Beautiful Girlhood

What a lovely book this is, and a must for all mothers of daughters. I had ordered it from Amazon a while back, and put it on the shelf for "the future," when I felt the girls would be able to understand it. That time has come! My older girl has been going through some challenges lately that caused me to think of Beautiful Girlhood and wonder if it might help. I thought, maybe she'll be bored, or not quite comprehend. She begs me for chapter after chapter! What a blessing. Never underestimate young ones; they rise to higher levels if we provide them.

Here is a favorite snippet:
"She who has an ideal character is first of all pure and true, then earnest and sincere, patient and gentle, and more ready to serve than be served. It is easier to build bad than good character....Choose well as the days go by. Build for all time, not just for present pleasure...To do right will often mean a struggle, but it is always worth the effort...Christ is our Perfect Pattern, and only those who form their lives after Him are building the best character." (p. 32-33)

I find this book a treasure for my daughters as well as for myself. It is loaded with wisdom. Many in today's culture would call it archaic or old-fashioned, but I cannot agree that a lot of what our society promotes today cultivates healthy living. There is rightness and satisfaction in simple goodness.

"I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected; to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send...My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world." (Wisdom from Marmee, Little Women).

On a Funny Note....

I love our local grocery.
It looks like it hasn't changed since 1985!
The girls like to take produce and weigh it,
then we talk about what weighs more, less, 
etc. It's fantastic, real-world math!
Anyway...they also enjoy shaking the coconuts
and hearing the milk slosh inside. Our store doesn't just sell coconuts...
they have GROOVY coconuts!

And Alas....

It seems the time has come to retire my oversized mugs till next year. Usually I put them away after Christmas, but this year I decided they looked wintry enough to get away with using them through January. They were a gift from Aunt Susan, and boy, what bliss they have brought!

Stuck in the Cabin

We are going on our third day of being snowed-in. Actually, my husband has dug his way out and ventured half a mile to the store. He doesn't relish cabin fever as I do! I mused this morning that these days haven't been much different than regular ones. In fact, there is a satisfaction of having accomplished my cleaning and washing in half the time, because of his capable help. Two are indeed better than one.

What a beautiful sight on the other side of the windows: a foot of blue-white, sparkling snow, reminiscent of a Currier and Ives image. After the work is done, I've loved gazing out the window at the glory of God, turning the pages of my Bible, allowing His promises to sink into my heart, asking Him to change it like only He can. The jubilant cries of kids come from another room as they burst in, throwing off their snow-crusted boots, warming their rosy faces. They have an excited exhaustion from hours of sledding and tramping back and forth. I have the cozy satisfaction that comes with such a day, and am glad.

"A Ride to School," Currier & Ives

Oh, that mothers these days would learn to love what we disdainfully call "cabin fever"! I realize that it's not all fun and games with very little children, so those in that season of life are exempt. But moms of older kids, why do we dread days like this? Is it because of the treadmill you're on, and are afraid to step off? Our culture is in a revolving door, and when we have a moment (or days) that force us to slow down, many have no idea how to be still. Deep down, I believe we are afraid to know ourselves in these quiet times.

I'm at a point in my life and walk with Christ that I'm afraid not to know myself. Too much time has been wasted not focusing on God's promises, who He is, and who He created me to be in Him. To be sure, asking the Holy Spirit to break through the lies I've believed about who I am and renew my heart and mind has been a process of painful refining. It's the only way to proceed.

Our front door view

The Holy Spirit recalled a passage to me yesterday:

"For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him..." 1 John 3:20-22

What hope! Almighty God, the one who heals (Exodus 15:26), is greater than my broken heart. I choose to camp out here a while, maybe for a long one. I ask Him to fuse my heart back together and enable me to know, to really believe the promise that He is greater than anything my heart can come up with. In healing the heart, He renews the mind; the heart must come first. When our hearts are whole, then we have "confidence toward God," or submission to the supremacy of Christ, as John Piper says. 

How grateful I am to treasure these January days being stuck in the cabin! They are days of healing and hope, of candles, hot tea, shabby books full of wisdom and richness. They are days of laundry, cooking, ironing, cleaning, with whistling, prayers whispered, and heavy sermons in the background. There are quiet moments curled in a chair in my book-room, the place where I belong and can think deeply. These are days of growth, clarity, and goodness. Thank You, Lord, for keeping me in the cabin.

How Charlotte & I View Mind & Heart Differently

If I could have a discussion with Charlotte Mason, I would gently challenge her on some passages in Ourselves where she brushes across the topic of our thoughts. Before I go further, I will make the disclaimer that I have not yet read this book entirely; I am merely stating my personal thoughts on a part that I recently read. 

I believe that I have earned some authority to speak to the renewing of the mind, as well as torment by the enemy with thoughts that are neither desirable nor instigated by me. The Father of Lies knows which buttons to push; he recalls every horrible news story I've heard, or image I've seen. He knows the details of trashy movies and books I once had no problem with; he's the one responsible for my once lackadaisical attitude toward them. I agree with Charlotte when she advises, "...it is unwise for anyone to read newspaper accounts of those sorts of things, for even if you are not tempted to do the wickedness, the horrid picture of it remains, once you have allowed your Imagination to paint it for you" (p. 52). No question there.

I am intentional now about what I watch and read; however, in this day and age, no one has the power to stop every pop-up ad, and who knows what will come up next on the news? Before I know it, the "images" are formed in my mind, like it or not, and as I've written before, the enemy uses this greatly against me. Unimaginable horrors threaten to take over my sanity before I know what has happened. This plus all the mind-junk from the past make for a nasty combination.

Where I take some issue with Charlotte is in the way she tells us to not listen to people who are discussing such "sins," and in how to handle our thoughts. I'd like to think she refers to the actual horrors, but her tone leads me to think that we shouldn't even talk about the fact that "normal" people deal with this daily, even minute-by-minute. I confess I'm bothered by Charlotte's wording that those of us who are tormented by certain thoughts "allow" ourselves "...to think such thoughts" without simply "shutting the eyes" of our imaginations. 

In defense of Miss Mason, I will say that I agree with her more often than not. She has felt like a wise mentor, one who guides me through homeschooling as well as life. Perhaps my admiration for her is what disappoints me to have a slight bone to pick. I feel like a troublemaker within the CM community, none of whom I've ever heard "call out" Charlotte on anything. But there is much more involved here, and obviously Charlotte had a rare type of mind-protecting discernment. I would wager that most of us have extreme difficulty simply "hurrying away from the thought to think of something else" (p.53).

John Piper's sermon "The Renewed Mind and How to Have It" offers excellent insight for those of us who struggle with this issue. Many have been through trauma that requires much more than just thinking about something else. Piper explains our problem this way:

"The mind suppresses the truth because the heart continues to feed it with hardness and won't let us submit to the supremacy of Christ."

Matters of the mind are matters of the heart. They are not flies that go away when we swat at them. My mind and heart are connected; the heart feeds the mind with lies that it has believed, and these manifest themselves all sorts of ways. According to Piper, this keeps us from submitting to Christ's omnipotence and majesty. 

There is so much more to this than replacing a negative thought with a pleasant one as if it were all up to me. It is counterproductive to interfere with the Spirit's work. Piper points out that the same "renewing" used when Paul talks about "being transformed by the renewing of the mind" is used only one other time as a noun in the New Testament, in Titus 3:5:

"...according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Christ Jesus our Savior."

Those who unwillingly suffer from, as Charlotte calls it, "unclean imaginings," feel unclean enough by these abominations without being made to feel as though the individual is somehow causing them. Piper says that we have a "mindset" that must be renewed. Trying to think good thoughts is not a bad idea, but the issue is much bigger. Lies we believe can come from anywhere: liberties taken as children, the death of a parent, having witnessed a traumatic event, having been neglected, and on the list can go. As commendable as Charlotte's methods are, I admit there is disappointment that more grace can't be given to believers who find it difficult to endure the enemy's torment.

As believers, let's not forget that every aspect of healing and change in our lives requires the work of the Holy Spirit. It can be hard to know what that looks like. When one is in bondage to lies for so long, we almost feel as though we're doomed to that fate forever. Not only must we soak in truth from the outside in the form of verses, sermons, etc., but we must pray like crazy for heart-repair on the inside. No amount of happy-thought band-aids will accomplish this. It involves begging God to let us know Him, and for ourselves to be known.

In my healing from wounds and lies, a tactic of the enemy has been to put repulsive images in my mind in order to make me feel dirty, incurable, and far from Christ. My reaction still changes moment by moment, depending on my turning it over to the Lord. My prayer is that soon, I will have completely given it over to the Holy Spirit. Even in good times, my cracked heart goes back to the lie that soon the other shoe will fall. When we are so bent on not thinking about certain things, we are bound to think them. I ask the Spirit daily to get me to the point that I don't think about thinking about it!

Healing a broken, warped heart is a marathon. We want to believe that once a person walks an aisle or prays a prayer for Christ...bam!...none of my old ways of thinking will affect me. The devil has done a crafty job of selling us this bill of goods. I am in this for real, continuing to ask the Spirit to heal me slowly, and make me be able to say with authority and no platitudes that I know for sure  that my heart has been healed. I have to be prepared for suffering and purging in the meantime.

"Now, the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

I remain faithful to the Charlotte Mason method. She feels like a friend, and I'm allowed to not see eye-to-eye with the way a friend conveys an idea. I encourage the CM community to remember that although we are presenting our children and ourselves with living, wholesome ideas, all of us have hurts that have brought about wounds that need healing. The "unclean imaginings" of others are not to be dismissed, but treated seriously, taken to the Lord in prayer, with compassion and grace. They are unwanted darts thrown at those who love the Lord.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16)

PeepEye's Birthday

Here is a tribute I wrote about my grandfather, Jack Burtnett, on what would be his 100th birthday...today!

Happy birthday, PeepEye.


http://burtnettfamilystories.blogspot.com/2016/01/happy-birthday-peepeye.html

Sunday Thoughts

                                                        Help me not to be unwise

                                                        To view my life through my flawed eyes;

                                                        Instead through Yours, which see things true.

                                                        Almighty power does renew.

                                                                                                          --J.B.W.

                                                Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break

                                                And peace of pardon win!

                                                How else may man make straight his plan

                                                And cleanse his soul from sin?

                                                How else but through a broken heart

                                                May Lord Christ enter in?

                                                                                               --Oscar Wilde,

                                                                                               From "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"

Deep Healing, Deep Quiet

My girls and I have been memorizing Psalm 27. Next week, we will come to the final verse:

Wait on the Lord;

Be of good courage,

And He will strengthen your heart;

Wait, I say, on the Lord! (verse 14)

Those who are quick to repeat, "Let go, and let God!" in response to the trials of others seem to have never done just that. David's way of commanding it, however, holds water. He lived it; he knew what it was to wait on the Lord, seek Him for the courage to do it, and allow only Him to strengthen his heart. He expresses the difficulty of waiting in that he says it once more, exclamation point and all.

This has been a year of intense purging and healing, but the renewal continues. I am in a time of painfully waiting on the Lord to perform changes that are out of my control. Make no mistake: nothing is ever in our control. This time, though, there's not even an option for me to try. Several situations in my life have me understanding the rubber-meeting-road meaning of Psalm 27:14, as well as another one that we tend to gloss over: "Be still, and know that I am God," (Psalm 46:10).

For years, I've said of certain trials, "I have to let go; I have to let God work." Usually this meant saying that, then proceeding to turn around and attempt to fix the issue, or smooth things over in some way in order to ease the pain. The Holy Spirit is showing me that these things not only don't work, I end up robbing myself and others of spiritual growth. Paul said in Philippians 3:10:

"...that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death..."

This isn't just for Paul; it should be my desire, too. Suddenly it is, whether I like it or not. I confess that more of these days are filled with my thinking I don't like it, yet knowing that God is growing me to love it. "Letting go and letting God" means just that: really getting out of the way of the living God, rather than reciting a catchy phrase to make myself sound noble, yet still pushing through in my own way. 

Charlotte Mason's students kept what she termed a "Commonplace Book." This is a blank book where I copy poems, verses, or lines that I want to remember. It can also be filled with drawings or doodles as the mood strikes. Yesterday, I copied Whittier's From Day to Day selection:

"In God's own might

We gird us for the coming fight;

And, strong in Him whose cause is ours

In conflict with unholy powers,

We grasp the weapons He has given,--

The Light, the Truth, and Love of Heaven."

                                  From "The Moral Warfare"

On Sunday, I expressed my sympathy to a dear lady whose father-in-law just passed away. She began telling me about the trials of her family's Christmas, and an unfamiliar sensation swept over me. My eyes felt googly, and my body was faint. The truth hit as suddenly as the feeling: I simply cannot take on more stress, regardless of whose it is. It is time for my mind and heart to be still.

This is a period of serious change for me. It requires being intentional about not doing too much. I need to focus on my family, our home, and our school, all under the Holy Spirit's constant guidance. It's all I can handle. My quiet moments are spent with the Lord, and also in lots of reading. He speaks to me about allowing myself to put back the wholesome ideas that have either been lost or never taught. God has given me the gift of the deep enjoyment of being still with books. There is a pleasure in clean reading, bit by bit, that I am relishing.

Well-meaning friends want to give suggestions about what I should "do," but I have to allow God the "doing" while He allows me the stillness. It's counterculture, counterintuitive. Deep healing involves deep quiet. When we have major surgery, aren't we advised to rest and let healing happen? Yet most in our fast-paced culture refuse to stop long enough even for such a concrete example. Stepping off the treadmill requires letting God give me back my breath, renewed. My heart will never be made whole otherwise.

Coram Deo

The year 2015 was unprecedented for me in healing and sanctification. For eight long, harrowing months, I experienced the pain of confronting issues and lies that have haunted me most of my life. I was tired of the elephant in the room, but bringing it to light and the work involved in redirecting things have proven exhausting.

This morning, Pastor Bryan preached from 2 Peter 1:3-11. He talked about living, as Luther put it, "coram Deo," or under the complete authority of God, literally "before His face." The idea is that followers of Christ are to reflect His virtues in every area of our lives, with consistency regardless of circumstances.

The trials and victories of the past year enable me to understand what Pastor means. I told my husband that if I had heard this message a year ago, I wouldn't have been able to relate to it a fraction of what it meant to me today. Last year, I was wishy-washy and scared; today, coram Deo is a reality. I know firsthand what it is to be raw, my sin naked before me, utterly shattered from deciding to walk straight into the pain. 

Pastor Bryan observed that many Christians don't get far in coram Deo because sanctification isn't a five-minute process. I'll take it a step further and add that it hurts, too! Who wants to sign up for a tedious, searing process? I spent many minutes, hours, days, even weeks, begging the Lord Paul-style, that He would remove the thorn that came along with this year's sanctification package. I found frustration but also deep comfort in the answer:

"My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

How undesirable, yet necessary this growth is! How deliciously harrowing! How else does the Lover of our souls tear us from our chains, but to allow us to see and be horrified by our sin? 

"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?" (Hebrews 12:5-7)

Much time has been spent in 2015 reading, listening to, meditating on, and crying out to God about this passage. During most of it, I chose to believe it because He says so, even if my heart wasn't totally there yet. And the whole time, I held on to that little word: yet. Rome wasn't built in a day; neither was the heart plagued by a lifetime of lies healed in a mere day.

The writer of Hebrews also says, "...make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather healed" (12:13, my italics). This small statement sums up the past year: doing what it takes to touch the garment of coram Deo, getting off the road of crookedness no matter how dark the days. I can relate to Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, as I have fallen smack into the Slough of Despond, walked through the Valley of Humiliation, and visited the Doubting Castle countless times.

I want to shout from the rooftop that it's worth it. My heart still has broken spots, but they're not the gaping wounds they were a year ago. I can see how the chastening of the Lord is good, and how He searches and knows me (Psalm 139:24). I'm not afraid anymore to ask Him to do this, and to lead me in the way everlasting. My walk has become more than a motivational pep-talk or a bumper sticker on my car; it is rubber-meeting-road, hideously-beautiful being made new. 

The Lord's mercies are sufficient for today (Lamentations 3:22-23). I'm content to be on the road of healing while knowing there is still plenty ahead. May the Lord give strength abundantly to those who dare to live Coram Deo.

Whittier's Poetry

I've been looking forward for weeks to unpacking this gem on January 1. Several years ago, I saw this in an antique store. The price had dropped from $25 to a mere $2.50, and it was so charming, I handed over the cash. 

John Greenleaf Whittier had no sentimental value to me, but I'm a sucker for anything old, especially books. This particular volume from 1910 was not only in its original box, it even had the tissue paper from over a hundred years ago still intact! As I had nowhere to put it at the time, I tucked it away and forgot about it.

Last year, we moved to a home that had a perfect room to be made into a library. I experienced great joy in re-discovering this sweet book and finding the ideal spot to display it on a bookcase. When I had time about a month ago, I decided to investigate the content of the book, and saw that it is organized into daily readings of Whittier's poetry, verses and stanzas selected for each day of the year.

Poetry was a tremendous part of Charlotte Mason's teaching and personal leisure. The Cloud of Witness, her gift to graduates of her teaching college, is made up entirely of poetry, verse, and Scripture. A homeschooler cannot follow the methods of Miss Mason and leave out poetry, but I believe it is daunting for some who are interested in Charlotte's methods.

Daily reading in The Cloud has exercised my poetry "muscle," and I'm learning that anyone can appreciate poetry. I don't claim to understand or even enjoy every bit of what I read, but all literature is like that; we take the parts we like, and feed on them. From Day to Day and The Cloud are both designed in a way that makes reading poetry simple, providing small morsels for the mind and heart to digest slowly.

I'm not sure what it is about Whittier, but I seem destined to rescue forgotten copies of his work. Upon dusting off From Day to Day, I remembered another volume on the shelf, one also purchased for a minimal amount at an antique store. The attractive, regal cover caught my eye, and I thought, why not?

This book has been in my possession for at least ten years, with little regard to Whittier or his poetry. The cover is completely unattached to the rest of the book, and overall it is in poor condition. I like to imagine that the previous owner, a man named George Abel (scrawled on the front blank page), found delight and comfort in Whittier's work.

It seems that by God's design, I have an affinity for the works of Whittier. Why I happen to come across old copies of his works, I have no idea, but I'm intrigued enough to start a collection and begin reading them and learning more about him. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) was born and lived most of his life in Massachusetts. He was a sickly Quaker, an abolitionist who worked to put himself through school, and whose poetry wasn't appreciated by the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I find it particularly interesting that this volume of Early Poems was published while Whittier was still living.

Something that may be obvious to others but that I'm just now discovering is that these careworn books aren't just for show; there is deep pleasure in opening them up and slowly taking in their contents. I have inherited many old volumes that sit on shelves, their insides having not been examined for over half century (maybe much longer). What joy I am finding in these treasures, which to most of the world are junk! 

In asking God to renew my heart and mind, I notice that He is using books, stories, poetry, and history as a part of this restoration. As I expose my children to good literature, my Father is immersing me in these fine things, too. When I ask Him to help me think on what is "true...noble...right...pure...lovely...admirable...excellent and praiseworthy" (Philippians 4:8), feeding my mind with worthwhile writings is key to renewal. A steady diet of God's Word and beneficial works are what I crave, and I believe Whittier is a part of that.