Stress Together

“I have figured out exactly what the problem is, hon.” Ralph had been in the kitchen talking with one of his best friends.  Evidently, they had been discussing the various issues that they faced with their families.  I had interrupted their conversation by my unexpected early arrival home from work.

He was standing on one side of the kitchen island and I took up a position on the other side.  Looking at me very intensely and putting both of his hands, palms down on the counter, he declared, “You give me stress!”

At first, I just stared.  And then, to both men’s amazement, I began to laugh.  I laughed so hard that they were afraid that I couldn't stop.  I laughed enough to make them both start laughing themselves without really knowing why.  You might be asking, what was there to laugh about….  Well, I was thinking “Who gives who stress?!”

Flashbacks…

… Ralph makes me the mother of 4 over night.

… Ralph is out to sea while I am pregnant and have to move into our new apartment by myself.

… Ralph has a major car accident which effectively ends his military career about 3 years too soon.

… Ralph moves us to Maine.

… Ralph and I fail in our first attempt at our own business and we lose money.

… Ralph moves us to Amarillo and I get assaulted at a rest stop on the way.

… Ralph gets laid off of work and we lose our house.

… Ralph opens a coffee shop which doesn’t pay the bills…my income totally sustains us and the family living with us.

… Today, he is undergoing triple bypass surgery on his heart. 

We have laughed over the years about the “You give me stress.” comment.  He insists that his heart is proof of the truth of that statement.  I don’t know.  But I do realize that with all the things that we have gone through together, as much as each event in our history has put me under stress, they have put him under stress, too.

In so many cases over the years, I have seen only my own stress and my own hardships in the difficult events in our lives.  Recently, I have begun to realize that his stress was not only as great as my own but, perhaps, even more so because of his position as head of our household. 

Today, I am facing the possibility that I won’t have him anymore…that I may have to face the world and its stresses without the broad shoulders of my dearest friend and ally to help bear the load.   I have been challenged to reevaluate the past in light of his leadership and God-given position. 

Flashbacks…

…I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and Ralph just happened to call in time to be involved while my friend cut the cord.  We became a family of six with so much support and help that we both learned to be better parents as we went along.

…Ralph came home from overseas just in time to help me give birth to my second baby girl.  He was there during the C-section and was able to stay home for a few days to help.

…The car accident was not fatal (even though the car looked like it could have been) and it brought us back together as a family…and he was able to stay in the military for another 3 years.  Those were spent as a corrections officer in the Brig.

…Our move to Maine changed our lives – spiritually, physically and emotionally – for the better.  The family we lived with taught us a lot about life in Christ, home schooling, parenting and healthy living.  Lessons we have never forgotten.

…Our failed business taught us so many things…not the least of which was how to do business ethically and biblically.

…Ralph was and is my hero.  Whenever I am in doubt about my value, I remember his rescue of me at that Rest Stop in Tennessee.

…When we lost our house right after our move to Van Horn, our whole family learned the value of having nothing.  It gave us so much freedom and kept us from overspending and borrowing – because we couldn’t.  We learned how to live debt free.

…The Coffee Shop was a HUGE success…but not monetarily.  God showed up and taught us to trust Him in a REAL way.  Those lessons were so much more valuable than money.

Heart surgery is a scary thing.  My heart longs to give him its own help and strength.  However, I have to trust God to bring him through.  Whatever stress we face, we face it together and I want to do whatever I can to acknowledge the stress that he feels in the various other challenges we will have.  I think that I am just now beginning to learn what “dying to self” is really all about.

Rom 12:3  For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

A Real Education - Educating for the 10th Generation

“I think you are confusing what you are learning in school with a real education.”  Baba to Amir in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The high schoolers in our home school co-op and I had a wonderful year reading literature from around the world.  One of the books we read was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.  The story inspired a lot of discussion amongst us and we learned more about Afghanistan than we thought we needed to know. 

However, the above scene really brought home one of the reasons that we home school – institutions do not have a handle on a real education.

“I never let school interfere with my education.”  Mark Twain

This brings us to the question “What is a real education?”  Everyone and his secretary have been trying to answer this question for the last decade (and probably the last 5 decades).  The President, Congress, The National Board of Governors, the National Education Agency, local school districts, CSCOPE…and we could go on and on, have been trying to define it.   Yet, no matter how many times they try to come up with standards, guidelines, tests or objectives; they don’t seem to be any closer to an answer. 

The only ones who could really give an answer to this question aren’t even being consulted – namely parents and children.  A real education is inherently different for each child – so how could a national, state or local bureaucracy ever hope to define what it would be for every child?  Even in this tirade, I could not begin to pin down a real education for any child outside of my own. However, I would like to share with you a few things I have learned about a real education for my kids, which I think might ring true about yours, too.

Several years ago I happened to be watching the Oprah Winfrey Show.  I would normally never watch something like that so I must have been trapped in a doctor’s office somewhere at the time.  Nevertheless, she was interviewing Suzy Welch, the author of 10-10-10.  I would like to read this book sometime (it appears on my list somewhere below The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and Reforming Education by Mortimer Adler); however, as Ms. Welch revealed the premise, I thought it was excellent!  She was explaining that she had written about priorities…ordering your worries, tasks and time according to what would matter in 10 minutes, 10 months or 10 years.  It really made me think!

Ten minutes from now, is it really going to matter that my daughter spilled something on the floor?  Ten months from now will it really matter that I didn’t get all of the laundry done today?  Ten years from now will it really matter that my son got 70% on his latest biology quiz?  Thinking of life from this perspective made me think about what I get uptight about and what I let slide.  Ten years from now will it matter that I insisted my children tell the truth no matter what?

I would like to add another 10 to the list.  What is really going to matter 10 generations from now? What is important for my children to learn now that will impact the next 10 generations?  There is only one thing that I can think of:  learning to know, love and serve a Living God. 

A real education is not about just our own children.  Of course, we want them to know things and be successful in life; but we also want them to teach their children the important things in life in such a way as to inspire their children to teach their children.  In educating our children, we cannot just focus on what they need to know to live but what they need to pass on to the next generation.  Everything that we teach – or DON’T teach – will be passed down to the next generation in some way.  Wouldn’t it be better to be purposeful about this “passing down” rather than just letting it happen?  This idea sheds a whole new light on what it is to educate my children.

The things we choose to teach and the priorities in which we teach them will impact generations to come.  Here’s the math for my family:  If my 6 children each had only 4 children (and I hope they have more) and their children had 4 children and so on, this is how many people will be influenced by our family’s home education:

                2^nd Generation – 24

                3^rd Generation – 96 (the size of a small church)

                4^th Generation – 384 (the size of a growing church) – I may still be alive then.

                5^th Generation – 1,536 (the size of a small town)

                6^th Generation – 6,144

                7^th Generation – 24,576

                8^th Generation – 98,304

                9^th Generation – 393,216

                10^th Generation -  1.6 million

This is not including their spouses, friends, coworkers or others that God may bring across their paths.  It’s incredible!!  It makes me look at our own generation and the society we live in and wonder what happened 10 generations ago.

So, what is our greatest priority?  What should be the one thing that we teach – every day, every conversation, every situation, and at every opportunity?

Deu 6:5 – 9:  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.   You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (NIV)

Everything that we teach must be focused on knowing, loving and serving a Living God.  Not just for our children’s sake but for the sake of the generations that will follow.  If I neglect to teach my children to know, love and serve God, I am neglecting the real education of 1.6 million people.

God tells us to “teach them diligently to YOUR children” – not someone else’s, not allow someone else to teach yours; but to teach YOUR children.   Some have said that this is why they have children’s ministry at church; but that is not what this means.  If you are teaching in children’s ministry, but you have no devotion or prayer at home with your own children every day – you are neglecting the most important mission God has given you!!

He tells us that we are to teach these things at every opportunity and especially while we “walk by the way”.  At that time, the Israelites spent the majority of their time walking!  They had no other transportation.  They spent LOTS of time walking along the way.  This means teach them “the majority of the time you have with them”.  You cannot possibly teach them to know, love and serve God in less than 4 hours a day.  YOU must have the majority of their time and use that time to teach them about God and His plan and purpose for their lives.

How do we purposely influence our children so that they will pass on these values, truths and faith to the next generation in such a way that they purposely pass them down to their children and so on?

How many things can you think of in your own lives which were influenced by your parents and their words, ways of doing things, traditions, aversions, careers, etc.?  Even in our own lives today, we can see we are influenced by our parents and grandparents.  We’ve all experienced those moments when we stop short and think “Wow!  I just sounded exactly like my mother!”

My mother would be driving us somewhere in the car and would observe a reckless driver whiz past.  She would turn to me and say, “There is an accident going somewhere to happen!”  Just that observation taught me that reckless driving was a bad thing and could cause accidents.  In turn it affected my driving and how I observed those drivers around me.  Now, I say the same thing to my own children and I believe that it is having the same effect on them.

Now, down to practical matters.  What can we do to influence our children for the generations that will follow?

“and [you] shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

I am seeing that God had a plan: frequency, intensity and duration.  Frequency being those daily habits that become instilled almost without thinking – “when you sit in your house”.  Intensity being those moments that we create to inspire and remember – “when you lie down and when you rise”.  Duration being the length of time that we do both of the above – from the time our children are born until the time that we die – “when you walk by the way”.

Frequency.  Habits can be accidental or purposeful and have to do with the daily moments in our lives. These are the daily and even hourly choices that we make – choices that are at first conscious and then, when frequently made, become unconscious.  Choices become habits with lots of practice.  Habits have nothing to do with feelings or wants but can be tied to them and become destructive if we aren’t vigilant.  Habits fall into 3 categories:

                Spiritual Habits – prayer, devotion, pursuing God in Scripture, forgiveness, charity, humility, honor, obedience, thankfulness, patience, respect, optimism, hope.

My father gathered us around the table each night after dinner and read to us from the Bible and taught us from it.  We would have lively discussions (some of which would frustrate my dad) and pray and encourage each other in our faith.  He would answer our questions with Scripture and challenge us to memorize certain passages.  At one time he even taught us the Greek alphabet so that we might be inspired to read the Scripture in its original language.  Today, my kids and I try to have a time of reading Scripture and prayer every morning.  In fact, on the mornings that we don’t have our devotions, I feel a little out of sync with the world.  Devotions have become a habit in our daily routine.

Even more important is exercising those habits of the heart taught in Scripture.  Do we teach our children to respond to their neighbors with respect, forgiveness, and humility?  Do we teach them to be thankful in all things and see the bright side to every coin?  Are these habits – things that they do without even thinking?  That should be our goal.  In this area, it is not so much about what we do to instill them as what we don’t do.  The heart left to itself is only wicked continually.

                Mental Habits.   We choose how we think (“bring every thought captive to the will of Christ”) and can choose to think positively, proactively, and selflessly.  We can learn to dwell on those things which are lovely, true, excellent, and worthy of praise.  When bad things happen, we can learn to think about them from God’s perspective and learn from trials and suffering instead of dwelling on the negative and becoming bitter.  We can cultivate these habits in our children by responding rightly ourselves and coaching them to respond rightly when they have trying circumstances themselves.

There is so much “drama” happening in our society today.  With the advent of computers and cell phones, so much of our kids relationships have the potential of being “all in their heads”.  FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, and other social networks make it so easy to make something out of nothing.  Are we teaching our children to properly use these tools or are we in denial about how much damage they can do?  Even my pastor and his wife are caught up in the “drama” of FaceBook.  Well, it isn’t real!!  It is manufactured drama out of the minds of those who are not “taking captive every thought to the will of Christ.”

We must teach our children to control their thoughts, which in turn help them control their emotions and their words and actions.  They CAN exercise the habit of controlling how they think about the situations, circumstances and relationships that they encounter.

                Physical Habits – caring for the body, making good food choices, smiling, speaking positive words, encouraging others, “do not complain and grumble about anything, but in everything give thanks.”, rising early, reading, learning, talking about God & His will in your daily routine, working diligently, completing tasks, etc.  Sometimes we call these Character Traits.  The Bible says that “a good reputation is better than gold”.  These are the actions that cause others to place value on our Character.

I have a good friend who is such a hard worker that he is frequently praised by his peers for his work ethic and honesty.  Those who know him well would do anything for him and would put their lives in his hands without a second thought.  That is the kind of reputation I want and we should want for our children.

Recently, I was talking to my daughter about her employment.  We both agreed that we should always want our boss plotting ways to keep us in his employment – instead of plotting ways to get rid of us.  She has a habit of smiling at everyone, being on time, and dressing professionally.  These things make her a valuable employee and, more importantly, a good reflection of who God is in her life.

Another friend has a daughter who is constantly complaining about everything.  No one wants her around.  No one wants to babysit or to have her a part of any gathering.  Incidentally, these same people feel the same way about her mother.  If we are constantly complaining, we are not doing our children any favors.  The habit of complaining can become a big problem if we don’t replace it with the habit of encouragement, thankfulness and praise.

In light of a real education, one that will stand the test of 10 generations, are we teaching our children good habits on purpose or are we allowing our daily lives to just “float” along?  Let’s be purposeful in how we train our children’s habits because they will definitely be taught to our children’s children.

Intensity.  The human race is programmed to put importance upon Ceremony and Ritual.  We find all through the Old Testament that God chose to teach His people through Ceremony and Ritual.  There were several Feast Days every year that the Israelites were supposed to keep.   In each one, they reenacted the event that it commemorated.

Consider also the building of alters at various times.  When the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and when they crossed the Jordan River.  They were told to build alters specifically so that “when your children ask ‘What is this for?’ you are to tell them…”

Today we have weddings and baptisms.  Both of these occasions are meant to convey deep commitments and lasting values.  Sometimes these events just become big parties at which people gather to have a good time; but, it is a mistake to miss the opportunity to communicate these truths to our children in such an intense and memorable way.

In addition, we have little rituals that cement ideas into our brains.  Do remember praying “Now I lay me down to sleep…” before bed?  I do and it taught me an important truth: God is watching over me always.  When the kids were little, we decided to institute a ritual “blessing” before bed each night.  We spoke over them what we believed God had blessed them with that day and then prayed with them before sleep.  I believe this helped them become confident that God has a purpose for them; not because of the ritual itself, but because we sincerely believed that they needed to hear it each night.

Duration.  What we do consistently and over the long haul, will ultimately determine the direction our children will go.  “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 23:6) Therefore, a real education will use all the tools we have at our disposal over a duration of time to train our children to follow God…including academics.

Academics are only tools.  We cannot teach Algebra so that our children will pass a test or get a good score on an SAT.  We must use Algebra as a tool to teach our children about an orderly God who gives us many ways to know and understand Him and what he has created.  We cannot teach Biology or Chemistry so that our kids will pass the textbook quizzes.  We must use Science to teach our children about God’s universe that He purposely designed for His Glory and how it reflects His love and care for us.  When academics become the goal, they become our god.

Ultimately, the only things that we can take with us when we die are our children…to Heaven.  So, we are training them for Heaven, not Harvard.  I don’t know about you, but I want to take my grandchildren and great grandchildren and the following generations to Heaven, too.

“…the sins of the fathers will visit themselves upon the 3^rd and 4^th generations; but the blessings of the Lord will visit the righteous even unto the 1000^th generation.”

This year, I am continuing to change how I think about each and every day of our “educational program” and am beginning to realize that it’s not so much about academics as it is about teaching and training with Heaven in mind.  I am counting on the blessings that God has promised, knowing that He will keep His promises and I won’t have to worry about how my children will get along in this world.  If I use academics as the tools that He’s given me, they won’t lack in that area either.  Indeed, God is already showing me His faithfulness.

“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”  I John 3: