Recommendations, gardening, and the blessing of work

First off, thanks to all of you who flooded my inbox with emails a couple weeks ago!  I have not yet been able to respond to all of you, but I have read each note and am grateful for your time, your stories, and your prayers.

Family Happenings

I am writing this newsletter a few days before the Great College Visit Week begins with Sophia, whom I mentioned last time is a junior and thus beginning the process of college decision-making.  Over the next week, she and I (and Madeleine along for female camaraderie) will be visiting three colleges in three different states.  The common and perhaps most important thread of the colleges is they are all small, conservative Christian schools, with a classical/liberal arts/Great Books approach to education.  They are focused on the forming of the whole man, which is what I have endeavored to do in our homeschooling and want for all of my children in the future.  We will end our trip with a couple days of sight-seeing in Washington DC, and I am particularly excited to visit the Museum of the Bible for the first time.

My kids are today wrapping up their second year attending Teen Pact in Nashville.  I cannot recommend this leadership and discipleship organization enough!  Teen Pact hosts week-long camps focused on the political process all around the country in the spring, and they host a whole variety of intensive leadership camps in the summer.  My teens have attended two Teen Pact weeks, my girls have done an Endeavor week, and my son will do a Venture week later this year.  This is a phenomenal Christian organization, and the quality of instruction and the opportunities provided to interact with elected government officials (like the Governor, the Attorney General, and the State Treasurer) are all saturated with a spirit of excellence, with incredibly high standards for young Christians…this is well worth the sacrifice of time and money!  Highly recommend.

Speaking of camps, my two oldest girls are attending a Summit Ministries apologetics/worldview camp this year.  It comes highly recommended from multiple people we know, and we have been waiting for the right summer to attend.  An added bonus is that both girls earned full leadership scholarships (thank you, Summit!), so we are thrilled for them to have this experience this summer.

One more camp recommendation for those of you with high schoolers:  Patrick Henry College Teen Leadership Camps.  Two of our teens attended a one-week class last summer, and they simply adored it.  This summer we’ll have two teens attending again.  High-quality instruction, great social activities, wonderful spiritual environment, plus sight-seeing in Washington DC.  Recommend without reservation.

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Hobbies and Handicrafts

A few years ago, I determined to take up gardening as my newest hobby.  With all my health challenges, this has only happened in fits and starts, much to my great chagrin.  But after the last boxes in this new house were unpacked last fall, I threw myself into remediating our sad, dilapidated, and utterly neglected yard – which was essentially a tiny square plot of weeds and invasive grass.  I dug brand-new beds (a first for me) and planted well over 150 plants all by myself.  My 11-year-old daughter was charged with planting several rows of bulbs (mostly tulips), and we have had the great satisfaction of watching these tulips begin to grace our front yard over the last couple of weeks.  We’ve never had tulips in the yard of any house we have lived in, but now I am a fervent fall-bulb-planting advocate and hope to plant many more this September.  I hope to spend the rest of this spring and summer digging more beds and creating more pathways.  With a tiny yard, we may end up having nothing to mow when it’s all said and done, but the trade-off of no grass in exchange for several months of continual blooms would be a worthwhile one. 

Also, I have long wanted to be a houseplant person but have failed in spades every time I have tried.  In this house, gangbusters has been my approach, and we currently have 13 plants all thriving and growing like crazy.  Who knew!?  I think a lot of it has to do with me simply taking the time to pay attention to what plant is flourishing and what plant is in distress, then taking the effort to move it around and adjust watering as needed.  Seasoned gardeners are rolling their eyes at this statement, but have mercy for the newcomer.  Also, this house provides the largest amount of direct sunlight we have ever had in a house, which is an amazing gift and no doubt contributing to the thriving greenery.  I am sure I will end up killing a couple house plants at some point, but having the mortality rate drop from 100% to 15% is helping me stay engaged and excited about adding as much natural greenery as I can muster.

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The Blessing of Work

Nothing makes me twitchier than observing that someone is not working hard, at full capacity, with excellence.  I have been known to say this phrase to my children:  “I would rather you have the besetting sin of cursing/profanity than the sin of slothfulness or laziness.  That’s how much I h-a-t-e laziness.”  [And anyone who knows me knows how much I despise the use of profanity, though inexplicably it has come quite commonplace amongst lots of Christians these days.]  But the notion of someone not jumping up and hustling and giving their best effort on every project set before them – well, that’s enough to open the floodgates of lectures, sermons, and heaps of piled-on chores.  As I have told my kids since toddlerhood:  work is a pre-Fall mandate.  In other words, work is a good thing and is not a consequence of the Fall.  We are designed to work.  We lack purpose and focus when we don’t.  Built into our very DNA is the desire and capacity for work, and from the earliest chapters of the Bible, we are given the command to take dominion and create culture.  We will all be working in heaven – in some way that none of us can understand, because it will be the first time anyone has ever worked in a world without thistles, thorns, and sin.  But it will somehow be glorious and perfect and immeasurably satisfying for an eternity.

Now, another topic worthy of its own article someday is the current cultural fixation on the golden egg of retirement, which seems to me to fly in the face of the gift of work and creativity that God has given us.  My kids may be sighing right now, but I simply cannot let a conversation pass without mentioning Thomas Sowell.  He’s 93, and he is still cranking out books.  This is my kind of guy.  It can safely be said that my four children have listened to exponentially more hours of Thomas Sowell interviews than they ever have of Taylor Swift songs. Ahem.

I also truly love the work legacy of popular historian David McCullough, who passed away shortly after his wife did a couple years ago, and he is said to have worked until his death at 89.  So a common family joke will be – well, that person is only 75, and so Mama won’t listen to what he says because he’s not old enough.  Haha.  But not really.

Back to the notion of work as a gift.

Work may be a gift, but what about women in the home?

Besides being naturally a “doer,” my high view of work really came out of my early days of theological study as a new Christian.  I suddenly had categories like ontology and teleology.  Suddenly there were principles governing vast swaths of my life that I heretofore did not know existed.  Everything was upended in the most glorious way.  I came across the infamous seashells on the seashore sermon by John Piper (who, in addition to John MacArthur, explained Reformed theology to me via hundreds of hours of late-night podcasts after long days of nursing babies and chasing toddlers), and it was perfection.  You’ve probably heard the sermon – or perhaps a caricature of it.  One takeaway is that we work because it is what we are designed to do.  And we become less human, as it were, when we don’t steward the gifts and holy desires God has given us with relation to work and purpose.  And of course, the great stinger of the whole sermon is his chiding of those who think it is a worthwhile use of time to collect seashells in the last years/decades of their life, rather than engage in productive work that benefits all of society.   

How does this translate to a life that is largely inside of the home?  Well, for women occupied at home, there is not necessarily a correlation between remuneration and work, though that is certainly a benefit when it happens.  But there is still work, mountains of it, to be done in creating and nurturing the life of a family.  My robust view of work is one of the reasons why I began to refer to myself as a domestic theologian many years ago.  It seemed to add dignity to what I was endeavoring to figure out and implement, even as most of what I have done these last 19+ years is entirely invisible to the rest of the world.  So I have labored long and hard to become convinced that the last two decades of my life have been worth it….All the things I could have been doing and chose not to.  All of the things I have been asked to participate in but declined.  All of the desires for projects.  Every bit of every sacrifice has been made, to a large degree, because I became convinced that nurturing the human souls under my care was the most critical culture-creating, Kingdom-manifesting work that I could be doing. 

As an aside:  I am not naturally a particularly maternal person.  I wasn’t interested in babysitting as a teenager and wasn’t interested in having babies when we were first married.  And I am certainly not sentimental.  I say all this as form of communication to all those women who are wired in different ways – who perhaps don’t find homemaking natural, maybe are highly devoted to the life of the mind, and are struggling with how in the heck it intersects with the life happening in your home right now.  I fought for it.  I fought for meaning.  I despaired, and then kept going.  I kept studying in the margins of the day, but mostly I just kept thinking, because sometimes that was all there was time for.  You don’t need to have an office outside of the home to think and to cultivate a vibrant internal life. It is certainly a lot messier when you don’t leave the home, and even now I have to battle resentment against the push and pull on my time.  My emotional energy primarily goes to my children, which often means there is very little left over.  But I will keep working and cultivating and praying for the harvest.  And I do keep reciting this verse:  “anyone who comes after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  I don’t like the denial of self any more than the next person, but that does not change the fact that I am called to follow the one who said it.

Resource:  Many of these thoughts were triggered because I recently purchased David Bahnsen’s new book:  Full-Time Work, which I am thoroughly enjoying. But truth be told, I am even more thankful for his accompanying podcast series On the Hook, where he interviews men in a variety of vocational spheres to discuss this idea of the call to work for your whole life (acknowledging of course that it looks different at 75 than it does at 35).  I especially love the theological aspects of the interviews.  Highly, highly recommend!

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Recommendation:  Andrew Peterson

A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter (age 11) finished reading through the Wingfeather Saga for the first time.  She came down to the kitchen with an emotional cloud of tragedy hovering overhead:  I can’t believe Janner dies.  Why did Andrew Peterson do that?  Is he going to write another book?  I told her that I am quite certain thousands of other children have wanted to ask him the very same question.  She had tears in her eyes for quite some time, as she moped around – feeling deeply both the demise of Janner as well as the ending of a beloved book series.

As providence would have it, the very next afternoon my three girls were in a local bookstore with their grandma, and who should they stumble across in the J.R.R. Tolkien section…other than Andrew Peterson himself!  He was very kind and gracious and began talking to my girls when he heard them whispering his name with intense delight.  They all chatted about his music, and Sophia explained to him that I had discovered his music while I was pregnant with her, so she had spent the last 17 years listening to him.  Though he was busy autographing his own books for future book-buyers, he graciously agreed to a photo, and this is a memory they will all treasure forever.

with Andrew Peterson at Duck River Books in Columbia, TN

I cannot recommend Andrew Peterson enough – his fiction for kids, his non-fiction for adults, and his music.  All of it.  I have said a thousand times that my kids’ understanding of music and the imaginative world has almost entirely been the result of them listening to AP with me over the years, as well as attending his concerts and hearing me recommend him over and over.  And if you are ever able to catch him on his Behold the Lamb of God tour at Christmas, spend the money and do it.  It’s powerful and beautiful in a way very few other musical experiences are.

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Books We are Reading

In our house, the following current “free read” books (i.e., reading for pleasure and not assigned) are underway, all of which I recommend including in your family library:

• Husband:

The Last King of America (Andrew Roberts)

The Bird in the Tree (Elizabeth Goudge)

• Myself:

Full-Time Work (David Bahnsen)

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (Abigail Shrier)

In This House of Brede (Rumer Godden)

• 19-year-old

Piccadilly Jim (P.G. Wodehouse)

Dune (Frank Herbert)

• 17-year-old

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell)

• 15-year-old

Little Britches (Ralph Moody)

• 11-year-old

The Wingfeather Tales (Andrew Peterson)

Teddy Roosevelt: An American Original (part of the Heroes of History series by Janet and Geoff Benge)

• Family Read-Aloud

Love Among the Chickens (P.G. Wodehouse)

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Recipes

I have been mostly avoiding the kitchen since we moved into this new house last summer.  Not a very impressive homemaker confession. People are still getting fed, but I have been cooking a whole lot less, as we’ve been walking/stumbling through this very difficult season. 

Earlier this week everyone walked in from a long day in Nashville and started sniffing the smells of delight at our favorite roast recipe:  Pioneer Woman’s Pot Roast, which I always cook in my beloved Dutch Oven.

I also made this salted butter dark chocolate shortbread last night, and I think it is safe to say this is the best shortbread I have ever had.  As a decades-long connoisseur of shortbread, I do have a couple of other very good recipes.  But this is the best I have ever baked or eaten.

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Homeopathy

One of my great passions in the last couple years has been studying homeopathy. I’m actually not the type of person who enjoys discussing medical things or different approaches to health issues, so my impetus to begin studying was merely borne out of the ongoing frustration with my various health issues.  I am very fortunate to have local friends who are outstanding amateur homeopaths, and I have had the privilege of bombarding them with hundreds of questions.  I also enjoyed leading two study groups of Joette Calabrese’s Gateway studies last year and hope to do another round later this year, if health and time permit.

One of the protocols Joette advocates for (which is a Banerji protocol that she discusses extensively in her materials and courses) is Aconite 200 + Bryonia 200 (or 30) at the first sign of illness, particularly of the head cold/respiratory variety.  I am telling you, this protocol is like magic.  If someone in our family feels a sore throat coming on, or congestion starting, or a cough starting, or a sinus headache coming, we administer those remedies together (mixing them and popping them in your mouth together), and time and again it nips the sickness in the bud.  Sometimes it takes a few doses, but often it’s just one or two doses, and a couple of hours later the person has entirely forgotten they had a cold descending.  I bet I have used this protocol 50+ times in the last two years for our family.  Now everyone immediately knows at the first sign of congestion or a throat issue, go find those two remedies.  Highly recommend!

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with Annaliese at the Tennessee State Capitol

I have a weekend of gardening, closet organization, and packing for the Great College Visit Week.  The biggest obstacle facing me is:  how many books can fit in my suitcase without incurring additional fees from the airline? 😊

Until next time,

Allison