The Mommy Wars: At the Heart of It

My kids start out life in a magic wonderland peopled by Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, and fairies of all kinds. Some of my Christian friends definitely disapprove. It's only one of a myriad of issues on which opinions vary widely.

Homeschooling is another hot button issue I often find myself in the center of. Moms landing on the public school side of things wonder if our homeschooled children will be adequately sociable, and whether they might not be too attached to their mommies. Homeschool moms wonder how the public school moms can send their kids away for an entire day, day after day, and often assume their children are receiving a superior education due to the small class size.

The truth is, as with any mommy war, our motivation is at the heart of the matter. Take the school debate for instance: public school mamas are often motivated by the fear that they wouldn't be able to keep up with their child's education, nor do they have the training necessary to teach. Homeschool mamas are motivated by the fear of bus rides and long school days, separation prematurely from their babies, and fear of a ho-hum education.

What if we refuse to be motivated by fear, and instead are motivated by love? When we give in to fear, we become defensive about our choices. If we are making a choice out of love, though, we can smile at the world, resting in the knowledge that we've made the best possible choice for our family.

If we are motivated by love - for our family, our community, and our world - the mommy wars will quickly be quieted. How can you change your perspective on your choices from fear to love?

How do you feed, diaper, and teach sleep to your infant? How do you train your toddler? What kind of movies/music do you allow your kids to enjoy? How do you educate your children? What kind of diet does your family endorse? Do you see any of these choices as a "one size fits all" solution? If so, maybe you need to re-evaluate your motivation and be sure you are treating your peers - and your family - with love instead of fear.

On Lisa-Jo's prompt: "Real"

In fields of silver

They takes their walking sticks across the road, giddy with new-found freedom, and beat the dandelion heads until the seeds scatter like a silver cloud. I watch them playing in the long shadows of the late afternoon, and think this is a wonderful way to begin to live.

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,

Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,

Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,

Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,

Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --

One learned of the eternal;

I learned not to fear infinity,

The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,

The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,

The wheel turning away from itself,

The sprawl of the wave,

The on-coming water.

A man faced with his own immensity

Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.

The murmur of the absolute, the why

Of being born falls on his naked ears.

His spirit moves like monumental wind

That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.

He is the end of things, the final man.

All finite things reveal infinitude:

The mountain with its singular bright shade

Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,

The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;

Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,

A scent beloved of bees;

Silence of water above a sunken tree :

The pure serene of memory in one man, --

A ripple widening from a single stone

Winding around the waters of the world.

~from Far Field by Theodore Roethke~

Do your children spend a lot of time in unstructured play? How does this bless your family? Do you have memories of unstructured play as a child? Are those memories good or bad?

Linking up with SomeGirl to the new home for Thought Provoking Thursday

Warrior children

You are my tumbleweed children, hurtling down the gravel of the country road in a fury of dust and dreams and flying off into the dandelion ditches when you hear the hum of car wheels approaching. It is that sweet mix of childhood, the daring-do of your young bodies coupled with the innate sense of vulnerability that scatters you far off the road if danger approaches. We've been vulnerable together, these past years, through the dissolving friendships following a church rift, through the darkness of depression when all your mama wanted to do was sleep, through the deep mid-winter of my cancer and your uncertainty whether I would live or die.

You know vulnerable as well as your own skin. I look at you, the fragile strong, and I wish I had been able to protect you from the knowledge that life is brief if beautiful, wish I had a shield that was impermeable to the dark darts of fear and trembling. We huddle like embattled Narnians on our homestead, lean hard into each other's warmth, and there is joy found in family although we are adrift from civilization. You gather "wish-lions", dandelions gone to silvery seed, and we blow a tornado of trouble off into the spring breeze with eyes squeezed close.

Perhaps it will be the family gift within the family curse, this early understanding of life's difficulties. When you are all grown through the stage of scrambling with fresh tears at night from your bed to ours...grown out of checking that Mama is still here when you wake alone in the dark...you'll be left with the fragile-strong, singing the Psalms as you face the brave new world of your own generation.

Let the weak say I am a warrior. The Lord roars from Zion, and the heavens and earth quake. But the Lord is a refuge to His people...(from Joel 3)

You are my hiding place,

You always fill my heart

with songs of deliverance.

Whenever I am afraid,

I will trust in You.

I will trust in You.

Let the weak say I am strong

with the strength of the Lord.

~Selah~

Linked with Emily for Imperfect Prose

To taste honey every day

I remember the first time I checked a website from my smart phone. It was like stepping out onto a glass bridge...a step of faith, praying my data plan would catch me and save us from overuse fees.

Trying something new is always like that. The tentative stretching of the toes onto new territory, testing the ground underneath for stability before we put full weight on feet. Then we do it again, this time with more confidence, and soon what was once a leap of faith becomes the everyday mundane.

Practice makes perfect. It is so with grace. It feels so scandalous, that moment of salvation, when we take the deep breath and say in our hearts, Yes, this is what I believe. I believe I am not enough. I believe I cannot save myself. I believe Christ can do what I cannot.

With practice, there is less fear and trembling each time we accept grace. May it never feel like our right, but always the gift it is. When we stumble and fall (a million times a day), may we reach hands to sky and simply feel the love raining down instead of shying away and covering up the stain left by sin.

She is the scandalous spontaneous, the one who is still a toddler at 5 1/2. She reaches her pink tongue out to touch the stamens of the crabapple blossoms, and her grin is infectious as she urges us to try. It's sweet, like honey, she says. We all laugh - the craziness of this, tasting blossoms like honey bees - and then we, too, stretch tongues and sense sweet and dissolve into gales of giggles over our own silliness. We talk about this - faith like a little child - the child who reaches out to taste God's goodness and never stops to wonder whether it is a crazy idea or not. Trust is so simple, it terrifies and paralyzes us as adults. We ponder the consequences - what if He's not as good as He says He is? What if I should be working harder, what if I don't deserve this grace?


Just like the drops of sweet on the yellow tips of each cherry blossom, His grace just is. It exists and has already been given, whether we reach out to take the gift or not. If we don't, we will never taste the sweetness that stands waiting for us.

Practice radical acceptance. Be the little child, ready to try anything, leaning hard on the Rock of salvation. Simply believe. Simply accept. Simply trust. Throw off the weight of causality, because He undid the laws of the universe at the Cross, and begs us be free from the gravity of the world so that we can soar with Him even through these days scalded by the curse of the world.

What have you done lately to practice radical acceptance of the freedom of the Cross? What can you do today in belief of Grace?