Archives for August 2010

One of the challenges that mom has given me is to anticipate the lessons our children need and teach them before that time. She points out that in many ways its easier to teach a fourteen year old how to drive than a sixteen year old. If I don’t want my sixteen year old daughter comfortable in a bikini, then it’s wise to teach her why when she’s four. This is why my young daughters don’t wear bikinis: not because they are sensual on a preschooler, but because my daughters won’t always be preschoolers.

This is also why I feel strongly about teaching my children to choose good and wise friends, long before they have the ability to choose their own friends independently of parents. Skateboarding is inherently fine by me, but I’m not going to encourage my son to become a professional skateboarder. Why not? Because the skateboarding culture is godless, drug ridden, and at odds with Christ and His Word. In keeping with my mom’s encouragement to think ahead, I want to ask myself what I want my children to look like when they are adults. How do I want my daughters to behave around young men, and my son around young women?

This brings me to the question of femininity and masculinity.

Here’s an experiment: Make a list of ten activities or interests you would likely not want your ten-year-old son to pursue because they are too feminine, in some way. Now make a list of ten activities or interests you would likely not want your ten-year-old daughter to pursue, because they are too masculine. Did you do it? Did you have a harder time with one list or the other? I realize that this isn’t a challenging task for some parents, but it was for me.

That’s the trouble actually. I can think of a number of “feminine” activities that I’m not comfortable with my son doing, but I don’t tend to have the same reluctance when it comes to “masculine” activities and my girls.  That puzzles me.

Now, I don’t think that climbing trees is inappropriate for a lady of any age  but I’m particularly asking myself about neutral activities like this. If I encourage my daughters to pursue activities and habits that are in our culture understood as masculine, am I making it more difficult for her to transition to a feminine adult?

I’ll talk tomorrow more about femininity and masculinity.

On occasion, I’ll reread something I’ve written and been completely unable to decipher what I intended to say. That’s how I felt last night, so I actually deleted my post (it was that unintelligible to me) and will repost something like it on Friday. Hopefully it will make sense.

Today is Wisdom Wednesday, and I remembered today that I wanted to write about an observation I made last week. I was rereading my original post on Wisdom Wednesday, and I noticed that I’ve been fudging a bit on my original intention.

In particular, I’ve been lecturing my children on how they can apply Scripture, and calling that wisdom. I need to do better at helping them actually think about Scripture that will help them make a decision, and then help them follow through. Ephesians 6:1 has gotten a little overused at our house lately. 🙂 I have seen growth, though.

In school I’ve been calling them to attention by asking them to be a “wise listener.” Bethel wants to read fluently. She’s expressed a desire to be wise, so I’ve told her that the biggest thing she can do to be wise is learn to read the Bible. She’s taking that seriously and working diligently.

I’ve been using the vocabulary of Proverbs when I talk about our decisions. Yesterday, David was telling me about a decision that he was making and added “I think that is a wise decision, don’t you think so?” It made me smile, because his decision was between two playtime activities. He doesn’t yet understand the connection between wise behavior and Scripture. But he’s learning to frame the question of wisdom  when faced with a decision, and that pleases me.

Lee and I have been talking about the difference between true submission and mere compliance (accompanied by expressions of displeasure). We might be phrasing the difference with wisdom vocabulary too. I need to be reading Proverbs with this thought in mind.

With that, I must be wise and take care of my household.

We’ve been listening to the Little House on the Prairie series in the car.

Since I enjoy children’s literature, I find the development of spirited heroines in the twentieth century to be greatly interesting. We like Laura, who speaks her mind and isn’t content to sit in a corner to sew demurely. Mary seems pale and uninteresting, and so she is, because the author saw her that way.

Here is my question, and I’ll spend a few days discussing what I’m thinking.

Is my perception of the development of femininity shaped more by the children’s literature I’ve read than Scripture and biblical principles?

It’s Wisdom Wednesday, and here’s the good question I try to ask myself at least once a week:

How is Scripture specifically changing me this week?

No good being vague: I’ve been more diligent… I’ve been more patient…

Better to be specific: When I started off angry because I wasn’t getting my way, I remembered what God said in such and such verse and changed my attitude. Or whatever.

I guess I should have waited to post yesterday’s post today, because that’s the biggest thing I can think of. God helped me turn around and make right choices about how I used my time. My day went well, actually. Incidentally, I kind of figure I really was walking in the spirit, because I ended up several times stopping being “productive” to do kid stuff: long talk with David about guilt/ sadness/ salvation, and later in the evening my children asked me to stop cleaning and play the piano for them. Several times I had to decide (deliberately) to serve my children instead of putting them off or asking a sibling to take care of the problem.

God helped me to evaluate the importance of those interruptions (another time, and perhaps the right decision would be different), but I am encouraged since sometimes when I am diligent I know I’m not walking in spirit because I’m irritable! Now that I think of it, those “interruptions” were truly building my house wisely, although at the moment I simply stopped what I was doing to do them. God did answer my prayer for wisdom.

And my last thought of the day was: Now, the wisest thing to do with my time is go to sleep! The sleep of a righteous person is sweet. That’s true. I like going to sleep when I’ve done right and been diligent.