which wearing a seatbelt would have saved someone's life to be fools not to buckle up.

We rode bikes all day without a helmet.  Good for you.  Many areas now have laws mandating helmet use.  (http://www.helmets.org/mandator.htm)  Like seatbelts, the reasons to enforce helmet use extend beyond legalities.  It seems to me that given what we know about head injuries and children's - especially boys' - propensity to attempt things we adults might approach with considerable caution, if at all, I cannot see how failing to require one's children to wear a helmet while biking could possibly be a sign of enlightenment.  I get that some parents are overprotective sticklers for safety who never allow their children to push the limits of their physical capabilities.  That isn't admirable at all, but swinging to the other extreme by sending your children out to ride in defiance of common sense and the law is no better. I hope you don't try to sue your neighbors when your helmetless kid crashes over a stick on their driveway.  (If you do, though, I know a good lawyer!)

But did you catch that thing about the law?  Wearing bike helmets and using safety restraints are the LAW.  I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, my mama taught me to obey the law.  So which is it?  Did your parents teach you to obey the law, or are you going to keep trying to throw off your helmet and squirm out of your seat belt?  And are you really encouraging your children to do so?  Are you practicing what you preach or strapping your most precious children into their car seats?  Can't have it both ways, folks...

We wandered around the neighborhood till dark.  Your parents probably knew everyone in the neighborhood, too, or at least enough of them to know that someone would be looking out for you.  Either that, or your parents didn't know all the crazy things that went on in your neighborhood.

In my early elementary years, we lived a block from my cousin and two blocks from my grandparents.  On one corner lived a lady who had watched my father run the streets of that same neighborhood.  We wandered freely, and yes, someone once called my parents when I ran my bike into their car.

Then we moved to Florida.

It may defeat my whole argument to confess that, to my knowledge, nothing really bad ever happened to my sisters or me in the course of our neighborhood wanderings.  My most frightening encounter occurred the evening a woman grabbed my arm and demanded all my money as I walked my dog, who in a freak breach of character failed to growl, snarl, and bite the woman.  (Those of you who remember Samson and were subjected to his territorial defenses can marvel at that one...)  The woman, much to my relief, believed my honest protests of empty pockets and sent me on my junior high way.  That was the worst that happened to me, but certainly not the worst that could have happened.  In retrospect, I'm convinced my sisters and I saw a few drug deals go down and enjoyed the hospitality of child molesters. I have no proof of either, but conversations with my Wise and Wonderful Sister (that's your proper name now, my dear!) have at least confirmed that many things from the neighborhood of our youth were a little sketchy, sketchier than we realized at the time.  Our wanderings led us into situations that could have been disastrous, situations from which I prefer to protect my children.

We usually traveled in a group of three or more, my sisters and I and our friends.  Perhaps ideas of "safety in numbers" gave my parents and us courage to wander along the wooded canals surrounding our neighborhood.  Perhaps a mere partial knowledge of where we were going and the people with whom we associated shielded them from worries over our safety.  Perhaps they were products of a different era from the one in which we grew up, an era of "Mayberry" and "Leave It to Beaver" instead of "Murder She Wrote" and "Unsolved Mysteries."

I don't think this subtle change in circumstances has received enough attention in the discussion of "parents these days," but this is the point at which I stop laughing.  You can tease me for buying ham instead of bologna, roll your eyes at my child's iPod, and call me uptight when I should "HELMET!" from my kitchen window.  When it comes to guarding against people who might harm my children, though, I have a hard time shrugging off ridicule.  From an early age, our parents and schoolteachers taught us not to talk to strangers and to have our parents check all of our Halloween candy before eating any of it.  You never knew what kind neighbor might insert a razor blade into a juicy red apple.   Our milk cartons displayed pictures of children just like us who never came home from school.  Through widely reported events including Catholic Church and Boys Scout scandals and through shows like "Law & Order" and "Dateline", the current generation of parents learned that perpetrators of heinous crimes against children are often those closest to them, those considered most trustworthy.  We've seen crime after crime reported and reenacted on the news, on prime time crime dramas and real life mysteries, and now on the internet. You might even say - and I say this tongue-in-cheek and without ill will toward our parents or our culture - that we were raised to be fearful and overprotective.  Now, from peers, for every accident a child has, his parents hear, "Oh, did you hear about (insert similar but much more severe accident that happened to someone else)?" The worst case scenario is ever before our eyes, and has been so since we were young.  It's no wonder we're paranoid.

We are paranoid, on the whole, and must resist the urge to overprotect.  We must judge carefully between valid concerns and exaggerated fears.  We must trust God to protect our children, our children to use common sense, and our loved ones not to create the next horrifying news report.  But we should not be mocked when we are aware of potential danger and take reasonable steps to guard against tragedy.  When I strap a helmet onto my child, when I buckle my toddler into his car seat, when I glance out my kitchen every few minutes to make sure my children are still in the backyard, when my eyes scan the playground, and when I do all the little things a watchful mother does...  I neither need nor deserve ridicule.  My children are my responsibility.  I have learned, through experience and ever-sensationalized media, that anything can happen in an instant.  And obeying the law isn't the only thing my mama taught me.  She also taught me to love my family and to think about what I'm doing.  So I won't apologize to those who accuse me of being overprotective.  I will admit that I cannot protect them from everything and ask God for the courage not to attempt to do so and the faith to believe that He will guard them from the true dangers they will face, many of which will elude the scope of my paranoia.  But I will not apologize for setting limits and watching my children even as they play within those limits.  I will not apologize for protecting them to the extent that I am able to do so, to the extent that I have the responsibility to do so.

If you have a problem with that, go buy some bologna.

Glimpsing the Quotidian (Yea, Me! I finally have a chance to use that word!!!!)

As I saw Geoff and John off to Cub Scout Resident Camp (and a few short hours later, drove to meet them in Spartanburg with the freshly ironed uniforms they'd left hanging in the living room), I realized that as much as I write, I don't often write about the basic everyday stuff going on in our little white picket life.  Some of this is intentional.  Life is full of issues of greater import than how potty training isn't going or how I'd like to organize our linen closet.  I try to avoid such quotidian matters, aiming to bore neither my readers nor myself with endless housewifely babble.  (I may bore everyone anyhow, but hope I steer clear of housewifely babble, at least most of the time!)

But this afternoon I regretted that, just a little.  My boy was on his way to his first overnight camp, and that's a pretty big deal.  Sure, maybe it's only a big deal to us, but going to camp and millions of less memorable moments are the materials of which our lives are built.  As elements of our life they are precious to me.  If I wanted to go all philosophical, I'd argue that every moment of every individual's life is immeasurably important, since all those apparently insignificant moments combine to tell the story of human history and all, but I'm not feeling that philosophical today.

I am feeling sadly, happily nostalgic, though.  My babies are growing up, and I want to record every moment lest I forget their loves and fears, their passions and weaknesses.  I want to remember the tones of their voices, the phrases they use, the words they mispronounce, the games they play, the battles they wage.  Years ago, a friend stared at me and told me she was memorizing my face.  Slightly unsettling it was, but I kind of wish I could memorize each of my children's faces as they express every passing emotion.

My desires to so preserve these everyday moments are a little unrealistic.  I'm going to forget a lot more than I'd like to forget, and it would probably be slightly unhealthy to take more pictures of my children than I already do.  (Besides, Geoff had the audacity to take my camera to camp).  But I can record glimpses of everyday life - not the whole picture, but maybe enough to trigger a few memories when I reread this post years from now.  So you're getting one of those "Here's What We're Up To" blog posts, like it or not.  :)

As mentioned, Geoff and John have gone off to camp.  John, at first apathetic to camp, could not get on the road quickly enough.  He must have asked Geoff a hundred times how high the mountain is.  On his way out the door, he gave me a hurried hug and kiss that felt more like a head butt to the stomach.  Not exactly what I'd hoped for when I begged for a goodbye hug and kiss.  Apparently, boys who go to camp are too old to give their mothers a proper hug and kiss...

Luke, at least, is not so old as to be incapable of lavishing affection on his mommy.  He hugs and kisses and zeberts me with the boundless enthusiasm unique to two-year-olds.  If hugging, kissing, zeberting and tickling him back didn't occupy my mind, I might have to cry at the thought that it won't last forever.

Other aspects of Luke's life, however, I am relieved to think will not last forever.  Colored walls, locked up knives, diapers, and diapers.  Did I mention diapers?  We have begun potty-training despite lack of interest on his part and lack of commitment on mine.  This translates to Luke wearing undies and sitting on the potty every couple of days, and me mopping up puddles every couple of days.

And then there's Luke's near constant companion, Elisabeth.  She is her usually spunky self, wavering between wanting to run with the big boys and wanting to mother or smother Luke.  She's also been enjoying afternoons with the girl next door, a very sweet young lady who looks forward to playing with Elisabeth as much as Elisabeth looks forward to playing with her.

Finally, Andrew...  Andrew is, well, Andrew.  He's looking forward to a few days as the only big kid in the house.  We have a few fun things planned - swimming and lunch at his favorite restaurant, as well as a not as eagerly anticipated trip to the pediatric gastroenterologist.  We're still trying to put some weight on him.  I'm wondering how long we'll have to keep driving an hour to be told to feed him more protein and milkshakes.  But whatever...

We have also started school.  After a relaxed May and June, it's time to get back to work (between camps and a trip to the beach).  Andrew is a bit dismayed by the resumption of school.  Overall, he's handling the injustice mostly gracefully, only occasionally objecting that summer is supposed to be three months long.  For the most part, he and John are having a great year.  They gave me a special treat this week, a humorous glimpse at two very different writing styles.

It happened like this:  In our writing lesson, we picked three key words from each sentence of a nine sentence paragraph, and then they each retold the paragraph (orally - we'll write it later) using the key words to form their own sentences.  Both constructed excellent paragraphs - as in, they followed the outline to dictate nine reasonable, comprehensible sentences that conveyed the meaning of the original paragraph - but their styles were so different - Andrew's sparse and matter-of-fact, John's humorously embellished.  I was so thankful to be teaching the two of them, and to be able to congratulate them each on a well spoken, completely unique paragraph.

That's our recent life in a nutshell.  I'm happy to add that I had to step away from the computer a few minutes ago to aid a little boy who had stripped naked to sit on his training potty all by himself.   He didn't actually do anything in the potty, but I didn't have to mop, either...  So we're making progress.

Best of all, he looked up from the book he was reading on the potty to give his me a kiss. And I didn't even have to beg for it!

The Truth About Homeschooling With Preschoolers

When teaching older children, the home education gurus suggest, provide younger children with their own "school" boxes filled with puzzles, toys, and other special things consecrated to school time.  Having their own "school" to do will keep the little ones happy, occupied, and mentally stimulated while you struggle through mathematics and grammar or read a lengthy chapter of history with your older scholars.  The school box is the key to blissful home schooling with preschoolers.

Either I'm a lousy home schooler or some of you are also laughing, snorting, and rolling your eyes right now.  Around here, that is not at all how it works.  I tried the school box idea, and haven't quite given up on it, but um...  It's just not that simple in reality.  

The Littles, as we sometimes call our youngest two, do have their school boxes filled with fun stuff.  Or they were filled with fun stuff until I wearied of finding puzzle pieces strewn all over the house and pencil, pen, and crayon marks in various corners and on various surfaces.  Thankfully, a bit of borax and washing powder does wonders on upholstered chairs blessed by pink colored pencil.  The living room walls may take a little more creativity, as they have been subjected to more than one outburst of creativity on the part of our littlest budding artist, and perhaps another coat of paint once said artist becomes more trustworthy with writing utensils.  I love the idea of the school box, but if you don't keep up with it, it will overtake your home.  Toddlers have to be taught to sit down and play with this right here and nowhere else, and preferably semi-quietly so as not to distract your older brother who'd really rather work a puzzle than a math fact sheet.  It's a great lesson, but hard to teach simultaneously with second grade spelling and fourth grade math.  

Despite the presence of school boxes, the Littles are crawling on my lap during grammar lessons, pulling out math manipulatives during our Bible lesson (and proceeding to scatter counting bears all over the dining room), and playing kitty cat - meowing in distress kitty cat, by the sounds of it - in the hallway while the Civil War raises to a deafening roar in my attempts to make our history chapter heard by my older scholars.  Another crazy morning of home schooling with preschoolers...

There are of course upsides to home schooling with preschoolers.  For one thing, they do pick up some of what their older siblings are learning.  For another...  um...  uh...  Okay, so maybe today I was thinking how nice it will be when Luke stops climbing onto the counter and starts sitting at the table for kindergarten.  

In a way, though, that tells me the chaos we experience in this phase of our home schooling life isn't as awful as it sometimes appears on the surface, because I am looking forward to the Littles officially joining our school.  I picture all four of my children sitting around the table, diligently studying grammar and math, or curled up reading history and literature in the living room.  If I can see a future in which all of my children gather together for school in a mostly civilized manner, I must deep down believe that we will survive the preschool years.  I'm sure we'll have a different breed of chaos when we are officially home schooling four, but I'm going to pretend otherwise for now.  Laugh if you want, oh you of more experience, but I'm going to pretend that someday our home will look like the cover of the homeschooling catalogs, at least until I get the living room repainted and have to face the beautiful chaos of that day.  

(And I am truly glad to have my Littles home, buzzing around enjoying life...  It's just that some days, like this one, I understand why people might think I'm crazy to do what we do!)

In Quietness and Rest...

Sometimes I think my life is downright crazy.  I have four children.  If that alone isn't enough to render my life crazy, I home school my children.  Then there are things like church and Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and piano lessons and soccer and doctor appointments and play dates and house cleaning and cooking and, and, and...  There is, as the saying goes, "always something."  So sometimes I can't help but utter a sighing, "You have no idea, " when someone tells me I have my hands full.  And yet...

Perspective.

The past two weeks have changed my perspective a little, hopefully lasting bit.  First, over the span of one week, our household went from six to nine to fifteen to twelve and back to six, as family came from Florida and then from Canada to visit with us.  Then, Vacation Bible School began at our church.  This year, VBS is from 9-3, with the preschoolers going home at noon.  Both of these events - company and VBS - are wonderful things.    I love my family and enjoyed having them here, and I am very thankful for the members of our church who have put so much time, thought, and energy into VBS.  I truly, truly appreciate their love for my children and all children.

But my kids are fried.  Our schedule is almost forgotten, as are dietary guidelines that promote peace and well-being.  The kids have been going nonstop and one of them, for whom routine and diet are most important, just can't handle it anymore.  When I brought all of my children home from VBS at noon yesterday, I felt a twinge of... inadequacy, maybe?  As if maybe we're depriving our children of some essential life skills by not sending them to school everyday from 9-3...  as if we ought to have done more to prepare our children for the rigors of an entire day away from home, mother, each other, and for one in particular, books.

One thing you might not realize if you don't home school is that while we are fully committed to what we are doing, believing it to be the best choice for our family, we are sensitive to our weaknesses, frequently evaluating our children, our methods, our lifestyles, ourselves...  really, anything that can be evaluated is evaluated... in the hopes of identifying and correcting short comings in the nurturing and education of our children.  This near constant evaluation does not spring from a lack of faith in our decision to build a life a little different from the standard, but from a realization that we aren't perfect and a commitment to preparing our children for life.

So, I wasn't questioning our lifestyle, which happens to involve a rather strong dislike of early risings and rushed mornings and a rather strong like of quiet reading times and predictable routines, as much as feeling very much on the outside as I drove home with my exhausted children and spent the remainder of the afternoon bouncing between scolding and holding a young man so overwhelmed by the past two weeks that he didn't know what to do with himself.  I suspected that we might be considered a little weird, a little wimpy, to be calling it a day at noon, especially since by doing so my oldest two children would be missing out on a fun afternoon of Bible School.  But I knew that I had made the right choice in taking them home.  I knew they needed rest and would have defended my decision fiercely if necessary.

In the course of my mental defense of rest, I realized something.  However crazy our life may be, through our regular routines, we maintain a level of sanity.  However loud our home may be, through times of reading and independent play, we enjoy moments of restorative quiet.  However much we may run, through the structure of our lives and our time together, God grants us rest.  I fell back on Isaiah 30:15:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:

   “In repentance and rest is your salvation, 

   in quietness and trust is your strength, 

   but you would have none of it. 

Actually, what popped into my head yesterday was a misquote.  I kept thinking, "In quietness and rest is your salvation."  But it's the same idea.  We shouldn't trivialize repentance and trust, nor should we ignore the reprimand at the end.  As far as structuring our lives, though, we start with quietness and rest.  In quietness and in rest, we are not rushed from one activity to the next, pushed and pulled till our brains short-circuit.  We find the time, the leisure, the openness to repent and to trust.  We have the time to think, to feel, to listen, to recover, to respond. 

So I find, through the busyness of the last two weeks, that while I may need to train my children in stamina and stability, we have a different good thing going on already.  We have space for quietness and rest.  I appreciate this more than ever, and will not feel lacking - or like my children are lacking - when I see the need to intervene to give them the quietness and rest that are so often lacking in the structure of ordinary American life.  In fact, I want to do more in this area of quietness and rest, steering it from the aimlessness into which we sometimes slip, into purposeful moments of restful repentance and quiet trust, instilling in my children and in myself awareness of and appreciation for the presence of God and one another.

We don't need to encourage frantic busyness.  That comes naturally.  Quietness and rest, so easy to sacrifice yet so essential to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, are habits we must practice and practice some more.  We can't afford to miss out on them.

Interestingly, our Sunday School just started a study of Sabbath...  

To My Darling Girl: Part Two of a Series on Beauty

My Darling Girl,

As I begin to write this, you are playing carelessly with your little brother, blissfully unaware of the pressures you will face in the coming years.  You are beautiful, with bright blue eyes and a mix of curly and straight hair all too familiar to me.  Your aunt often points out how much you resemble me when I was a child.  Believing you to be the most beautiful little girl who ever breathed, I am humbled by the thought that something of me is visible in your precious face.

Something of me is visible, too, in your character.  Others may not notice, but I see, in how you behave and in how you respond to events in your day, echoes of my own personality and shadows of my own sensitivities, sorrows, and struggles.  You are without doubt your very own person and will have your very own experiences and your very own perspective on those experiences.  Still, there are moments when I almost grieve for you, wishing to spare your tender heart inevitable sorrow and hoping to prepare you for battles I cannot fight for you.

You are beautiful, inside and out, but there are those who would have you believe otherwise.  There are those who would convince you that who you are on the inside is insignificant and who you are on the outside is all that matters.  They will whisper that you need to be more or less this or that.  They will seek to destroy the carefree confidence with which you entered the world and by which you happily venture out in boys' tennis shoes, purple penguin socks, and hand-me-down clothing.  They will push you to change your appearance with the promise that others will find you more appealing if only you...

And you may well believe the lies.  Very few girls, if any, do not want to be beautiful, and many of them believe blindly whatever society tells them is fashionable, regardless of unhealthiness or indecency. Knowing there is little I can do to shield you from the pressures of society, I wish to spare you naivety by teaching you early to identify false beauty and honor what is truly beautiful, yourself included.

I offer you, beautiful girl, the following beauty tips:

1. Pretty is as pretty does.  Quite simply, your words and actions will impress people far more than your hair, makeup, clothing, and figure.  Sure, a gorgeous body and pretty face may attract a lot of attention initially, but unkindness quickly mars even the most beautiful of appearances.  When you get up in the morning, whatever else you put on, do not forget to wear love, compassion, faithfulness, and mercy.

2.  Don't try too hard.  Turn on the radio.  "She don't know she's beautiful" is far more romantic than "You're so vain."  Better to err on the side of carelessness.  If you're working too hard to be beautiful, you'll reek of vanity, and no one finds that attractive.

3.  Your body is not for sale.  One of my friends has said, "Don't advertise what you aren't authorized to sell."  By all means, dress nicely, but remember that you have no business showing off more than is decent.  You don't need to advertise your body because you are not for sale.  You are your daddy's girl until he gives you away.  And when that time comes, you want him to give you to someone whose love for you is based on the shape of your character rather than the shape of your body.  Don't waste your time attracting those who are interested only in your body.  They simply aren't worth it.  Someday, God willing, you will meet a man who won't care if you grow fat, old, wrinkly, and gray.  In fact, he'll be delighted to travel the long path to dilapidation with you.  Because he loves you, not your image.

4.  You are not just a pretty face.  You, my beautiful girl, are overflowing with creativity, curiosity, and capability.  You can create and discover and conquer.  You have more to offer than you can possibly imagine.  Step away from the mirror, stop worrying about how you look, and greet the world with confidence.  Nurture your mind with books.  Develop your soul with thoughtful consideration of your God, your self, and your world.  Know that you were created for a purpose, and it wasn't just to sit there looking pretty.

5.  Never forget God's love for you.  Your friendships will falter.  Your loves will fail.  At times, you may feel completely alone.  You are not.  You daddy and I will always be your biggest fans on earth.  You may doubt that if you choose, but never doubt the love of Christ.  He who knit you together in the womb, who knew all the days ordained for you before one of them came to be, who suffered and died on the cross for your salvation, and who has promised never to leave you nor forsake you, HE is faithful.   Trust in Him.  Know that He created you just as He wanted you to be and that He will direct your life in such a way that you will know great peace and joy.

Those are the words I have for you today, my sweet daughter.  As you grow, I will strive to impress them upon your heart that you may know that you are more than beautiful as the light of your character shines upon the features of your precious face.  And I will pray.  I will pray that you retain the spunkiness that enables you to shun bows and wear boys' tennis shoes with sundresses.  Because you are, without question, a super cool girl.

Love,

Mommy

Beauty the Beasts: (Probably) Part One of a Series

Beauty is a bit of a beast.  Two beasts, actually, and they have torn us up and are now feasting on our sons and daughters.  (How's that for a dramatic opening?)  Seriously, though, I have been thinking a lot about beauty and the pursuit of beauty in the time since I last posted.

It started with a Facebook link to an article in which the author urged people to engage girls in meaningful conversations, rather than compliment them on their appearances.  It was for the most part a fairly good article with some excellent advice.  And it got me thinking about beauty and our culture's unhealthy obsession with and frantic pursuit of beauty.  I do not want to trivialize the very real and serious issues facing our boys, but I will focus mainly on how the beasts of beauty threaten to devour our girls.  Please do not think I am ignoring the boys.  I have three of them, and I have plenty of reasons to be concerned about the ideas of beauty presented to them, but tonight, I'm talking primarily about girls.  I do this because I have only a vague knowledge of the dangers to boys, not enough to write with any confidence.  As a woman who was once a girl, however, I have a bit of insight into how the young female mind works.  I also have a daughter who loves to please others and may very easily be convinced that she is not as beautiful as she is, that she needs to make herself into someone else, that she isn't good enough.  I do not want that to happen, and anger and sorrow well up in my heart when I think of the challenges she is likely to face as she grows.

The most obvious obstacle to a healthy view of beauty is the media.  Very few would argue that the media - television, movies, the internet, magazines, newspapers, etc. - do not contribute to some very unhealthy views of beauty.  Everywhere one turns are images of thin youthful people, ideally proportioned, and unnaturally complexioned.  One need spend only a minute or two in the grocery store checkout line to see what the print media thinks of beauty.  Thin and flawless body and fashionable hair and makeup are the rage.  Once in awhile, the tabloids celebrate the everyday-ness of celebrities by mocking what most of us look like all the time.  (How kind of them).  Faces blurred, we see that we average folk do not have a monopoly on flannel pants and oversized tee shirts.  But those who are celebrated as beautiful, however ugly their lives may be, are always physically well put together in every way - figure, complexion, style...  We know that many of these beautiful people are airbrushed and touched-up, that they have personal chefs, trainers, and stylists, and that a good number of them have some sort of eating disorder to aid in the maintenance of that perfect form.  As adults, I hope we have the wisdom to ignore the illusion of perfection and rejoice in the lives we have been given, but fear we often do not do so.  As for our children, too many of them, to whom the tricks of the trade have not been disclosed, see the images of perfection and wish to emulate the fantasy.  The media makes a pretense of condemning anorexia, yet how many girls view photos of skeletal stars in bikinis with a secret longing to be so thin?  Probably more than we care to admit.

Television and movies are no better, portraying populations of characters  that don't quite square with populations of people in reality.  Those thin, fit beauties of the check-out lane move across the screen, perhaps with an average sidekick, maybe with a flat-out ugly adversary.  Even the Glee club "geeks" on Glee are pretty good looking people, (besides being a tad too old to be entirely believable in their roles as high schoolers).  With the exception of a few very talented actors, British sitcoms are about the closest you'll get to real people that you might meet in your own neighborhood.

The media have set up unrealistic goals for our children, especially our girls, and it is tempting, and probably quite fitting, to rail against them.  It is right to deplore the images set before our children, for they have the potential to do great damage to our sons' and daughters' views of themselves and of others.


But the media, for all its evils, is not the only problem.  We who love the girls in our lives dearly aren't helping.  We're going crazy with big bows, coordinated outfits, mommy-daughter pedicures, and so forth.  We're dressing our little girls like teenagers and all too often letting our teenage girls go out dressed like prostitutes.  We're teaching our girls from the start to be slaves to beauty and standing helpless, and sometimes encouragingly, when their ideas of beauty take a turn for the scandalous.  We have taught them to seek beauty first, and in so doing, have failed to teach them to be mistresses of true beauty rather than slaves of whatever distorted form of "beauty" the world craves at any given time.  These are strong words, I know.  I also know that they are not universally true and that it is possible to promote inner beauty and natural beauty even while painting toe nails to match coordinated outfits.  But I'm a little scared for my daughter.  As a culture, we are praising girls' appearances, rather than probing their minds and admiring their accomplishments, in a wholly unbalanced manner.  We are setting girls up for insecurity, because so long as they are looking at supermodels in the checkout lane and being praised more for their outer attributes than their inner attributes, they will never consider themselves good enough.  There will always be someone prettier, thinner, better put together.  If I write strongly on this topic, it is for the sake of my tender-hearted little girl - and for the doubting, insecure young lady that I pray she will be spared from becoming.

I do not want her ever to feel that she needs to be taller or skinnier or lighter or darker or that she needs to show a little more leg or a lot more cleavage.  I want her to be comfortable in her (appropriately covered) skin, confident in her mind, and compassionate in her heart.  I pray that she never doubts her beauty, that she grows up always knowing that God created her marvelously and that her heart and mind are full of treasures that will enrich her world.  But I am not completely naive.  I realize that this beast we call beauty has a companion.  There is the outer beast of media and culture, that feeds girls the lie that they should be more beautiful than they already are.  But there is also an inner beast, an innate desire for beauty that has warped into an insatiable hunger for beauty and that leaves girls (and maybe boys...  Never having been one myself, I can't say...) often doubting and always striving.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis suggests that the sins of gluttony and sexual immorality are distortions of two natural and good drives.  Humans need food to eat and sex to survive as a species.  Without the former, an individual perishes.  Without the latter, humankind perishes.  In addition to their necessity, we may gain pleasure out of both food and sex.  Either one, however, when twisted or taken to excess can be detrimental to one's health and happiness.  I don't know what Lewis thinks about beauty, but I wonder if the same principle might apply.  Beauty is good.  God created a beautiful world, and I believe He gave us, who are made in His likeness, an appreciation for beauty and a desire to create beauty.  The artist, for example, reaches his highest bliss in creating a masterpiece, in looking at the finished product and saying, "Yes, that is it.  Beauty."  With this perspective, I can appreciate the desire to accentuate one's more pleasing features as not entirely bad.  I might even call it "good."

Our appetite for beauty, of the physical, human sort at least, has for the most part gone beyond "good" to mutate into something unnatural, unhealthy, unholy.  We do not "make ourselves up" as an act of stewardship, nor do we seek to improve our appearance for the sheer joy of creating something lovely with which to honor a creative God.  Rather, I suspect, we do these things at best to make ourselves look good, at worst to make ourselves look just a little better than someone else.

And this is nothing new.  We can blame the media.  We can blame beauty-zealous mothers, relatives, and friends, but I suspect this desire for beauty is just a part of who we are.  I Peter 3:3 states, "Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes."  Long before the invention of the photograph, long before the onslaught of television and movie stars, beauty was wreaking havoc, leading women to invest too much in outward appearances and too little in inner character.  I suspect, if we were to trace the history of vanity, it would lead to the first meeting of two women and one man, if not to Eve herself.

Woman and girls want to be beautiful.  Sometimes we want to be prettier than someone else, but always we want to be beautiful.  We may not be overwhelmed with a constant yearning to be beautiful, but for better or worse, it's part of our nature.  You can turn off the television, live off the land far from civilization.  You can shield your daughter from any comments on her appearance.  I doubt you'll kill her desire to be beautiful.  And you shouldn't.  The inner desire for beauty, unlike the outward pressures inflicted by media and culture, is not a beast to be killed, but one to be tamed for nobler purposes than self-promotion.

And so the problem of beauty is a pair of beasts.  One attacks a girl from without through media and culture.  One devours  her from within, filling her up with a disastrous potion of vanity, envy, and doubt.  The second beast is to be handled with care, that our daughters may learn the meaning of true beauty and live peaceably with a tamed and healthy perspective of their own beauty and that of all their eyes behold.  The first beast, we ought to kill, but won't.  Too many have no interest in wounding that beast, let alone killing it.  And so we must equip our daughters to stand firm against that beast's attacks.

God help us.