Education and its Dilemma

Our homeschool is about to begin, and I thought it might be an appropriate time to share this article, one I wrote a few years ago.

     I wasn’t going to be a homeschooling mom. My own education took place in a private church school, surrounded by peers. Friendly competitions pushed my grades higher than they might have been if I hadn’t had to announce my score to twenty classmates. With happy memories behind me, I expected my future children to attend a brick-and-mortar school with classmates, chalkboards, and teachers.

     Not only did I have a positive experience to look back on, but a friend shared horror stories of integrating poorly-educated homeschooled children into her classroom. Fourth graders could hardly read. That clinched it. I would never be a homeschooling mom.

      But through the years, the “I will never” was slowly chipped away. I met another kind of homeschooled children. Some were annual winners of the local spelling bee and one child played piano like a master when he was eleven. I met a homeschooling mom who tailored classes to fit the needs of each child, churning out a dozen who knew more than I did. They weren’t social misfits; they spoke comfortably with adults and easily with peers.

    I rubbed shoulders with die-hard homeschooling moms who touted the benefits of teaching your children at home. To some, this was more than an optional schooling alternative; this was a God-given mandate. “God gave your children to you,” they said with their arms around their preschoolers. “It is your job to train your children. It doesn’t seem right to place them in someone else’s care for most of the day.”

     “Plus,” they told me, “when you homeschool, you can tailor the education to fit each child’s learning style, unlike a classroom where everyone is forced to go at a pre-determined pace. This is where homeschooling shines.”

    Other moms, pinning daisies in their hair, said, “I love the flexibility of homeschool.”

     That flexibility part made me wary. I heard of homeschoolers who mowed yard, pulled weeds, and raked leaves for a day of school under the umbrella of “studying agriculture.” I supposed that kind of flexibility produced fourth graders who couldn’t read.

     When my firstborn reached school age, we were in Ghana. I was going to become a homeschooling mom whether I liked the idea or not. Then came the next weighty problem: What curriculum should we use? Opinions rolled in.

    “Using self-paced programs is like tossing a pile of books in your child’s lap and saying, ‘Go educate yourself.’ But homeschooling is much more than that. It is being involved in every area of your child’s life, including their education. Plus, CLE is hopelessly boring.”

     “Abeka is advanced academically but it is very patriotic.”

     “ACE has a terrible writing program. The children are in, like, seventh grade and can’t give speeches or write essays. Plus, ACE is much too easy. All they do is fill in blanks.”

     “Rod and Staff is far too narrow-minded. They even put Adam in a plain-cut suit in the Garden of Eden in one of the illustrations.”

     “If you use any curriculum that doesn’t share your values, you will lose your children to the world.”

     “The whole book approach is the only way to go. You retain information through books you read, not by cramming for tests. Use a program where your children read living storybooks with guided discussions instead of textbooks with tests. These books give your children a whole world education, not one so focused on American history alone. Children need to learn about more than just Christopher Columbus, you know?”

     Using storybooks to educate my children appealed to me, but I sensed strong feelings behind the opposition: “Sonlight recommends ungodly books that condone or make light of sin, just because it is great literature. I would never allow my children to read those books.”

     Seasoned, build-your-child’s-educational-experience-people hinted that sticking with a single publisher for every subject was an inferior way to educate children. “Every curriculum has strengths and weaknesses, so your job is to ascertain your child’s learning style, then pick textbooks based on that. For my oldest son, I use Apologia for science, the Mystery of History for world history, and Saxon for math. But my second child used none of these.”

     And the final piece of advice: “If we are going to reclaim our children’s education, we don’t need to model our days after the public school system. One of the best things you can give your children is a love for learning, and you don’t get that by giving them a stack of textbooks. Learning is meant to be fun! We tried the textbook approach, but it did not work for us. I am not going to have war in my home for the next twelve years trying to force worksheets upon my crying child, so we switched to the whole book approach and it revolutionized our school days.”

     I wasn’t the only one who was unsure about educating my children with no tests and textbooks. "I'd be wary of the 'no worksheets' idea," my cousin wrote. "Sure, Thomas Edison may have learned that way, but Thomas Edison was the exception, not the rule. I'd like to tell those moms that unless they are confident their child will produce the world's next lightbulb, they are safest sitting little Johnny down and having him endure the drudgery of storing information the boring way. I'm all into interesting and hands-on, but there's something rotten at the bottom of this they-don't-even-know-they're-learning approach. I'd say, 'Exactly. And furthermore, does anyone else?'"

    By the time the barrage of opinions ended, we had already dipped cautious oars into the waters of homeschool. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. But judging by the Winds of Opinion, everything I had done so far was wrong, and my boat rocked dangerously. What did it matter if my kindergartener could read simple storybooks and write in cursive, or that my second grader could multiply and divide? I was guilty of being a textbook girl. Too structured. My curriculum was flawed. And my children, in spite of my most interesting diversions, were counting the days until summer break. I was failing, in other words. Maybe sending them to a real school was my only hope of redemption.

     My sense of failure might have shipwrecked our homeschool had voices of encouragement not penetrated my fog. One of them was my husband’s who listened to me process opinions endlessly and was still able to chart a straight course.

     “I’m not comfortable with the whole book, no-textbook approach,” he said. “Let’s use a traditional curriculum, worksheets included, to make sure the foundation is solid. Then, if you want to, add reading material to the side. Our children will get the best of both worlds.”

    “My children have been counting the days until school lets out, too,” one non-homeschooling mom told me. “It is normal at this time of year.”

     “This isn’t a perfect world,” someone else conceded. “School is what you make of it, brick and mortar or homeschool. Curricula are good or bad depending on the teacher. If it is working well for your family, don’t let the naysayers discourage you.”

     Encouraged, I filed my list of Sonlight book titles (mom-approved ones, of course) so I can add them to our library someday. I loosened up just a little until I can enjoy some of the flexibility homeschooling offers. No, I still don’t call a baking spree as a full day of Home Ec, even if they stir in the chocolate chips and press ‘start’ on the timer. But instead of copying a recommended paragraph into a textbook for his penmanship class, my second grader wrote a report on antlions he found on our property. When he read about a blind child, we wrote his name in Braille on cardstock and read a book about Louis Braille. That, in addition to his regular work. He didn’t even know he was learning.

     Indeed, school is what you make of it. For now, we are a homeschool family, making the most of an imperfect curriculum with an imperfect teacher at the helm.

The Diary of a Wimpy Camper

Each summer when I was a girl, our family went to a Canadian lake for a week. We stayed in crummy cabins, swam in a pool with no diving board, fished from glorified rowboats, and left for home with everything smelling like a cocktail of dead fish and sunscreen. The trip was the highlight of the summer for us children. And why wouldn’t it be? It was effortless to slip clothes and swimwear into a suitcase, pack a couple of books and art supplies for down times, and spend a week in the sunshine.

Family camping trips with cousins were similar. We explored the woods or played Monopoly in someone’s tent. Meanwhile, food showed up on my plate at mealtimes. Coolers stayed chilled and stocked with soft drinks without apparent supervision. (Did camp hosts take care of those things back then?)

Sadly, they don’t make summer vacations like they used to.

I recently spent two weeks poring over meal ideas, compiling packing lists, buying cartloads of supplies, and prepping food. The pile to take to Ohio grew like an invasive species and took over my kitchen. Out of necessity, we packed efficiently so everything could fit into our minivan. Propane cylinders rode in my kitchen tote. Bowls and pans fit together so tightly that I couldn’t retrieve one without getting them all. Smaller items slipped into crooks and crannies and fell into unreachable areas of the baggage.

We looked like roving packrats while driving to Ohio. Ice chests hung off the back of the van on a rack. Boxes and pillows piled up inside, leaving only pockets of space for the children to sit. They didn't mind. A week of camping with cousins was unbeatable. 

When we got to the campground and spilled outdoors (literally), I realized that aside from our tent, sleeping bags, and clothing, we had no place to go with anything. Tightly packed totes would need to stay that way. Even our ice chests had no place to go because there was no shade. There were no trees. At least no trees bigger than me. John and I pulled ice chests from a rapidly warming van and stood around whispering about how to get them out of the sun. Borrow shade from the neighbors? It was our only choice. We begged shade from my sister’s canopy for our ice chests and stowed marshmallows in my parents’ air-conditioned camper.

The lack of shade was only the start of our troubles. John and I were tenting, but since my siblings and parents brought campers, we reserved a full hookup site so we could camp beside them. That meant our site was designed for an RV, not a tent. The driveway was ample and cement. The grassy margin around its edge was sloped for drainage purposes. John assessed the options and initiated a difficult conversation.

“So where do you think we should set up our tent? On the cement pad or on the slope?”

Neither spot exactly thrilled me. It was like choosing your own punishment. I didn't want to be the one to make the call. “How about you decide, and I’ll just go along with whatever you want. Will the tent fit in the grass?”

“I think so. But it is sloped enough that we will fight a slide all week. What do you think about renting a tent site? A campground this big surely has actual tenting sites with trees and flat grassy spots big enough for a family-sized tent." 

"We could, but then we are going to be so far away from everyone else that we can’t put children to bed early and sit around the campground with the adults."

We opted for the gentle slope. As expected, sleeping bags shifted downhill in the night. Our brand new tent was equipped with a protective floor covering that was held in place with hooks and loops. A week of bodies sliding down the slope tore out one of those loops.  

We set up our tent on the only place it fit--six feet from the road and directly beside an ash pile. The ash pile was void of a campfire ring. Our site had no grill. No grate. Just a heap of leftover ashes heaped in a blackened circle beside our tent. The only thing that kept this from becoming a national emergency was that we pre-planned to save on firewood and share fires with my sister. Still, what campsite doesn’t have a campfire ring? 

Without trees, our tent sat in full sun. So did the picnic table. I looked at the tent, brilliant sunlight, and still-crowded van, and my spirits plummeted. This was going to be a long week.

On that first morning, I tried making mountain pies for breakfast. The recipe pictured perfectly toasted sandwiches filled with egg, sausage, and cheese. The instructions said to tear a hole into one piece of buttered bread, drop in a raw egg, top it with cheese, fried sausage, and your final piece of bread and toast it over the fire. It looked like a great idea online. But my enthusiasm for the recipe was low when we assembled the sandwiches. Egg squeezed out of the pie irons and ran onto the picnic table and below. A trail of egg whites followed us across that beautiful cement pad when we carried them to the fire, and a crust of burnt egg yolks adhered to the side of the pie irons during the cooking process. In the end, three of our five sandwiches cooked to passable levels of edibility.

The other two sandwiches stuck to the double pie iron with a vengeance. We prodded and pried and chiseled out as much of them as we could. John ate his portion “as is,” meaning partially cooked with the egg white still jittering when he walked. I opted to dump my scrambled mixture into another pie iron and cook it longer. It was a dismal feast at best.

While we messed around with stuck, raw, and scrambled egg sandwiches, our children ate theirs by the side of a vehicle, crowding together to fit in the shade. Breakfast was doing nothing to revive my love of family camping. At least I still had cinnamon rolls to bake over the fire. Cinnamon rolls and coffee would surely be enough to get even a smoky-eyed, wimpy camper excited.

I poked refrigerated cinnamon rolls onto roasting forks and held them over the coals. For the first few minutes, it looked like it would work, but then the dough started to slump and soften. It didn't take a culinary specialist to know that bad things were going to happen to good cinnamon rolls unless something changed soon. John saved the day by suggesting we bake them on open pie irons. To my surprise, they baked perfectly--even the one that needed to be retrieved from the ashes.

When I finished baking the cinnamon rolls, it was only 10:30, and I was already tired of being in the sun. I took my ash-covered roll to my parents’ camper and sat alone under their awning, hoping a breeze would not only cool me but improve my dark mood. Is this really what camping is like? Lousy food, hot sun, and smoke-burned eyes? I had forgotten.

Mom invited me into her air-conditioned camper, saying, “You look hot already!”

“I am hot,” I said. I had not absorbed enough breeze for it to do its good work. “I mean, seriously. Couldn’t they have left at least one tree on every campsite? Just one tree bigger than me."

That evening, a storm rolled in, defying the weathermen who had predicted a beautiful week with no rain. A purple patch on the radar approached rapidly while we grilled burgers over the fire—a fire that billowed smoke into my eyes no matter where I stood. As soon as the burgers were done, John and I inhaled our sandwiches and urged the children to hurry. Just as they crammed in their final tremendous mouthfuls, rain started to fall. I dove into the tent for refuge and listened to the rain fall in earnest. It picked up pace from there, changing from pouring rain to pounding hail. Hailstones pinged off our van and clattered on the concrete. They hit the tent with enough force that I wondered if any would suddenly come blasting through. Mercifully, they didn't, and the tent stayed dry.

I gave up on weathermen. Rainstorms passed through three days in a row, even though the forecast stayed beautiful. 

Rainy view of someone else's site

During the days, most of the adults in our group disappeared onto the lake with their kayaks and boats. I didn’t have toys like theirs, but I definitely didn't sit immobile at the campsite all week. I moved my lawn chair to the shore for a while and watched the children splash in the shallows until the glaring sun made me nauseous. I kept beating a path to the bathroom with my three-year-old who drinks like a water buffalo and has the bladder of a mouse. And I dodged flying bean bags whenever I carried food from the picnic table to the fire, because the cornhole game was set up on our otherwise empty cement drive. So I had my own variation of exercise and excitement.

I'm still wrapping my mind around this thing called camping. I spent two very happy years in a Ghanaian village where we lived without running water, electricity, stove or plumbing. Our whole village lived that way. It felt like there was redemptive value in living as much like our friends as possible. But now, choosing inconvenience and discomfort just for fun made me question the sanity of every American who camps. Who does this on purpose? Cooking over a fire with smoke stinging your eyes? Eating ash-covered cinnamon rolls, poorly cooked eggs, and unevenly roasted snacks? Trotting down the street to a germ-ridden bath house to take your child potty umpteen times a day? I'm still incredulous that we paid to do this.

To be fair, it wasn't all bad. I spent a week with four of my five siblings. That's a little hard to beat. 

I watched my children race around on their bikes with cousins, play on the playground, splash in the lake, and roast marshmallows in the fire. They played hard, ate heartily, and crashed into sleeping bags, exhausted. Even at my lowest moments, I knew I’d camp again for their sakes.

I enjoyed our evening campfires. Cooked shrimp, shared all around. Party mix by the bucketful. Singing by the light of the fire. We adults put the children to bed late and stayed up far later, laughing and talking like good families do around a fire.

Still, I can't say I was sorry to leave. Lingering smoke in my hair, shade-less sites, random rain showers, no way to organize my camping gear. My list of legitimate complaints was long.

But the biggest problem I had with camping was when I took a good look at myself and realized they sure don’t make happy campers like they used to.

Campfire Cooking

My entire family went camping for a week this past month. Until that experience, I always have camped with competent people who wanted to share (or assume) cooking responsibilities. But this time, considering the size of the group we were camping with, it made sense for each family to cook independently. This means for the first time in my life, I had to create a campfire menu.

Scared that my children would be the ones with boring campfire meals, I begged menus off of everyone else and sourced more ideas online. I was satisfied with the variety I came up with on paper, but cooking it was going to be another story. In the end, everything was edible but only because quality control teams don't bother scrutinizing campfire food. Some of it was burned and some was undercooked, but John says campfire food can be like that and nobody minds. (Well, somebody minds, but she will be silent about that for the time being. Keep an eye out for "The Diary of a Wimpy Camper," coming soon.)

In the meantime, here is a list of campfire food ideas, minus the traditional hamburgers and hotdogs that everyone already knows about. Nothing is original with me, so don't give me undue credit. And the final disclaimer is that half of this was cooked over someone else's fire. (Well, all of it was cooked on someone else's fire because our campsite didn't even have a campfire ring of its own. I know. Read the diary.)

1. Waffle Danishes
Make a sandwich out of two purchased waffles, cream cheese, and pie filling. Butter the waffles well and toast them in mountain pie irons until they are nicely browned. Serve with coffee.
Tip: Either make extras or be prepared to beat off the neighbors who have None. 

2. Cinnamon Rolls
The website showed golden cinnamon rolls being baked over the fire on roasting forks. I should have known better. Photoshop trickery going on there, maybe, because it certainly is not real life. I started off by poking refrigerated cinnamon rolls onto a roasting fork, but they soon softened and slumped dangerously. When he saw their demise was imminent, John suggested we put them on open mountain pie irons and finish baking them like that. They baked completely through. Even the one that landed in the ash tasted surprisingly delicious. But I feel my blood pressure rising as I type this. That breakfast isn't the greatest memory on record.

3. Steak, Eggs, & Potatoes

We were only cooking two meals a day, so I supposed a hearty breakfast was in order. We grilled small steak medallions over the fire, then fried cubed potatoes, onions, and peppers in our cast iron skillet. I cut the potatoes into really small cubes so they'd cook quickly. Once they were ready, I cracked a few eggs into the potatoes and scrambled them, making a delicious breakfast we all loved.  

4. Biscuits and Gravy

My brother baked refrigerated biscuits on a grate over the fire. They lost points for their campfire-cooking appearance, but supposedly the smoky flavor made up for it. The gravy was made in a Dutch oven, and the end result is worth repeating.

5. Hobo Packets

Wrap veggies, meat, and seasoning in layers of tinfoil and roast them over coals. The fun part about this meal is that each packet can be customized to suit personal preferences. Use cabbage, thinly sliced (or partially cooked) carrots, onions, shredded potatoes, green peppers, hamburgers, sausages, or anything else you might like to include. You can make them meatless and add a pat of butter to the vegetables. Wrap them tightly in tinfoil and roast over hot coals until they are done, flipping every 10 minutes. Plan on 30-40 minutes of cooking time. Delish!

6. Mountain Pies in multiple varieties
Quesadillas: My sister likes to use tortillas instead of bread in her mountain pie irons, giving plenty of space for the fillings like ham and cheese, mushrooms and onions and cheese. Think 'Ham and Cheese Quesadillas' cooked over the fire and served with salsa.

Breakfast Disasters: I tried tearing a hole in a piece of bread, cracking in an egg, and topping it with cheese and fried sausage. A couple of them were fully edible, which we gave to the children. John ate his egg partially raw. I dug my sandwich out of our new mountain pie maker with a chisel and digging iron. Call it a success if you like raw eggs or scrambled mountain pies. In the future, I'll use cooked eggs in our breakfast mountain pies.

Pizza themed mountain pies worked better for us because all of the ingredients were fully cooked and only needed to be charred heated. 

7. Through-the-Garden Wraps

Grill marinated chicken thighs over the fire. Cut into strips. Load a tortilla with chicken strips, diced cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, Ranch dressing, and Honey mustard dressing. 

8. Apple Crisp

Wrap your favorite apple crisp recipe in layers of tinfoil and bake it over coals. Serve with ice cream. 

9. Evening Snacks

Not all snacks are created equal. I thought campfire snacks and marshmallows were synonymous. But I was completely and totally wrong. S'mores are like, so yesterday.
Cheese sticks. Poke a cheese stick onto a roasting fork and toast until it turns slightly brown and gets soft. But watch out! Once they get soft, they easily slip into the fire. 
Small smoky links
Shrimp, cooked in butter in a cast iron skillet and seasoned with Old Bay seasoning. I love brothers who bring shrimp to share. Never mind that I had One Shrimp. Next time I'll bring my own if I want any.
Steak. "There's nothing like going to bed on a belly full of warm meat," he said. I didn't try it so I can't verify that. I can say, though, that his steak was restaurant-quality, judging from the pack of wolves that hovered near his chair begging for a single bite. One lick. The bone. An I'll pay-you-for-it bite. An edge. An anything. Then moans of happiness over the pieces he shared.
Bacon. Wadded up on a roasting fork, or spread out on a Graber grill. Cooked over the morning fire when coffee is brewing. Or eaten around the fire in the evening. You can't go wrong with bacon. It is one food where campfire cooking rules. No mess to deal with, and no smoke alarm to scream in your ear just when you are vulnerably bending over a hot oven to remove a pan of sizzling bacon. Everyone should do bacon over the fire.
Pigs in a Blanket. Crescent roll dough wrapped around miniature smokies and poked onto a roasting fork. It worked well if you found the perfect angle above perfect coals in a perfect cross-breeze. But most of our campfires were roaring blazes which meant these piggies were a success if you prefer your food ebony on one side, doughy on the other, and chilly in between. But, hey. People eat anything around a fire. 

Except carefully guarded steak.

Painted Rocks

I've been mistaken for a creative person, but what I actually am is an avid borrower of non-patented ideas. I also am surrounded by great friends who bring smooth rocks, containers of paint, and brilliant suggestions to my kitchen table. Gail and her three children joined us for an art project of painting rocks and distributing them in parks for other people to find and keep.

Our project started with the happy chaos of selecting rocks, distributing paint, finding the right brushes, and choosing what we wanted to paint. Then we settled down to work and watched our rocks come to life.

The car my 3-year-old masterminded
 and couldn't part with.

While one layer of paint was drying, we baked other rocks at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, or until they were nice and hot. Then we used crayons to color the hot rocks. The crayon melts as you draw, filling in crooks and crannies and smoothing out the picture. Warning: Melted crayon runs, so if you try it, don't expect perfection.

"Painted" with crayon. Also a rock my son couldn't part with.

After lunch, the younger children drifted off to play and we moms and an almost-adult-daughter sat down with paints and rocks. It was quiet and restful. We painted every rock she brought. 

My favorite. Gail painted it.

Once the rocks were dry and sprayed with a clear sealant, we gathered children and rocks and went to parks to distribute them. The children put them on playground equipment, on edges and ledges, and in other noticeable hidey holes. 

We left Gail's pie on a picnic table.

It was easily our favorite art project of the year, making it a great way to end a school term.

Not long afterwards, our family went to Virginia to visit grandparents. I noticed a small, beautifully painted rock on their back deck and asked about it. The rock was a gift. Someone had anonymously placed a painted rock on every mailbox post on their street. 

I felt warmed by the story. Someone else out there knows the fun of planning, painting, and placing rocks for other people to enjoy. 

Lasagna, Redeemed

True story. Unfortunately. 

I felt accomplished when we left for church. A gigantic salad crisped in the fridge. Homemade French bread was sliced, seasoned, and reassembled into a garlic loaf. A gooey chocolate dessert called enticingly from the counter. Best of all, a gorgeous, meaty lasagna waited in the oven on Delayed Time Bake, a feature that would give us a table-ready dinner when we walked in the door. 

It was important to have our food ready immediately upon arrival because three Brazilian schoolteachers would be with us. They had a tight schedule and needed to leave by 2:00, which wouldn’t give us much time together.

Our link to the Brazilians was through the University of Delaware. International students who came to university to learn English could sign up to receive a host family. As hosts, we brought them to our home twice a month so they could practice English, visit an American family, and learn more about our culture. We enjoyed our interaction with them so much that on this occasion, we invited church friends to come for lunch and share the fun of a multi-cultural friendship.

When we got home from church, the Brazilian ladies stopped by our Rose of Sharon to take selfies and group portraits. I smiled, enjoying their laughter and rapid Portuguese.

And then I saw John at the front door. His eyes sent frantic messages I could not understand.

As soon as I stepped within whispering range, John said, “Something smells burnt.”

My lasagna.

John opened the front door, and from the smell that wafted onto the porch and down to the Rose of Sharon, I knew our lunch was in serious trouble.

I crept to the oven, scarcely brave enough to look inside. And there was my double-sized lasagna, not just overdone but charred beyond recognition. The delayed start had malfunctioned, and the lasagna baked for the entire four hours we were gone. I pulled the pan from the oven and surveyed it with morbid fascination. My beautiful lasagna was now a solid, black rectangle that thumped woodenly when I tapped it. Later, it would slip from the pan in one piece, an astonishing specimen of cookery-gone-bad.

But now, guests streamed through the front door, directly into the kitchen and within sight of their ruined lunch. Chefs in small houses have no secrets. Oh well. I wasn’t going to be like my relative who apologized profusely over every recipe she served. I decided to face the obvious with good humor.

“My oven malfunctioned,” I said to the Brazilian ladies, hoping their grasp on English was robust enough to understand. “But don’t worry. I will make something else.”

I ran to the basement for home-canned spaghetti sauce. I stirred every spaghetti noodle I owned into boiling water, praying God to multiply the amount and to please, please erase the memory of this culinary disaster from our guests’ minds. It would be humiliating to be remembered internationally by an inedible lunch.

I served the meal, poured water, and offered extra Parmesan. I brewed coffee and took comfort in the happy chatter of my guests. It sounded like things were turning out all right. Who could know? Maybe the lasagna would be a darker memory to me than it was to our friends.

But before I got too comfortable with this idea, I saw the visiting children hovering curiously around the lasagna. Their mother is my good friend and a renowned cook who doesn’t burn Sunday dinners to this degree.

“Was this—was this real food?” a pixie-like girl asked. She pointed at the pan with a milk-white forefinger.

“Yes. It was your lunch.”

“Oh.” Her voice was small.

“Was it—was it our dessert?”

Five years later, the host program closed (no reflection on the lasagna), terminating our flow of international guests. Our friends, the ones with the darling pixie, gave birth to a son.

Wanting to celebrate his arrival, I baked homemade French bread and used it to make garlic loaf. I tossed a gigantic salad and baked a decadent chocolate dessert. Best of all, I delivered a gorgeous, meaty lasagna to their door.

I was hardly home before my friend sent me a text saying, “Now this is real food!”

It was lasagna, redeemed.

I only regret that three Brazilian teachers hadn’t joined them for lunch. 

Bungled Birthdays

Each November, a high percentage of my friends give me cards or gifts on my birthday. I don’t know how they do it on time so consistently. I have puzzled over this for years and came up with a list of possibilities:

1.      My birthdate (11-11) is easy to remember.

2.       I am unwittingly more vocal about my birthday than most people.

3.       I associate with people who A) are uber organized, or B) have eidetic memories.

4.       Remembering birthdays on time is normal.

That last point concerns me the most. I do remember my friends’ birthdays—usually a week late. Occasionally, the reason I have remembered a birthday at all is when someone says, “For my birthday this year, my husband…” And I stand there feeling small and then smaller, knowing I have done it again.

I want to honor my friends like they honor me. I want to be thoughtful and giving, so every year I turn over a new leaf. I add Remember friends’ birthdays to my annual goal list. Because of this, my January and March friends stand a higher chance of hearing from me on their birthdays than my unfortunate June friends or, bless them, my December friends.

I used to be a secretary with acceptable accuracy and believe that birthdays shouldn’t be harder to remember than paying quarterly taxes. I tried checking for upcoming birthdays at the beginning of each month like I used to do for taxes in the office. This almost worked for the entire month of January. Turns out that Barb’s birthday is too close to the 1^st, so I even missed that one. On another year, I wrote names on my calendar, which helped a little. But then, when I missed a birthday, the name glared at me from the page, adding guilt to grief and highlighting the old question: “How long after a birthday can you give a person a present?”

This year when I underlined and highlighted Remember friends’ birthdays on my Annual Goal List, I prayed about my problem. Almost immediately, I thought of the calendar on my phone. Being a pen and paper kind of girl, I do not use the calendar on my phone for my schedule. I hate seeing a month full of quiet gray dots that signify anything from “Lunar New Year” to “Host Hospitality.” (Do they make colored dots? They should. Gray dots for days I can ignore, blue dots for important events, and blinking red lights for birthdays.)

I wouldn’t have bothered trying to use my phone calendar except I heard it has those alarms you can set. Alarms are even better than blinking dots. I spent half my morning figuring out how to enter birthdays and set alarms and the other half feeling confident and happy. Smug, even. To the surprise of all my friends, I would clamber onto the highest plains of normalcy and remember birthdays like the best of them.

I gave Lydia Ruth chocolates on her birthday in February and invited Gail to my house on hers. I gifted Sunday school students with timely tokens of my love. This business of remembering birthdays gave me a sense of accomplishment and the satisfaction of overcoming a severe fault. 

On March 31, my phone dinged, notifying me of Lydiann’s birthday. I immediately stopped what I was doing and sent her a text. I love having people in my life who freely credit God for the redemption and deliverance He has given. Lydiann is that kind of person. I blessed her for that trait and sent birthday greetings. On her birthday.

Warmth filled my whole kitchen.

Then I received this response from Lydiann: “Thank you very much! I receive your blessing. Our story really is a story of redemption. My birthday is actually May 31 and not March 31. Did you see it somewhere that I would’ve made a mistake and filled it in wrong?”

I hadn’t. I crawled to the church directory and double checked her birthdate. She was right, of course. But my embarrassment was tempered by knowing that my system—even when flawed—was working.

On the morning of April 25, my phone pinged reminding me that it was Anna’s birthday. I love Anna. She is warm and friendly, fun to chatter with, has a child in my Sunday school class, and another one due to arrive any day. I wanted to be especially sure to remember her birthday this year. I was arranging books and crayon boxes in my class area at church when she walked in. This was my moment. I launched into a cheerful, “Dah-dah dahn dahn dah dah…” to the tune of Happy Birthday.

Anna certainly seemed surprised. She was stunned into silence and appeared startled. Puzzled, even. Her husband looked amused.

My confidence wavered. “It’s your birthday today, right?”

“No, my birthday is in December. December 2, to be exact.”

I felt betrayed. Crushed. My failproof system had let me down horribly for the second time in less than a month. This time, I didn’t know what went wrong. How could I have gotten the date mixed up to this gross extent?

And then I knew. Right date. Wrong Anna. The birthday girl lives in Oklahoma. My husband only knows her as “the cheesecake lady” because for my birthday one year, Anna sent me a homemade lemon cheesecake in the mail, forever cementing her position in our minds as one of the best cheesecake bakers and best birthday gift givers ever. Hers was a birthday I planned to remember.

I apologized to Anna-at-Church and crept back to my phone to add a last name to the notification.

I haven’t abandoned my new system, but I am eyeing it skeptically. What I need to do is awaken the secretary within me and devote an entire morning to my calendar. I want to verify that each benign gray dot holds accurate, complete information and includes all my friends. This should be good news for the December birthday people, particularly Anna who might receive not just one but two greetings from me in the same year.

In the meantime, my friends, happy birthday to you all!

Martyrs' Remembrance Night in Two Perspectives

In what I hope will be the start of a tradition, our church held Martyrs’ Remembrance Night on Good Friday. The invitation said we would meet by candlelight and, upon arrival, we should quietly find our seats. I really looked forward to the evening. In my youth, the courage of martyrs inspired me, even giving me a sense of nobility as if I too could do this if God asked it of me. Their deaths increased my faith.

But now I have young children.
 What if a candlelight service remembering Christian martyrs
inspired fear, not faith, in an eight-year-old?
Apprehension mingled with anticipation.

We fell behind in our cleaning jobs that Good Friday as I talked about martyrs with my children, trying to prepare them for the event. We talked death being a door to life. About heaven. At 3:00, we talked about Jesus' death. About the angels who must have inwardly strained to rescue Him from the cross. About the mounting anticipation in heaven that will culminate when the Father says, “Son, its time.” 

Time? I was suddenly aware that time was getting away. We scrambled to complete necessary cleaning and shopping before overnight guests came at bedtime. Our evening service was scheduled to start at 6:30, and the announcement had included a plea for everyone to be on time. 

I was not.
I ran late all afternoon.
Adrenaline pumping. Blood pressure rising.
John was partly responsible for the Communion portion of the service
and needed to leave before the children finished eating supper.
I stayed behind with a slow-eating child.
And with another child who misunderstood instructions,
delaying our departure still further.
Desperation set in.
Leave the guest room as is.
Drive as fast as you legally can.
Silently slip onto folding chairs in the back of a dimly lit church.
Breathe.

Once I was settled and calm, I tuned into the beautiful service. By flickering candlelight and a small light on the podium, five stories were told: Perpetua, a young mother who chose death instead of offering a single pinch of incense. Michael Sattler and his wife. John and Betty Stam, missionary martyrs who left a small child behind and the legacy, "Afraid? Of What?". A Romanian pastor who understood that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church’ and said to his captors, “Your greatest weapon is to kill. Mine is to die.” A martyr whose dying words became the song I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back!

Their strength. Their faith. Their willingness to die. Their stories gripped me, and I felt my spirit reaching upward. Pressing in towards God.

The child on John’s lap was not inspired.
“Mom,” he hissed. “Why it be dark? I wanna go home.”

We stood to sing “Faith of Our Fathers." Tears pooled in my eyes. I will be true to thee, ‘til death. Death is only a passageway into life. No turning back! Glory awaits!

And then it was time for Communion. I glanced across the auditorium and sensed how meaningful this time would be for our congregation. Observing Communion on Good Friday at the close of a service where we remembered people who loved Christ more than physical life brought an almost-palpable sense of sharing in His suffering. It held the potential of being the most meaningful communion I have ever been to.

But my child was done.
The last straw was when his dad went forward to help the other deacons pass out the emblems of Communion. He fell apart emotionally and cried from the time John disappeared from view until we were on our way home. He flopped disconsolately across my lap.
My best mothering skills couldn’t quiet him.
The hurried afternoon, late arrival, an inconsolable child--
So much for nobility. I too was done. 
I decided I would leave as soon as I had participated in communion,
slipping out as silently as I had come.
But then the pastor said,
“Be very sure you do not eat and drink unworthily.”

The bread felt white hot in my fingers.
Which is worse?
To partake when you are in the middle of a parenting fail
with a crying child hanging off your right leg
and unsanctified emotions welling within you,
or to not partake at all
and need to dispose of the bread you are holding.
(Do you feed it to a gasping child?)
This was Communion. Holy and sanctified.
I partook but instead of reflective meditation on His sacrifice,
my thoughts were ones of grasping desperation, Lord, help me!

The child flopped against my arm when I held the tiny cup of juice,
threatening to bleed its purple contents down the front of my skirt.
I shook my head at his insistent,
“But why it be dark, Mom?”

Again, the pastor’s warning haunted me—
What does it mean to partake unworthily?

Lord, I need You!
A single swallow.

A whisper to my other children, “I’m going home. Wait for Dad.”

My son and I left. He wailed down the darkened corridor in the basement on our way to the vehicle. When I pulled into the driveway at home, our guests were waiting.
I would ask my husband later about that verse.

The next morning was better. The power of the stories still gripped my soul. None of my children had nightmares. The guests had clean beds and sufficient breakfast. And I had heard John’s thoughts on that troubling verse: “Eating unworthily is when you trust in your own righteousness.”

I tasted immediate relief and a portion of God’s graciousness, for in the middle of the Love Feast, trusting in my righteousness was not one of my many faults. I was desperately grasping for His.

I still hope Martyrs’ Remembrance Night becomes a Good Friday tradition. I need to hear gripping stories of real people who refuse compromise and find God’s grace sufficient—even in death. I want these annual reminders that God's grace is always sufficient.

Even for harried moms who slip, late, onto folding chairs in the back of the church.