I am a wife and the mother of two beautiful adult daughters and a wonderful new son-in-law. I am a seminary student and also do some part-time freelance writing, editing and graphic design work. My interests include reading, photography, baking (mostly bread and chocolate), and studying God's Word.
After reading book after book and article after article singing the praises of homeschooling and extoling the successes of homeschooled children, you start to feel like you’ve truly heard all there is to say about homeschooling.
I felt that way until yesterday, when I came across this article — a very well-thought-out and very brutally honest piece on potential pitfalls in homeschooling. I believe the author is Reb Bradley of Family Ministries. He makes some very eye-opening and convicting statements about homeschooling!
He says there are 7 blind spots in homeschooling:
1. self-centered dreams
2. family as an idol
3. emphasis on outward form
4. tendency to judge
5. over-dependence on authority and control
6. over-reliance upon sheltering
7. formulaic parenting that breaks down relationships
This is a great article to keep on hand and re-read at least once a year to keep yourself on guard against these! Here’s the link to the full article: Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling, originally published in September 2006.
Not being much of a TV fan myself, I was pleased to see that Pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis offers an in-depth explanation for why he doesn’t watch television and rarely goes to movies.
On the day Linnea was born, we admired her long, slender fingers and daydreamed of her playing the piano. Someday. It seemed so far away.
When she was about 20 months old, she’d sit at the piano, randomly pecking at the keys and singing the ABC song at the top of her lungs. Someday soon.
Last Saturday morning Someday arrived in the form of Linnea’s very first piano recital. She’s been taking lessons for four months, and she is already moving those little fingers oh-so gracefully across the ivories!
Her musical debut was “Bunny Jumparoo” by Pat Heldman Johnson. Playing solo from real sheet music is a noteworthy milestone at the ripe old age of 6 and a half. Of course, Linnea had memorized the recital piece, so the music was just there for show.
Our guests at the grand event were Linnea’s Great-Grandma Martin, Great Aunt Marla and Great Cousin(t) Rachel. What a joy to share the experience with them! And I felt so sentimental about these precious guests because it was Great-Grandma Martin who nearly 60 years ago bought the piano we have now in our home for Linnea’s practice. (Read the piano history here.)
I must confess this is the only complete piano recital I’ve ever attended. Listening to the music each student played was such a treat. They all play piano incredibly well! Mrs. Peterson, Linnea’s piano instructor, is a very lovely, encouraging lady with amazing gifts for teaching music. We are so blessed to know her!
Just for fun: If you play piano well enough to find Middle C position, leave a comment saying how many years you took lessons. Do you remember your first recital piece? I’d love to hear your memories!
Our little gardening day a few weeks ago was made all the more bright and festive with these fun gardening hats and aprons that my dear friend Aimee gave the girls for Christmas. We’ve been waiting for months to get a little dirt on them! We have an annual tradition of planting Wave Petunias in the window flower box that goes in the girls’ playhouse/swingset in our backyard.
Add water. Lots of water.Water again. Just in case.Gardening project complete.Yes, that's dirt on her nose.Prize-winning mud popsicles.
As part of our Kindergarten unit on butterflies, our family received five caterpillars in the mail one day, in a little cup with food on the bottom and a lid on top.
One caterpillar was notably smaller than the rest. We watched them all eat, eat, eat. We watched them all grow, grow, grow. And then we watched as four of them miraculously hung upside down and dried to form their chrysalises.
The fifth caterpillar was stubborn, sluggish. Linnea encouraged it emphatically, “You can’t be a caterpillar all your life!” Finally, she joined the others hanging upside down.
We carefully moved the chrysalises to a mesh butterfly habitat and then we watched, watched, watched for several days as nothing happened. One afternoon while we were away, not watching, our first Painted Lady butterfly was born! The next morning two more butterflies fluttered around in the habitat, and another one wiggled around still in the chrysalis. We watched so closely as that one miraculously broke free and made its way out to dry its wings. How amazing!
We kept and fed the butterflies for a few days, but since we were leaving town for the Memorial Day weekend, we needed to release them. The last stubborn chrysalis remained, shaking sometimes. We entrusted it to our next door neighbors so they could share in the experience.
The morning we let the four butterflies go was a little breezy and overcast. The girls knew they wanted to release them at “Butterfly Meadow,” a grassy meadow in a park very close to us. Linnea aptly named it because we had seen many butterflies fluttering through it one day on a little hike.
I’ll let the pictures tell the next part of the story.
the path to Butterfly MeadowLinnea unzips the habitat; butterflies hesitate.Butterfly poses for the camera before sailing up into the air.Linnea follows butterfly into the meadow.
“My favorite part of the school year,” Linnea says, “was the butterflies. I got to let them go, and they were beautiful. I got to open the lid to let the pretty Painted Lady butterflies fly away. I found one after it flew away, and I gave it leaves and flowers.”
Laurel tries to lure butterflies out using a dandelion.Another butterfly poses before departure.The last butterfly lingers on a wilted flower petal, then flies away.
Before this day, I had envisioned the butterflies rushing out of the habitat quickly. One swift mass exodus. I never expected we’d have to coax them to fly away. They were a bit uncertain.
What’s more, saying farewell to these beautiful creatures we had studied so closely felt surprisingly bittersweet. We felt sorrowful, but at the same time, we knew their potenital. Although they had hesitated to fly away at first, those butterflies never looked back or longed to return to the confining habitat in which we had kept them. No, instead of looking back, some soared up past the trees, up to the sky, rising up until they were completely out of sight. Free. The others fluttered far into the meadow and disappeared. Free.
The sheer joy of setting these creatures free to fly as high or as far as they wished — it overcame me. How exhilarating! Flying high and flying far was exactly what God created them to do! Their time on earth is brief; they usually only live a few weeks. They need to fly!
While my children are still small and at home with me, I study them closely. These early years are caterpillar years. They eat, eat, eat, and they grow, grow, grow. Someday they’ll probably be more like those chrysalises, and I won’t so clearly see what’s going on inside them. They’ll feel awkward as they change.
And then, someday, they’ll unveil. They’ll be beautiful butterflies.
I will let them fly as high and as far as God created them to fly. They, too, are on earth for just a brief time. They need to fly!
One of my favorite of the 10 Commandments is “Honor your father and mother.” I mention it to my kids quite often. Children need to respect and obey their parents as authority figures because parents (in most cases) know what’s best for their children and act in that best interest. For our family, this is a key part of raising children to become adults who love and obey the Lord.
That said, you can imagine my complete dismay when I recently heard that our government is poised to adopt the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child , a purposed international treaty that empowers the government to over-rule any decision a parent makes on the children’s behalf — decisions like where to attend church and how to correct wrong behavior. This is a deeply disturbing invasion on our rights and freedoms as parents. The worst news is our nation’s top leaders support it wholeheartedly.
Hearing stories about the erosion of parental rights in America’s courts also sends chills up my spine. So, in an effort to safeguard the relationships between me and my children and to protect the freedoms of future generations, I am spreading the word about the Parental Rights Amendment.
Michael and I first heard about this amendement a few months ago, and right away we both signed up to support it. This amendment will protect against the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child and other threats to parental authority.
A parent’s right to raise their children as they see fit is a time-honored American tradition, but today it is being threatened. The Supreme Court’s Troxel v. Granville decision in 2000 undermined a 75-year heritage of Constitutionally-protected, fundamental parental rights, which 8 of the 9 justices abandoned. At the same time, a growing body of international law fuels activist judges to legislate foreign standards from the American bench, while treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child would subject parental decisions to government oversight and international review.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (MI-2) has proposed HJR-42, the Parental Rights Amendment, to stop the erosion of parental rights in American courts while simultaneously defending our laws from international invasion. Please, visit parentalrights.org to learn more about the Amendment, and to join their email network by signing the petition to protect parental rights.
I urge you, if you care about your parental rights, please sign up!
“Any adult who spends even fifteen minutes with a child outdoors finds himself drawn back into his own childhood, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.” -Sharon MacLatchie
As the school year comes to a close and Minnesota’s weather becomes downright splendid, it’s time to breathe deeply and slow down. Our family’s weekend trip to the Boundary Waters was just the invigorating, deep breath we needed over Memorial Day.
We spent Thursday through Monday with some very dear and generous friends at their family’s picturesque cabin on a lake that’s an entryway to the Boundary Waters.
What a relaxing and refreshing trip! I can’t begin to explain how restful our time was. How is it that one sleeps so much better snuggled beneath thick covers on a cold night in a cozy log cabin? The first night I actually dreamed I had overslept until noon — and I certainly felt as though I had — but it was really only around 7 a.m. when I awoke! The kids — there were seven of them ranging in age from 18 months to 8 years — also slept remarkably well. Such a blessing!
Feeling so rested, we packed in a number of activities between the meals and the s’mores and the popcorn and the ice cream. We canoed, kayaked, pontooned, hiked, fished, enjoyed campfires, and played games. We had a remarkably wonderful time being together as a family, sharing time with our friends, and soaking up all the splendor of God’s creation up north.
We had close encounters with a bright green frog, loons, hummingbirds, chipmunks (or “chick-munks,” as Laurel says) and other wildlife. No moose or bears, though. That probably would have been a little too exciting, anyway!
One highlight for me was watching Linnea make little sailboats out of sticks and leaves. She made a little marina on a rock along the shoreline. It was precious. She played and played near the water, and she even fell in the lake once and got a whole pant leg wet. The water was about 50 degrees.
Another memorable highlight was Laurel asking if we were “car hiking” as we drove through the woods to the cabin. What an unusual comment! The drive was quite beautiful.
Laurel and all the other kids really seemed to love traditional hiking — on foot — especially with a walking stick. We hiked two trails in the Superior National Forest; both were just the right length for all the pairs of little legs.
Saturday we ventured off to Grand Marais. We did quite a bit of rock exploring along the north shore of Lake Superior. The rocks there are dark and jagged and great to climb.
We threw many rocks into the water and stuffed a number into our pockets. We were blessed with uncommonly warm weather for that area, sunshine and a light breeze. We stopped for lunch and ice cream at Sydney’s, stocked up on fudge in an assortment of flavors at Beth’s Fudge, and found kid-sized paddles, camping gear and other treasures at the Lake Superior Trading Post.
Back at the cabin that evening, Laurel played with a little birch canoe Michael made for her while we were in Grand Marais.
Sunday morning we all loaded up into canoes and the kayak for a trip into the Boundary Waters. Just as our family pushed away from the dock, Michael noticed a leak in the canoe. I was thankful that he noticed the two cracks then while the duct tape was still nearby and not later when we might have been really taking on water in the middle of the lake! Anyway, we portaged the canoe over to a different lake and then paddled around a tiny island. The girls really wanted to explore the island, which was only slightly larger than our mini-van, but there really wasn’t a good place to land the canoe, so we headed back to the portage. There Michael spotted a loon nearby and alerted everyone. Linnea, who was once again climbing on the rocks along the shoreline, got distracted looking for the loon and fell in the lake again. This time both pant legs were soaked, along with her socks. It was a cool and soggy return trip for her, but she managed to save her cry of embarassment until she was putting on dry clothes back at the cabin. She nearly ran out of dry clothes! Bless her heart. I commended her for being brave and reminded her that now she has a great story to tell about her first trip to the Boundary Waters!
Later that day we made an excursion to get water from a spring nearby. All the kids excitedly filled their water bottles with the fresh, cool water bubbling out of the ground. The water tasted so refreshing, and it symbolized our trip!
Sunday afternoon we inadvertantly mentioned going home; both girls burst into tears. Oh no! Then when we started saying our goodbyes to our friends Monday morning, the tears never ceased. All the way to Grand Marais, anytime Laurel or Michael or I mentioned anything about the trip, Linnea sobbed, “Stop talking about the cabin! You are making me cry!” And she did cry. She finally recovered once we stopped to check out Smoky the Bear at the ranger station in Tofte.
Monday evening we arrived home just before dark — our pockets still full of rocks and our hearts full of memories to treasure for a lifetime.
Michael and I celebrated our 13th anniversary yesterday. Some folks dislike that particular number, but having had our firstborn on Friday the 13th, we don’t subscribe to such silliness as luck! I am so blessed to have married a man who fears the Lord and loves me and our children so deeply. Thank You, God!
I recently came across some excellent and useful prayer tools on the topic of marriage and husbands. They are from a ministry called Revive Our Hearts, and I believe they are simply too good not to share.
First is a scripture-based daily prayer guide for praying for your husband. You can download the PDF here.
Next is the 30-day Husband Encouragement Challenge. The challenge is that you can’t say anything negative about your husband — to him or anyone else — and you must say something you admire or appreciate about him — to him and to someone else. I am going to attempt this one, and I’m asking my husband and my friends to keep me accountable! The file includes daily scriptures and encouragement for wives taking on this challenge. You can download the PDF here. Anyone else up for it?
Last, and Michael’s favorite title, is 15 Ways to Please Your Husband. I was surprised to see “Keep your junk out of the garage” made the list. I never would have thought of it! You can download the complete list here .
On the same site — Revive Our Hearts — I came across theologian Jonathan Edwards’ 70 Resolutions for Godly Living. They drip with profound wisdom. Here a just two of my favorites:
#28: Resolved, to study the scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.
#69: Resolved, always to do that, which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.
You can read through the complete list of 70 resolutions here.
Today is the National Day of Prayer, and as I look out the window I see a beautiful spring day. Buds have turned to growing leaves on the trees. The rustling grass has grown a vibrant green. It’s a sunny, breezy, 71 degrees in Minnesota. What a beautiful country we live in!
God has blessed us! How can we not respond with thanksgiving? How can we not praise the Maker of the beautiful creation around us? He is worthy to be praised.
Today I am saddened to hear that the White House is not participating in the National Day of Prayer. When in our nation’s history has there been a more urgent need for prayer? So many Americans are without jobs today. So many are off fighting for freedom in distant lands. So many suffer from countless diseases and heartaches.
Especially when the leader of our country choses not to humble himself before God, the rest of us must continue to pray fervently and humbly. Let’s pray that God takes hold of our president and changes his heart. Let’s pray that the veil over the president’s eyes is lifted. Let’s pray that these remarkable trials draw our president into a right relationship with the One True God. Let’s pray that God will forgive our country’s arrogance, our self-sufficient attitudes, and our idolatry. Let’s ask Him to continue to bless the United States of America.
Starlight Writer 