In the Margins (and 25 Ways to Encourage Young Homeschooling Moms)

It takes place in the margins: car rides, mornings snuggled in my bed, bedtime, talks on the couch with my eldest. This is the overarching beauty of homeschool, undone from the confines of the 8-3 time frame, we learn together organically with the rhythm of our days. Katy reads her history book voraciously, and we talk about how much courage it took for Christopher Columbus to ask a third king and queen for funding after he'd been turned down by two European governments already. Rosy and I play a word game of antonyms and synonyms on car rides, a constant verbal back and forth that both builds vocabulary and grammar skills. Amy learns her letters and phonics on the iPhone, curled up next to me, describing the letters in her unique right-brained way ("B" is a snowman on a stick, "G" a kitten curled up, "A" an Indian teepee). Caleb astounds us all by rocketing through the alphabet to early reading skills at 3 1/2, and doing Rosy's addition exercises. He tells me all about trapezoids, in between little boy antics painting his skin brown with cocoa and pestering his sisters at naptime.

Pantry fall-out from Caleb's exploits in cocoa powder yesterday

How do your homeschool days look? I have a 3rd grader, a 1st grader, and two in preschool. We spend only about an hour of structured school time each day, and the rest falls into place around that. Most of our official school hours are spent on math and science. The rest, so far, is done via computer or verbal exchange. I expect this to change as our homeschool matures, but for now, it is what works in the busyness of family life.

Linked up to Lisa-Jo's 5 Minute Friday writing exercise

25 Ways to Encourage Young Homeschooling Moms:
1. Ask her what her children are learning...and listen to her answers
2. What are her fears about homeschooling her children?
3. Share an experience you've recently had with a homeschooled child
4. Get her talking about her curriculum choices!
5. Ask her what her biggest dream for homeschooling is.
6. Offer to watch her little ones for an hour so she can dig in with the older kids.
7. Fold her laundry...especially all the socks!
8. Notice one thing each of her children is especially good at, and write her a note telling her their strengths.
9. If you see something homegrown & educational on Pinterest or elsewhere on the web, share the idea with her.
10. Draw her children out socially, and compliment them when they interact well.
11. Support community programs for homeschoolers in your area, and tell her you did so.
12. Share a favorite verse, blog post, or devotional on perseverance. Print it out and mail it to her.
13. Offer your services in something you're very good at...pottery, art, music, science? Help share her burden!
14. Drive her kids to an event once a month to give her a morning to herself.
15. Offer to go with her to the library...and pay her fines for her!
16. Ask her if she's saving any household items for homeschool projects (toilet paper rolls? Kleenex boxes?) and give her your extras.
17. Give the children a gift subscription to National Geographic Kids, God's World News, Ranger Rick, or Highlights.
18. Offer childcare so she and her husband can have a date night.
19. Accompany the family to a homeschool fair, book sale, or conference and watch the children during workshops or shopping times so she can focus.
20. Pay the entrance fee for the children to take a gym class or participate in a sport.
21. Listen to her concerns about time management and homeschooling.
22. Give the family an unused bookshelf or organizational system you have around the house.
23. Surprise her with a visit and make coffee for her...then sit down and chat!
24. Give her a gift card to a local salon or spa for a manicure or facial.
25. Do the dishes and mop the kitchen floor!

An instant bedroom make-over

This is the only spot in my house that always stays clean. Two chairs. Sentinels amongst the piles, silently proclaiming that there is something sacred in this home. And that it's not any surface or spot or place or thing.

It's people.

The view from the chairs is pretty depressing. Every morning (well, almost every morning) since a fateful day in January, my husband and I have sat in these chairs to read our devotions together. We read the Word, we share the Word, and we pray. And are largely able to ignore the mess that we see from our two chairs.

Why is it, that two chairs buried in laundry and unpacked suitcases can be such a magical haven? Why is the view from there somehow less depressing than the view elsewhere in our house? Is there some potion in the aged sometimes yellow-sometimes green of the velveteen of this chair that makes the messes that nearly engulf it disappear?

There is. It's the view. (not the mess and not the laundry and not the unpacked suitcases and spiderwebs.)

The view from these chairs is the place where our beloved sleeps. His beloved. My beloved.

His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. 
This is my beloved and this is my friend.
(Song of Solomon 5:16)

When our house was cleaner, and the laundry never piled up, and the meals were more on time, and more imaginative...that is how I defined myself as wife and mother. In terms of what I was able to accomplish. In terms of how good I was at being a wife and mom. I was a good cook. I kept things sanitary and clean. The laundry was never piled up in a mess of wrinkles. I ironed occasionally. The sheets were washed every week. The kids were bathed every other day. My husband came home to a wife in relatively clean clothes who tried her best to be flirty and fun. There was music on. Home-school was going like clock-work.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?

I miss it, all the time.

But does it sound redeemed?

Who was accomplishing things around the Thul household in the picture I just painted you? God? Or Genevieve? Who was taking the credit? Whose ego was being massaged with compliments? Who felt like she had it all together?

I have wondered, at times, whether it would have fallen apart so drastically, if I'd been more humble. If I'd learned quicker how to integrate God and His glory into a life that was running smoothly. I cannot extricate cancer and suffering from my life any longer. I can't figure out if I would ever have arrived here without it.

If my house had never fallen apart, if the wheels hadn't come off the family bus this badly, marooning us in our messy home with stresses beyond what we imagined threatening to crack the very foundation of our marriage, we would not know this love.

I could have always assumed that Aaron loves me because I keep his house clean, his meals cooked, his needs satisfied, and his bed warm.

Now I know for sure that is not the way he loves me.

I know he loves me because he sees my soul, because God brought us together, because he has allowed 36 years of seeking God to shape him into an amazing man who looks past the little things and the big things that distract him from seeing deep inside me - the woman I want to be, perhaps the woman I will never even become.

Do you think the woman in Song of Solomon was really the most beautiful woman in the world?

Does Jesus love us because of our perfection, or our brokenness?

By allowing me to suffer a messy, disorganized home in the wake of cancer and encephalitis, God has allowed me to experience Christ-like love flowing from my husband. Love that loves anyway. Love that loves with service. Love that heals brokenness.  Redeeming love.

That is the potential in your marriage. The potential in your messy house. The potential in you as failure.

When you feel entirely alone, lost, broken, bruised, battered, useless, weak, imperfect, sinful, abandoned...don't forget to close your eyes and turn your face upward, toward the One who is always silently present. He will redeem it. He will renew it. He will use your situation to bless you far beyond what you can imagine or desire.

The best preparation you'll ever receive for your most agonizing trials will be when you are the only student in class. In the midst of you deepest difficulties, have you ever looked around and thought, Where is everybody? Sometimes God reserves the right to withhold others, to pull you aside with Him, so that you can experience what David did in I Samuel, "David found strength in the Lord his God." ~ Living Beyond Yourself online Bible study by Beth Moore

Linked to Ann's 2011 pre-Valentine's series on marriage at:

A conversation in the morning

I have a 4 year old who drinks a bottle at bedtime and naptime.

Sometimes I want to scream when I wash them.

Because I am afraid that she will never grow up.

I have a 5 year old and a 7 year old who haven't learned to make their beds.
Without prompting.
And I am afraid they are going to turn out just like me.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow:
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. 
Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof.
(Matthew 6:34)
I will still be with you when Amy is 30.
Whether or not she is still using a bottle to keep from seizing.
You know it's not your responsibility to keep her safe, right?
And you know I like you just the way you are?
That your daughter's failures when they're 30 will just bring them to me?

The diaper pail stands cracked open. 

The fumes fill the room.

I kick myself for not dumping it yesterday when it started to grow stale.

I have a four year old who wears a diaper at night.

If she can take it off herself, and put it IN the diaper pail,

shouldn't she be old enough to quit peeing in it?

Just shut the pail, Gen.

Why do you ask these questions?

Do you really think you're a failure because poop stinks 
and the child with the brain infection still pees at night? 


Really?

Blessed is the woman who remains steadfast under trial, 
for when she has stood the test she will receive the crown of life 
(even if Amelia pees at night for the next 45 years), 
which God has promised to those who love him. 
(James 1:12; gender switch mine)

Okay, leaving the bathroom.

I hear the kids in the kitchen.

The oldest served breakfast, praise God.

One less thing for me to do.

Or perhaps several extra things to do.

Don't cry over spilled milk.

What about the Cheerio spackle on my cupboards, Lord? Can I cry about that?

Sure, you can cry about it.

But don't wound your children with your words 
when they're just being children. You may not do that.

I tell you the truth, whatever you did 
for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. 
I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, 
you did not do for me.
(Matthew 25:40 & 45)

Do you remember breaking this door frame?

Sending the door flying against frame so fast sparks almost flew with it?

And the sparks came off your tongue and burned your children?

Remember slamming the door with all your might,

and the trim came loose?

I remember it because a drop of my blood paid for it.

I know, too, why you did it - I'm there with you, I see all your thoughts.

You slammed the door so you wouldn't slam them.

Yes, Lord. I will never forget it.

You don't do it anymore.

That's how faith is the victory.

Your house is still messy.

You still hate that your house is messy,

and half the tears you cry to me are about your messes.

But I taught you with messes. I taught you not to scream at your children.

I am still teaching you to be a servant.

Being a servant means you can't only serve as long as everyone agrees to keep it clean.

And not to make certain messes.

Being a servant means being on your knees,

scrubbing Cheerios off the cupboards.

Cleaning up the milk.

Dumping the diaper pail, however stinky.

Washing bottles for as long as I tell you to wash bottles.

...many who are first will be last, and the last first. 

(Matthew 19:30)

Truly, truly, I say to you, 

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, 

it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 

(John 12:24)

A buried appliance speaks

I crack you open like a ripe melon

and the paintings strip off your face

like dead leaves rustling down, down to the floor

Lost in the color

a boy from somewhere East of here

mother with the risqué hair
she smiles
he opens
they all remind

the verses like banners

are there if you care to find them

in the harried moments

when voices rise sharp

sometimes banners cover the ever-ready sin

of mid-day tongues

and the last year's daughter

glowers

a harbinger above another banner

a landmark reminder of praise

prayer

dreams are buried on your once-white skin

like a wrinkled old woman's 

collecting dirt in the roadmap of life's waste

in the curled paper dripping from the waves of clutter

stands a round Queen Genevieve

Queen Mama

"proud" purveyor of your contents

"overseer" of this mess

Ah.

I envision the crown on head

my hair not risqué

and bend again

to pick them up,

precious paintings

...even if there are thousands....

and fasten them with dreams and banners

because I cannot seem to find my garbage can.

What leaks through

There they are - all over every window under 5 feet high. The handprints older moms tell me to cherish because they will soon be gone.

Problem is, I had difficulty finding even one handprint to photograph. Because the kids love to leave other marks on my windows, too: they write their names with their spit, they slide their hands up and down, leaving tracks and letters and smears instead of cute little fingerprints.

Some days it feels like the sun can barely shine through these track-marked window panes. I'm lucky to wash these windows once a year, the vinegar pungent, sharp, clean, billowing up from my bucket of hot water as I scrub with blue rags, discards from the hospital's surgical ward.  These days, I use them to scrub windows instead of wounds.

And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink (Mark 15:36a).

I clean windows with the liquid offered Jesus to soothe his blood-crusted lips as he took his last few breaths while saving me. The smell rises and stings my eyes. The tears flush out the burn and the sting settles deep in my chest. Is this my cross, Lord - this messy home? These rowdy kids who drive me crazy half the time? These small burdens that seem to always be breaking my back?

Forgive me, Lord, when I am petty.

I see the children twirl in the room I just swept, twirl in front of the filmy windows, twirl in the sun that still streaks through. Praise God for this short moment of the day when there's nothing there to trip over.

She twirls here, too, in front of the table that is always piled with laundry. For over a month now, I've been sorting the summer and winter clothes. I sometimes wonder if I'll be doing this still the day I leave God's green earth.

But her twirling in front, like one of Degas' ballerinas, soothes my eyes, and the wrinkle between them fades, worry line of motherhood always failing, always with a mess to keep on cleaning.

The dishes never seem to be done either, and my husband tells me we need to buy more kid cups because we're always running short.  But we have 50! We don't need MORE, I protest, and slam dishes into dishwasher and wish for a magic wand. We just need to work harder. Or something like that. I realize I am muttering to myself now, and he is working, harder than I who have stopped to complain instead.

He rarely did the dishes, before I got cancer. Perhaps that's the silver lining in the messes that surround. Without them, I'd have never discovered how deep love speaks when my husband's hands do me a service, take up a humble chore of housework and lift it, silently and tenderly, from the load I am carrying around with me every day. Even more, those eyes of his that never speak shame and his voice that never says why aren't you better at this? Why can't you keep up? What's wrong with you? That voice is my own, the one coming from within. Never the voice of my lover, or the Lover of my soul either.

Would my husband have learned to bless me this way, had I not been tripped up by these disasters? If I'd had the energy to keep trying to be perfect, would I have ever discovered that what he really loved was me, not our clean house or our gourmet, on-time dinners, or the fresh outfit I always rushed into just before he came home?

I saw it, through the camera lens...the dirty milk bottles, and the pile of junk in the foreground, the random bottles in between the dishes that bore the food of that evening's dinner. Clutter. Failure.

But what leaks through, around the clutter and through the mess and in spite of the dust and the dirt and the chores undone, is love. Love is here. Love is now. Love is in the twirling girl, love is flowing from the husband's hands, it speaks loud in our dinner prayers and the laughter, even though we're eating at the island (again).

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. (I John 4:16-18)

Linked up for Valentine's 2011

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Prayer request from November: I beg for your prayers today as my daughter Amelia is admitted to the hospital at the esteemed Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She is 4 and will be having a 72-hour electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure her brain waves during various activities throughout her days and her sleep at night. We are hoping this points her physicians there in the right direction for treatment of what appears to be persistent, violent, and frequent seizures.

They're just bunnies. Harmless, right?

I have a husband with allergies. When we were first married, dusting was high on my priority list. I invested in all kinds of microfiber tools to trap dust so it never even swirled into the shaft of sunlight that filled the living room. After our first baby was born, we both became somewhat addicted to the "show ready" state our house was in when we put it on the then-red-hot housing market so we could move to the country. We swore [read: I swore and thought I heard my husband's voice in unison with mine] never again to live in a messy house. No matter what.

And this picture was taken a mere 6 years later. These dust bunnies are the view underneath my bed. Almost always.


This is the foot of my husband's side of the bed. I took this photo at 2 p.m. (I'm trying to be honest here. *deep breath!* It's not easy!) The bed is still unmade.  Even worse - gasp! - my husband's sheets and blankets are untucked. Again.

It would be so easy to get tangled up (ahem) in the details. Like the tousled sheets, the unmade bed, the dust bunnies threatening to carry us off into the dark night.

I just taught my daughter the meaning of the word "forfeit" today, so that I could use this sentence as I teach her...over and over and over again: "You have a choice whether or not to forfeit the joy in this moment because you are disappointed about the way life is". I'm hoping she'll learn now a truth it took me 30 years and cancer to really believe.

For·feit   Verb   /ˈfôrfit/   1. To lose or be deprived of a right or privilege as a penalty for wrongdoing: "those who refuse to sleep in bed with their spouses because of frustration over dust bunnies beneath may forfeit their marital rights"; 2. to lose or give up something as a necessary consequence of something else: "she didn't mind forfeiting an extra hour snuggling into her husband's beckoning arm to get up and vacuum their bedroom".

The truth is this: what happens underneath my bed has much less bearing on what happens on top of it than I previously thought.

When I grudgingly follow my husband to bed at the childishly early hour of 10 p.m., and feel the disdain leech steadily, easily out of my trunk, into my limbs and down and out of my fingers as he wraps me in a spoon-hold...

When he kisses the back of my earlobe and the worry of the day melts away like butter on the hot cast iron skillet in morning...

When our hushed conversation slows and our breath holds a rhythm and mingles in our space, dancing in and out of our chests to the same beat as sleep hovers like our heavy down quilt on conscious thought...

The last thing either of us is thinking about is dust bunnies.

In the dark and silence of our bedroom at night, there is no stack of folded clothes waiting to go into the dresser. There is no sand in the sheets. There are no bugs caught in the light fixture. The dust bunnies and messy room floats away into the dark and disappears for eight glorious hours until God wakes us with an orange-and-turquoise sunrise cresting behind the lyrical cottonwood.

I lost most of my microfiber tools in the move. I've never replaced them. And my husband has never said a word about it.

Oh what peace we often forfeit,

oh what needless pain we bear,

all because we do not carry

everything to God in prayer.

I wonder what other "harmless bunnies" I am forfeiting my peace and blessing for? Let my desire to be wife extraordinaire, woman worth far more than rubies never turn my heart into the thorny ground. The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. (Romans 12:2)

At first glance, it looks like poo.

I'm cleaning and thinking. I know what you're thinking: Her? Cleaning? Although the appearance of my house belies it, it is a little known fact that I do, indeed, clean at least a little bit every - single - day.

The dust bunnies mock me from under the beds.

The piles of dirt grit disappointment under my heels (and when I say piles, I mean piles: I measured one pile yesterday just to see if I was exaggerating in my own head. It was 1 1/2 cups of sand. From the front room and front door rugs alone. Is it possible to exaggerate 1 1/2 cups of sand??).

The never-ending succession of toys that litter my living room and dining room scream frustration.

The dining room table that cannot be seen shouts condemnation while we eat at the island yet another evening.

In every one of the daily visual reminders of my weakness and failures as a mother, wife and daughter there is something other than the scoffing accusation I see first: there, also, is the visible remains of Grace.

My mother and I both saw it at the same time.  A pile of poo on my brand spankin' new [albeit thrifted] blue chair. Not only a large, lumpy turd, but the shmear of said turd and the little pile of rabbit turds that sometimes precedes such a turd out of the rear ends of my offspring.

I guess I realized what it was a moment before my mother, and I think she nearly collapsed when I reached out with my bare hand to pick it up.

It was crusty playdoh.  You know that weird brown everything from watercolors to the dinner in the Crock-pot takes on when you mix enough things together? Well, this was mixed together-25 colors of Playdoh with just enough variation to truly resemble a large, steamy pile of poo. What a relief to find it was easily squished together and removed from the pristine velveteen of the chair that had somehow survived 25 or so years in someone else's - apparently more immaculate - home.

Playdoh is one of those constant burrs under the saddle of parenthood around our casa. There are a million-and-one recipes for nearly free homemade dough, but seriously, I have trouble getting edible dough of any kind on the table for dinner. How often do you think I have time and energy to devote to making dough for playing with? Arguably, I might spend less time sighing and cleaning up little yellow canisters as a result.

This is a picture of my kitchen sweep-up yesterday afternoon.  Less than a day's worth of dirt, Playdoh canisters, dried balls of the contents of said canisters, and other miscellaneous art scraps...previously littering the floor in a space 8 feet by 8 feet.

It's the cost of allowing creativity to run amok in your children's lives.

Something catastrophic like cancer hits and it leaves you with only a couple of options, as a homemaker. (You could fill the "catastrophic" blank in with anything time-consuming, really: grad school, a home improvement project, a demanding ministry opportunity, that novel you're writing or the recipe you're perfecting.) 

Option A: Hire a professional. Because your medical bills certainly won't eat up so much of your budget that you don't have space left for "frills" [sarcasm].

Option B: Tighten down, get rid of most of the toys, all but the essential, color-coordinated outfits, and all the consumables that tend to get scattered about, cut up or otherwise contribute to confetti like messes in your home (i.e. Playdoh, toilet paper, computer printer paper, paper towels, napkins, stickers, grocery lists...you get the idea).

Option C: Throw up your hands (cast all your cares upon Him), put on some socks so your dirty floors don't drive you crazy, and decide to live with the mess.

Option A is going to be most appealing to you.  But your husband and kids will probably thank you if you make early peace with Option C.

Have you read Proverbs 31 lately? The passage that describes the perfect matriarch? I perused it as I wrote this, and found no mention of a clean house in it. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. So let me ask, am I looking well to the ways of my household, with the resources I've been given? Am I eating the bread of idleness?

Mock poo piles or no, this is what I can do with this day.

And believe it or not, I see the shadows of His redemption everywhere.

This week, I am going to show you my messes.

And I am going to tell you how God has turned them into my successes.