All of a sudden, they had a place to which they could ride their bikes together, spend change on candy, and talk to other people in our neighborhood. I described this to someone recently who said, “that sounds like the 90’s!” which is a bit comical because we all know that something so simple and classic didn’t originate 3 decades ago. Instead, it’s central to Americana.

When we first announced that we had purchased and would soon run a general store we received many of the same reactions. They went something like, “you’ll be the Olesons in your town! I hope you sell old fashioned stick candy!” or to my husband, “should we call you Mr. Drucker?” As we’ve been discussing decor and furniture arrangements in the store I think of Ike Godsey’s General Merchandise or even Mr. Gower’s Drug Store.

These are iconic places within collective American culture, and for good reason. The general store was, for many decades and more, central to the life of any small town America. There is something deeply American about the general store. In the early days of the settling of this country, trading posts existed at particular points across the raw, untamed lands west of the Mississippi. “Tao Pueblo was for years a favorite meeting and trading place of the Southwest. Here were held Trappers’ Fairs and everyone came- French and American trappers, or ‘Mountain Men’ Spaniards, and Indians of many tribes” (Holling Clancy Holling, Tree in the Trail). Just last week I read this to my seven year old daughter from Tree in the Trail:

At Independence, the head of the Trail, steamboats splashed up the muddy Missouri with new cargoes. Negroes carted bales and barrels to the stores. Those boxes of glassware, perfumes, cloth, food and hardware brought riches in the Santa Fe trade. And so merchants in silk hats bowed to silk-gowned ladies riding in polished carriages.

These trading posts and later general stores were the heartbeat of America. They served as not only the hub for bartering, trading, and shopping, but also for discourse between both neighbors and neighboring towns and states. As Holling describes it, “the stores buzzed like hives of bees.”

But as the world shifted and cars developed, interstates constructed, grocery stores built and later the mall, Walmart, and the internet became shiny and new, people abandoned local shops and with it, the culture it preserved. Disney made an entire movie about it, a movie that touched our hearts:

I used to watch that scene (1:15:00) about Radiator Springs in Cars and lament. It truly encapsulates the feeling of nostalgia so many are having as the modern, digital, fast-paced, and therefore isolated world has displaced what was once central to American life: that which is local, historical, and generational. The longing to restore those is good. And I’m hopeful it can be done.

What we restore won’t be exactly what Cars portrays, as much as we love the vintage cars, the classic music, the old smells; it’s not those physical things that we long for. At least I don’t think. They are only representations of what it is we’re missing. What we need is to return to the spirit of what the movie depicts.

So, instead of mourning the loss of the life we all feel has been lost to history, our family is determined to do something about resorting it.

It’s not as though we lost something that must be buried and forgotten about. It’s as though we left something behind we thought we no longer needed. Now, slowly, thankfully, people are realizing that it’s not something we can just set on a shelf in a museum and visit periodically. It’s something that is actually quite fundamental to this nation. The roots of this country, the veins that transport its blood, the feeling of who we are is local, communal, personal, physical, provincial even. It connects both the daily lives of real people and the generations reaching back into our history. This isn’t as much about nostalgia and longing for the days of yore as it is about recognizing that we are poorer for not preserving something so central to America.

Jon Harris, who often talks about the urgency of recovering the local recently said,

If you want to preserve the way of life that has been passed down to you and expand on it and return to maybe things that even preceded your own birth, then you’re going to have to get involved in local associations. That’s where the community actually lives, breathes, exists… The only place that we have, the only tool available to restore any semblance of stability exists on the local level.

But you’re wondering when I’m going to answer the question: why did you buy a general store? I hope the above discussion gives you a glimpse into our reasoning, but I do want to cover a few specifics, divided into three categories that I mentioned above, before I conclude.

Local

We truly believe that, as Jon Harris said in the above quote, the restoration of this nation and the preservation of the way of life that has been passed down to us (even if it still only exists in shredded pieces) happens primarily through reviving the local.

Us millennials carry within us fond memories of our time at the mall. It defined our generation. And that time at the mall, I think, was just another iteration of what trading posts and general store used to be; how merchants set up shop and for some reason, that’s where life took place. Commerce creates and connects community, not because money is the bottom line, but because it requires people to physically interact, connect, show up, and converse. It therefore establishes a natural place for relationships to develop and propagate.

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The internet, as wonderful as many of its many benefits may be, has significantly eroded that. Not to the point that it’s disappeared, but we’re certainly on the way. Discourse on X, FB groups, Discord servers, and Reddit forums may masquerade as communities (Reddit even referring to itself as the home of “authentic human connection”), but deep down we all know such things, as helpful as they may be, can’t truly replace the inherent need within the human soul for physical community and relationship.

Our family, like many I’m sure, has recognized this and longs to restore the local so that we can restore community. We’ve lost community connection points all across the country. Church attendance has been on the decline for decades. Participation in local volunteer and service oriented groups has dipped. And general stores have all but disappeared. Sure, we can still plan to meet a friend at the local coffee shop for conversation over a hot drink, but the place down the road where we see one another regularly or serendipitously bump into neighbors and friends, the place that hosts community events like bingo night, parades, or barn dances, it’s been replaced with Netflix, Instacart, and online chat groups. We’d like to reverse that trend.

Historical

From the moment we moved into our town, I started to learn about her history and the history of her people. It’s a small farm town, a hamlet as my husband calls it, bordered by two rivers and boasts a rich history of farming- both agriculture and livestock, specifically pigs (the pigs not so much anymore).

Even the history of our house is linked to a family who ran a ferry across the Ohio river early on the 20th century. Ruins of an old river town where, as rumor has it, Lewis and Clark would have stopped on their way down the Ohio heading west, lay but a mile or so from our house.

We desire to help preserve the history of this place. I dream of a wall covered in photographs of the people and places who have and still do make up this area. I want to hear stories from the people in our area and pass them along to others, to keep the memories and the heart of this hamlet alive so that it can continue on for generations to come.

And it’s not just the history of this area we want to help keep alive. It’s also specifically small country stores in America. As I’ve been researching all of the general stores in our county (because there once were several) I’ve come to discover that many have one by one been purchased and converted from down home country store to run-of-the-mill gas station, smoke shop, convenience store peddling kratom and Indian cuisine. In small town, rural America, we are witnessing our distinctly American culture morph into something lifelessly ordinary as it is homogenized and absorbed into something far more international and global while ties to the past are entirely severed.

Multi-Generational

There is a reel that went viral on Instagram recently that said, “Telling kids to leave home at 18 is one of the most successful psyops of modern life… Here’s what they don’t want you to know: Families that stay together can build businesses, share costs and grow generational wealth. When the family unit breaks, each generation has to start from zero; financially, emotionally, spiritually. That’s not freedom. It’s a setup and it’s by design.”

One of the first conversations we had after the opportunity to purchase this store was presented to us was about our children. My husband immediately brought up that this would be a chance to build something that our entire family would be involved in and that, Lord-willing, we could pass on to them.

We’ve said for quite a while that it is a goal of ours that each of our five children have some sort of business they have established before going out from under our roof. In the not so distant past, households looked quite different than they do today. As I’ve written before:

It wasn’t as if there were dual incomes, but instead multiple streams of income into the one economy by what was produced under the one roof. We’re talking farming, production of household goods, etc. that were either grown, made, or developed for the family itself to keep, for the purpose of trade, or for sale.

We want to cultivate this economy in our own home; multiple streams of income including streams our own children contribute. What better way to do that than with a storefront where our children can both work and sell goods they themselves develop, make, and build?

And not only will our children work with us in the store, but my mother who last year moved to Kentucky to be two doors down from us (a quarter of a mile down the road), will also help in the operation of our fine retail establishment. That’s three generations working side by side.

Not to mention, we have two sons. They will, Lord willing, have households of their own one day and rather then set them up within the modern system of -go to college, get a job, seek out good benefits, and slave away for someone else their entire life- we strongly desire to establish something that will set them up to own their own business or company rather than depend entirely on another person or corporation and its success. It’s also no secret that in recent decades, finding work for a young white man has only become more difficult. We see this as an opportunity to avoid that possible dilemma.

There’s also the matter of inheritance. We don’t have much to leave our children right now. But it’s our hope to follow the wisdom that Solomon left for us in Proverbs 13:22 when we wrote, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” And we aren’t interested in leaving money behind when we die. Instead we want to build something now, to build a culture, a family heritage, an investment in our children right now that will be securely carried on into the future in order to bless their children and their children and so on.

And so there’s your answer in 2000 words. I’m no master of brevity, and this honestly only barely skims the surface of the reasons why we feel so strongly that this is the right thing to do. For now, I’ll wrap this up with the same words I shared on a recent Instagram post:

Here's to small towns, close communities, physical stores, shopping local, tradition, heritage, history, and restoring all the best of America one little town at a time.

Stay tuned as I share updates along the way of our progress and eventual grand opening!

My purpose for writing this essay and the next is two-fold: I want to recount how this endeavor of buying a historic general store came to be. I also want to explain the many reasons why we decided to do such an outdated thing in the year of our Lord 2025.

To begin I will remind you (or inform you for the first time), that in 2024 our family up and moved from Las Vegas, where my husband and I both grew up, across the country to West Kentucky. It was a shock to many; not so much to others. We had long longed to leave the city, and that one specifically, for many years. It seemed that would never happen., until the opportunity arose for us to skedaddle, which we took. I’ve recounted some of that here if you’re interested in back-stories.

When we arrived in Kentucky we had no home and my husband no job. (We did, however, have a church!) We, my husband and I, our 5 children and 2 cats, lived in a fifth wheel on the side of my in-law’s house for two months while we enjoyed a good ‘old Kentucky Spring and house hunted.

The day we met our realtor to tour the home we would later come to purchase, we drove past an old general store that had a “for sale” sign on the door. I jokingly said, “we should buy that and turn it into an ice cream shop.” When we brought our children to see the house and they saw the store with the “for sale” sign on the door, they seriously said, “we should buy that and make it into something like Whit’s End!”

Shortly thereafter we closed on our house and the store soon sold to a family here in town. My children were ecstatic that there was a general store within bike-riding (or go-cart-riding) distance from our house. For a while they regularly rode down there to purchase candy, chat with the locals, visit the library bus, play old-school Nintendo, and even meet Santa at Christmas time.

But then in the Spring, our small town, or hamlet as my husband calls it, flooded. That’s nothing unusual, this being a farm town bordered by 2 rivers, but this year was particularly bad; a hundred-year flood they call it. And so, along with several houses in what is considered the “downtown” area, the store flooded. The family who owned it decided to close up shop and no one knew what would happen to it.

It has been closed ever since.

Now, we weren’t particularly close with the owners. They are a very sweet family that we always enjoyed visiting with whenever we were in the store. The wife always raved about my sourdough bagels. The husband offered some help to my husband when he was searching for a job and they both, and their daughter very much enjoyed the visits from our children (because who wouldn’t? They’re awesome). We stayed in touch after the store closed and saw them periodically. We do both live in the same very small town, after all.

One afternoon in later September as we pulled into our driveway, the then-owner of the store pulled in behind us. My husband stayed outside to chat a while and the kids and I went inside to rest after a long morning at church. A little ways into their conversation my husband poked his head in the door to inform me that, “I’m headed down to the store for a few minutes. I’ll be back!”

I didn’t think much of it. The family had been tossing around several ideas as to what they were going to do with the place. Perhaps my husband had been inquired of for assistance in some manner, I thought. Probably half an hour later my husband returned with what, at the time, seemed the most wild proposition,

“He wants to sell the store and he wants us to buy it.”

“No way” immediately left my lips before I even had an instant to consider. To which my husband replied, “wait a minute. Let’s think this through”, which is exactly what we went on to do for the rest of the day. We discussed the pros and cons. He reminded me that I had wanted to buy it from the moment I saw it (because as my father used to say, much a truth is said in jest). We discussed how we’d always wanted to start a business, but were never quite sure what that would be. Now it seemed as if the opportunity had all but fallen into our laps.

Soon thereafter we came to the conclusion that yes, we should buy it.

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I’ll leave out all of the financial and timeline-related specifics and logistics. But suffice it to say, we decided then and there that if God made a way for this to happen, we were all in, completely on board, fully committed. And as providence would have it, over the next several weeks, everything fell into place and in early December, we signed the deed and became the proud new owners of a 90 year old general store.

My husband joked that my life is basically a Hallmark Movie. Moving out of the big city into the country. Husband buys her the perfect little farm house and then right before Christmas, a general store. Truly, I am living a dream.

Now I know many of you are asking the somewhat obvious question here: why? (While some of you, I know, completely understand).

Why would you do such an curious thing like buy an old-fashioned country store in the twentieth century?

That’s what I’ll share with you in my next essay.

As I write this, I can overhear a room full of grieving family members who lost a mother and grandmother this week, as they eat and mourn and tell stories together. We’ve just finished serving them a meal, after the memorial service at our church. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people are gathered in Arizona for a memorial service, and watching online, as they remember Charlie Kirk and grieve the loss of his life.

And now that a week has passed since I first sat down to write, another beloved saint has gone home to the Lord, Voddie Baucham.

Honestly, I had planned to write this essay before now, as I read a booklet last month on the topic and felt that it’s something very much worth addressing in the church today. Now, with death on the church’s mind, it seems even more fitting.

The first thing I need to say is that I don’t believe this to be a sin issue, necessarily, so please do not hear me condemn the choice of one who decides to do with their loved one contrary to what I argue for in this essay. In other words, hear what I say, not what I do not say.

But just because it is not a matter of sin does not mean that what we, as Christians, do with our dead doesn’t matter. I believe that it matters very much, which is why I feel compelled to address it. Cremation is, after all, a new practice for Christians, historically speaking. But before we get to whether or not Christians ought to practice one or the other, burial or cremation, we need to address our view of the body, because these issues are very much linked.

Soul in a Body or Body with a Soul?

Modern day Evangelicalism is rampant with a functionally gnostic view of the body. Many focus so heavily on how we are meant for heaven, that this world is not our home, and that the soul is what matters most, that the body, and the physical world are viewed as severely lesser-than or not important at all. I address this idea a bit in this essay.

Consider what many picture as happening after we die: our spirit, now freed from the body, sits on a cloud, playing a harp or singing to God for eternity. No physical body. No manual labor. No earth on which to place our feet. It’s all void of any physical dimension to eternity.

Nancy Pearcey writes extensively about this erroneous view in her book Love Thy Body. She says, “The Gnostics saw death as freedom from the encumbrance of the body. But for the early Christians, says Peter Brown, death ‘was a rending of the self that left the soul shocked and horrified, like a bereaved spouse or parent, at the prospect of parting from the beloved body.’ Scripture portrays death as something alien- an enemy that entered creation with the fall.”

At death, the spirit and the body are separated. This is incredibly unnatural, as God made us both body and soul. So why do we often seem to prefer the spiritual to the material when it comes to the person? Pearcey points out that many Christians “hold an escapist concept of salvation, as though Jesus died to whisk us away to heaven” and that many preachers talk about being forgiven so that “we can go to heaven.”

But this leaves a church that is almost no good on this earth and right now in this life. What’s that old saying? “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you are of no earthly good.”

Why then does Paul stress that you are to “honor God with your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:20) and to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God- this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1). Why does scripture refer to the church as the body of Christ? And why, if only the spiritual matters, did Jesus come to earth in physical form, taking on flesh and blood, to die for sins that are physically committed by material beings in physical ways? (all emphasis mine)

Because the body does matter. And it matters very much. As human beings we aren’t simply souls embodied for a time. We are both body and soul. My body is as much me as my soul is me.

I love what John Murray wrote about the body, that after death is laid in the tomb:

It is the body of the person. More properly, it is the person as respects the body. It is the person who is buried or laid in the tomb. How eloquent of this is the usage respecting our Lord. He was buried. He rose from the dead. In reference to Jesus the angel said, ‘come and see the place where he lay’… so what is laid in the grave is still integral to the person who died. In and during death, the person is identified with the dissolved material entity. (emphasis mine)

Mark 15:46 makes this point incredibly clear: “And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.”

We don’t say that Jesus’ body was buried. We say Jesus was buried. And Jesus was raised. And the same will be said of each and every one of us when we die. Then in eternity, you will receive back your body; everyone will, either for eternal punishment or if you are in Christ, renewed to glorification. In fact, this resurrection was a major debate in the time of Jesus and again during the early church which Paul addresses.

What About the Resurrection?

You are going to hear a rumor one day that Voddie Baucham is no more. Don’t you believe it. Don’t you believe it! Don’t you believe it because though I die, I will rise with Christ. It will not be the end of me because Christ is raised and I too will be raised with Christ. That is why he is called the firstborn from the dead. Folks, you don’t talk about a firstborn unless there are others who are born after him. Don’t you pity me. You pity the one who wants to hold onto Jesus without holding onto the resurrection. You pity the one who has absolutely no hope because they have no resurrected Christ.

One of the cornerstone beliefs of the Christian faith is the resurrection. The entirety of 1 Corinthians 15 makes this abundantly clear, but consider just these few verses:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23

This is precisely what Dr. Baucham was referring to in the quote above. In this life we are in Christ and in eternity we are with Christ. Because He died, was buried, and was raised bodily, we too after we die, will be raised bodily. We will, body and soul, be made alive. When the disciples saw Jesus after His resurrection, they saw His physical body. They touched His hands and He ate with them.

Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 15 to use an analogy of the body as a seed that must first die and be buried in the soil, which then results in the renewed, glorified, eternal body of the saint. Donald Howard writes, “The burial of the body gives explicit expression to the analogy of the seed sown resulting in a future harvest; it is a distinct testimony to the future Christian hope of resurrection.”

Therein lies what I believe to be the clearest argument for Christian burial of the dead, which has been practiced for all of church history. What we do before men, the way we act and the decisions we make says something about what we believe. Or put the other way around, our beliefs should very much drive our actions.

If we believe what scripture teaches: that some time after the Christian dies his or her body will be resurrected to eternal life, then the way we treat our dead should reflect that. If what Paul says is true: that our bodies are as seeds to be planted in the ground to later be raised renewed and glorified as the fruits of the seed, then our actions toward our dead should say that very thing.

In this way, burying our dead preaches an entire sermon in itself.

Donald Howard goes on:

Every activity and opinion of the Christian must be based upon biblical premises. These include living and dying. As death is the last opportunity any of us will have to testify to God’s truth, what is more fitting than that our passing should focus upon the unique and distinctive doctrine of the resurrection of the body?

And as I’ve previously stated, this has been the stance of the church for nearly all of church history, both during the Old and New Testaments, and in the centuries following until the turn of the 20th century.

Historically, what a people did with their dead has been religious. It was a reflection of what they believed both about the body and about what happens after a person dies. Consider the Egyptian princes buried among their wealth, believed to carry it with them to the afterlife. Buddhists burned their bodies in order to separate and set free the soul from the body. Hinduism prescribed cremation in order to purify the body and set the soul free so it can transition to its next life (in another body).

But for the Christian, in which the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is central to their faith, because a resurrection was coming, the body was buried.

Until recently.

A Pragmatic and Theological Shift

Howard recounts this history in his booklet Burial or Cremation: Does it Matter? where he tells us, “For over eighteen hundred years, cremation was never considered in countries which had experienced widespread gospel preaching or influence. Then in the 1870s a few Italian chemists and physicians appear to have initiated the modern movement.”

Cremation was legalized in 1877 in Italy while at the same time in England, the first cremation society was forming, through the efforts of a professed Agnostic surgery professor at London University called Sir Henry Thompson. Pragmatism was beginning to take hold, but it needed a catalyst. And in 1884 the Cremation Society in England received just that. A British father was indicted for attempting to burn the body of his child instead of burying it. It was determined that unless it could be proved that the father’s actions proved to be a public nuisance, he would not be charged. And in 1902, as a result of the work of the Cremation Society, Parliament passed an act that legalized cremation in England.

By 1904 there were ten crematoria in Britain and by 1922 there were two thousand cremations each year.

I find it interesting, the timing of this shift given what was taking place within the church. Gresham Machen’s book Christianity and Liberalism was published in 1923, addressing the widespread theological liberalism that was sweeping the church both in England and America, of which some tenets include a rejection of miracles and the supernatural including the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus.

As Howard points out, “Liberal theology had invaded the churches, and… spiritual regression and the progress of cremations ran parallel to each other. At the same time, belief in the resurrection of the body and of Christ himself was decreasing.” He also writes:

Burning bodies in our Western society is promoted within the context of strong assaults from secular philosophy and scientific materialism. Spiritual decline and the progress of cremation run parallel with each other. When death is secularized, cremation doesn’t matter.

And as time has gone on, instead of rejecting the practice of cremation on theological, traditional, and biblical grounds, the soft, modern Evangelical church has simply figured out how to file the practice under the category of Christian liberty.

Graveyards in Church Yards

It was once common practice for Christians to bury their dead at church. But this practice too has gone by the wayside. It’s no coincidence that the disappearance of church cemeteries coincides with an uptick in cremation and death disappearing from public view altogether.

There can be little doubt that in the Western world we don’t like death. We hide it away. We don’t talk about it. We don’t plan for it. We medicalize it. Rather than caring for our own dying elderly, we place them in facilities where they die separated from the comfort of their own home and family.

Mourning too has become less public and less communal with a reduction and sometimes elimination of traditional mourning rituals. Where death was once accepted as a familiar, expected destiny experienced communally, it now is viewed by modern man as an individual experience. According to Howard, “By the mid-twentieth century, death was rapidly disappearing from public view in the industrialized Western nations. [Philippe] Aries saw the increasing popularity of cremation as a confirmation of his opinion that the once familiar face of death has become, in Western societies, something shameful and forbidden.”

If this premise seems untrue, consider just how foreign the mourning and burial practices in the Bible are to modern sensibilities. Anointing the body with spices and oils. Wrapping the body in cloths. Days of mourning. Hired wailers. Sackcloth and ashes.

Howard points out that cremation and the ceremony that results (as there is no body present to mourn over and physically bury) “short-circuits” the grieving process. I also would argue that given what some do with the ashes of their loved ones, from keeping an urn on the mantel to incorporating them into jewelry and some other truly bizarre options, it can leave the grieving process open-ended, without true closure and finality.

Full finality comes when the coffin is lowered into the ground and the grave is filled in the sight of the mourners, however slow and brutal that may be. Tragically, this isn’t the case in the ceremony of cremation or even burial these days. The grave is often filled after mourners have left, in the sight of no one except the undertaker. And like no longer having graveyards in church yards, we are poorer, spiritually, for it.

Memento Mori

There is so much more to this discussion that I simply don’t have the time or space to cover, but I hope this has provided enough to consider for now. I’d like to conclude with an excellent quote from F. D. Maurice who said,

The more I think of the way in which the children of Israel asserted their right to the possession of Canaan, in which they had not one foot of other ground, merely by burying their dead in it… the more do I feel that every body put into this earth is a new invasion of Satan’s present dominion, a new declaration that Christ is coming to claim the earth for His Church.

Abraham could lay claim to the promised land because of a cemetery. That’s not insignificant. A cemetery, particularly one where saints are buried, is a physical reality that points to a promise that will be fulfilled. When there are physical bodies, laid in physical graves, as I’ve written about before, it reminds us of at least two things:

We will die. Our lives are but a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow. And while we have breath in our lungs, we are to live to glorify God.

But, death is not the end. We will be raised. These graveyards filled with the perishable seed that has been sown into the ground, remind us that the story isn’t over. For those who are in Christ and their body is in the ground, they are currently at home with Him, but they will also receive a new body, untouched by sin and death. And that in believing in Christ we have that same hope of eternal life.

Death does not spell the end of the body because death does not spell the end of the person. Jesus is coming back and will bring with Him resurrection. This is our hope as Christians.

I recently took to Instagram to discuss a trend that many of us are aware of, but still seems to be getting worse by the day. That is the number of women, particularly young women, who are following “influencers” typically not much older than they. These young female influencers don’t seem to be tethered to anything, let alone biblical mores, even though most of them claim Christ.

As I mentioned on IG, I have watched as very recently several of these ladies with 30k+ followers have shifted their seemingly shallow beliefs from Fundamentalist to Reformed to Catholic. From orthodox to progressive. From trad-wife to trad-hater. From homeschool to public school and sometimes back again. These major shifts in their beliefs are taking place in short periods of time and very publicly.

I get whiplash just watching.

My desire was to point out how dangerous it is for these young, unmoored women to be leading large swaths of ladies online. Purely based upon their sheer number of followers, they are a trusted voice for many still in the midst of forming opinions and seeking out advice on any number of personal, biblical, and cultural issues in their own lives. But instead of a sure, sturdy, faithful leader at the helm, there is a woman who can’t make up her mind, tossed to and fro by whatever wind comes her way (who clearly isn’t being led by her husband). She either placed herself there by building her online platform, or was put there by many, many women who were attracted to her aesthetic or sharp tongue or strong public opinions.

Why is this the case? Instead of seeking out older women in their own lives who have years of experience and wisdom to share, why are young women running to podcasts, online platforms, and social media influencers to form opinions and get advice?

The Conversation that Transpired

I posited my theories on Instagram and the purpose of this essay is not to flesh those out, but instead to discuss the conversation it started and come to a conclusion based upon the myriad of messages I received from both older and younger women, both longing to be heard and seen and appreciated.

As the conversation unfolded, I received a handful of messages agreeing with my initial premise that many in the younger generations have an arrogance that leads them to reject advice and wisdom from any Boomer or Gen Xer (which is an obvious generalization).

But then the messages from younger women began to trickle in:

“I have sought after older women for guidance or even teaching my children skills I don’t have and the response has not been positive. It’s been discouraging. I plan to do better when I’m in that season.”

“Where do we find these older women? For years I searched for a mentor; anyone who could help me wade through confusion as I tried to learn about Christianity and find answers to questions that tripped me up. Even in churches it seemed no one was interested in helping. The older women influence feels mythical to me. I love the idea, but it’s so difficult to find them.”

“I have also see the issue in a few churches of older women not wanting to disciple the young women while so many young women have tried to initiate those relationships. The older women feel like they don’t have anything to offer so they don’t try.”

And then on the other side of the coin I had several older women message me too:

“If I may present the other side, I am a 65 year old women who loves all the domestic things- pressure canning, sewing, baking, gardening, etc. I can’t find younger women interested in these things. I pressure can hundreds of jars of produce from our garden every year, and as I’m doing it, think about how much I would love to be teaching this to a younger women.”

“Jessi- I’ve personally experienced this, but it’s been more subtle. Young women have come to me because in their minds, that’s what they’re ‘supposed to do.’ But they they disregard anything shared/counseled and continue to progress in the same folly. I cannot tell you the number of times that this has happened. It’s discouraging as an older women to spend significant time with these young women at their requestion only to be dismissed. It’s like they’re torn. They know what the scriptures day and yet, they’ve been so influenced by feminism and social media that they can’t fully submit to the Lord’s teaching.”

“I homeschooled my four kids for 19 years and have not had one person ask for my advice. I am a very friendly, approachable person who talks to the younger women in our church, have them for a visit, but I don’t get asked for advice on homeschooling or anything else really. I might say something or suggest something in conversation but that's it. It’s sad. I see the younger women listening to podcasts of women their own age. It’s a shame.”

And that’s just a smattering of the messages I received.

If anything, the conversations I was having that day broke my heart a little. These women were all reaching out in frustration because they want exactly what the bible says: to learn from older women or to teach younger women. And yet, they’ve been unable to find that opportunity.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I have several thoughts on this. But I don’t claim to have the answers. What I want is for this conversation to become more widespread, leading to a change in things for the better.

It seems to me that there is some sort of breakdown in communication between the generations. If there are younger women seeking older women, and older women desiring to teach younger women, why haven’t they found one another? Could it be that only the exceptions reached out to me? Of course that could be the case. Or could it also be that somehow we’re not hearing one another?

I wonder about expectations. I wonder if ladies have an ideal in their mind that isn’t being met and they give up. I wonder if we don’t recognize when a casual conversation with someone in the church is actually an older woman trying to pass on wisdom and we just don’t see it. I wonder if the younger ladies simply don’t know what to ask the older women and so they decide instead to just not ask at all. I wonder if some of these women are in such large churches that it’s hard to meet and know people in a different phase of life than you. I wonder if we’ve just made the whole thing a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

Practical Advice

To some I’m the older woman and to some I’m the younger woman. I try to teach those younger than me and glean from those older than me. I can sympathize with both sides from which criticism is coming. So here is my two cents.

What I’ve recommended in the past and what I will continue to recommend is simple: just ask. If you are a younger woman and you want to learn a skill from someone you know possesses said skill, ask her. Catch her on Sunday morning and say, “Patty, I was wondering if you would be willing to teach me how to sew an apron for my daughter?” If Patty is unwilling, move on to another woman.

I did this a couple years back. There was a gal in our church, not much older than me (there doesn’t need to be some huge generational gap for this to work, but there also can be!) who was a hair stylist. I have three daughters and never learned to French braid myself and so one day I just ask her, “hey would you be willing to teach me how to French braid my daughter’s hair?” She said yes. We picked a day (this is vital, you must decide on a day and time. Saying, “ya let’s do that one day” will never come to fruition) and I showed up.

It really does help to have a specific skill or question in mind. Be teachable and humble. If you’re wanting to build a relationship but don’t know where to begin, sit down and think of some questions you could ask a woman who has been a mother of children your age. What can you humbly inquire about and then apply in your household? Ask about cleaning schedules, at what age your daughter should begin shaving her legs, how to roast a whole chicken, etc. It doesn’t have to be a deeply theological or relational question, but it can be. It just needs to be a starting point.

To the older ladies: maybe get a group of younger women together. They may be more comfortable together. Check with the college-aged girls in your church to see if you can teach them how to [fill in the blank]. Get their phone numbers. Start a text thread. To the best of your ability, pick a day and time and show up.

You can also invite a woman out to coffee or over for tea. Young women, you can ask an older woman. Older women, you can ask a younger lady. If she has kids tell her, “I’d love to have you and your children over next week. I will make lunch. Would Tuesday or Wednesday work best?” Be specific and nail down a day and time.

Ultimately what I see is a lot of complaining and not much doing. But that seems to be the case in many a dilemma. Neither wringing of nor sitting on hands will solve the problem.

So I’ll end with a question: what has worked in your own life or the church you attend? How have you personally overcome this gap in the generations? What does Titus 2 look like in your life and the life of your church? What can you do to work toward bridging that gap with the women God has placed in your life?

We watched the storm blow in from the northwest on that Friday afternoon. I had hoped the chicken would finish cooking on the grill before the sky opened up. But my hope was short lived and in mere minutes the lightning was striking right around our house and it began to downpour.

After dinner and near to my children’s bedtime, it was still raining and the lights began to flicker. Soon the power was out and we diligently lit candles and lanterns around the house. We decided to gather together in the living room as I read from The First Four years. It was now past bedtime, but with all the excitement we decided we’d make an exception this one night. The power wasn’t out very long, however. As we wrapped up reading the section we were on in the book, the lights flickered again.

Will the power go out again? My children wondered, excitedly.

This time it did, but not before we heard a very loud noise, a pop of some kind, just outside of the kitchen, to the north side of our house.

My eldest son, who had been in the kitchen at the time, said he saw a bright flash outside and thought it might have been the transformer on a nearby power pole. I had him grab my phone so that I could call the electric company if needed as I quickly ran outside to get a better view.

As all of this was taking place, my husband and other son, who had been downstairs painting in the basement (in the dark with headlamps on), came running up to see what was the matter.

As I stepped outside I could see that, yes the transformer had somehow ignited and there were small flames coming from it. As I dialed 911 I realized that the power pole was not the only thing on fire. There were flames visible in my neighbor’s barn to our east, not 10 or 12 feet from our own pole barn.

Unlike Las Vegas, the dispatcher answered immediately and I informed her of our location and that there was a structure fire next to our house. She took all of the pertinent information and recommended that we get outside in case the fire jumped.

It was pouring down rain and there was lightning striking all around us.

I went back inside the house to gather everyone and my husband told the children to put on their shoes and collect one change of clothing while I gathered files and my purse. As we prepared to leave the house, we watched for the fire trucks to arrive. Given how rural we are, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they got here.

Our next door neighbor to the north called to let us know we were more than welcome to come over to their house if need be. They had also called to inform the owner of the barn (who lives about 15 minutes away) of what was happening.

The plan was for the girls and I to get in the car and head the quarter mile down the road to my mother’s while the boys stayed with my husband at the house. As we walked out the door, into the flashing lights and sound of sirens, it was obvious that the fire had grown significantly and there wasn’t time to get to the car.

My husband very sternly looked at me, pointed down the street, and said, “walk!” So the girls and I turned toward the road and began to walk, quickly, in the dark and the rain, toward my mom’s.

The concern now, was not only the large barn fire behind our house and the fact that it could jump to the closest building at any moment, but the 1000 gallon propane tank on the north side of the barn. There was suspicion that it was completely full (which we learned later was not the case, thankfully).

As we briskly walked down the street, we could see and hear emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle arrive. The girls were rightly shaken and worried. I kept encouraging them to “keep walking. You’re doing great. We’re almost there.”

As we walked, we could also hear the loud explosions of many things including tires and smaller propane tanks from inside the barn. I called my mom and informed her we were on the way to her house. She had not seen what was happening until now, when I told her to look out her window toward our house. You can imagine her reaction on first seeing the inferno and not being able to tell exactly which building was the source of the conflagration.

We continued to walk, my daughter had on a headlamp so that the few cars who passed could see us in the dark, and we prayed. We prayed for the firemen, for my husband and sons, for protection, for our house to remain untouched, and that the blaze would be extinguished quickly.

Once at my mom’s we stood on the porch on the south side of her house and watched as massive flames rose and a very black plume of smoke billowed into the air. Then a huge torrent of water from the fire hose rained down upon it all. We continued to hear some loud booms and we continued to watch and wait.

A neighbor passed by on his tractor, followed by a couple of pick up trucks. The town showed up in full support.

One of my sons soon walked up to my mom’s house and all of the kids enjoyed popsicles in the living room as we decided what to do for the night and waited for confirmation that the fire had been extinguished and it was safe to return. The girls decided they would prefer to stay the night at grandma’s, which I entirely expected.

My husband called to give me the all clear and so my son and I grabbed some water (it was very hot and muggy outside) and our head lamp. We walked the quarter mile back to the house.

On arriving home we took note that there were firetrucks from six surrounding towns, all volunteer departments. On top of that there were multiple emergency vehicles and several neighbor’s cars, all in our yard, in our driveway, and on the street. It was quite the bustle.

I found my husband and we talked to other neighbors as the firemen continued to search for hotspots and confirm that all was safe and extinguished.

We watched as a good number of young men, all from different fire departments, worked diligently together to complete the job. They would rotate, coming out, taking off a mask, drinking water, while someone else took their place. And on and on it went until they were done.

The whole ordeal was wrapped up by about 11pm. Neighbors slowly began to return home. The fire trucks packed up one by one and left. And all who were left were two linemen from the power company, tasked with repairing whatever had happened on that power pole and restoring the electricity to our home, now the only house on the street still without power.

The next day (you know how in the moment you don’t necessarily realize the weight of everything happening around you), I thought about how incredible all of this truly was. These men, on a Friday night, all volunteers, in a moment’s notice, were there. And not even just men from our own town. Men from 6 different towns. There was an emergency and they answered the call. Each of them sacrificed their time with family or friends or leisure and came to the rescue.

I stood there and watched as the often demonized Patriarchy did exactly what God designed them to do. Men of all ages stepped up to help and protect their fellow man.

And the contrast was striking, really.

There were several women there too. And do you know what they/we did? Offered a hug to the man who was watching a large portion of his world burn to the ground. Provide water to the hot and exhausted firemen. Quickly take the children to a safe location. Pray.

The men did what was in their nature to do, and the women likewise.

The barn, and this was no small structure, was a complete and total loss. I don’t even know how to begin to determine the size, but it is large enough to house multiple trucks, tractors, plenty of tools and lots of other equipment. It’s the place where this older farmer, a friend of ours, spends his days building trucks and tractors and engines with his son, friends, neighbors, and even our own son has been learning from him recently.

All of that, gone into the night.

And now I’m not sure what happens. Apparently this is the second time that barn has burned down. It’s been in this man’s family for multiple generations and was rebuilt the last time. I only hope he’ll do the same this time. But I know that he’s old and tired. And quite discouraged after the ordeal.

We keep him in prayer as he deals with the aftermath of it all.

It began when I asked if he wanted to go hunting for the hole I knew had to be in the yard, somewhere. That small, jet black skunk, the one I saw this morning as I stepped quietly down the stairs from my front porch, the sun slowly rising in the distance, the birds beginning to sing their morning tunes in the trees a few paces ahead, disappeared right before my eyes into the earth. For the life of me, I could not see anywhere in the yard where he could have gone. All I know is that one moment he was there and the next, he had simply vanished.

My son was intrigued by this story of mine. He now wanted to hunt for the skunk to capture him and keep him for a pet (which is entirely off the table). My husband wanted to hunt the skunk to eliminate him. Either way, we endeavored to find this mysterious hiding place of his.

It was evening now. We had just finished a roasted chicken and vegetable dinner. The sun, now on the other side of the sky, was slowly descending behind the trees in the distance, the trees that line the corn field at the end of a farm road across from our house. We spent several minutes poking at the ground with a stick, intent on finding a hole; finding something. We found nothing.

And so we quickly abandoned that venture and turned our attention to another.

Along the aforementioned farm road, on the right hand side and directly across from our house is an enormous soy bean field. I’m not sure how many acres; in fact I’d have zero idea how to even estimate such a thing. I only know that it is owned by two brothers who outsource none of the work and instead work the entire field on their own with their own equipment (which is generally unusual around here). Last year they grew corn and this year it’s soy, which is quite normal. Rotating crops and all.

We haven’t had rain in several weeks. And to farmers, water is life (or death as we had an historic flood in April which delayed planting season until it was almost too late, but that’s another story for another time). The meteorologists keep telling us that “rain is on the way!” but time after time, their predictions fall short. Instead of waiting on the rain, the farmers of this field, and others, decided yesterday to turn on the irrigation.

When my son and I looked down that farm road and saw the massive sprinklers cranking away, creating misty showers over hundreds of feet of soy, we decided to head right on over. Thick streams of water sprayed directly over the road into the field on the other side. And now we had a chance to cool down a bit on this hot summer night by running through that towering sprinkler. Once we had quickly jaunted to the other side, we turned to see my eldest son rapidly gaining on us, only on his bicycle.

For a few minutes we, all three, stood there discussing the mechanics of the enormous irrigation pivot before us. My son has always been extremely taken by how things work. We queried whether it was powered by electrcitiy or water. We attempted to estimate how far the water sprayed and at what rate it moved (which from a distance it seems to be standing still, but up close it becomes obvious that it moves at a snail’s pace).

And then our conversation turned to the kill deer that had been nesting about 50 yards down the road. For a duration of four weeks, my children and I had walked down to the nest, which was an indentation in the gravel on the side of the road, to keep watch over the 4 eggs she had laid. Each day my kids excitedly checked to see if the babies had hatched. And each day, the momma kill deer did her silly little dance, pretending to have a broken wing and hobbling away in an attempt to lure us away from her precious eggs.

And then finally, it happened. I had been on my early morning walk, just like the one where I had seen that skunk, and as I passed by the nest I gave the usual glance just to see. Low and behold, the eggs were gone and in their place were 4 tiny little birds with ridiculously long legs. When my children awoke that morning I informed them of the news and even though it was pouring down rain that day, they quickly suited up in rain jackets, grabbed umbrellas and ran out the door. I watched as they disappeared down that farm road, knowing what joy of discovery lay ahead.

Presently, my son wondered what had become of those kill deer. Their babies had grown and flew the coop and I hadn’t seen the momma and daddy birds for quite a while (that is until this very morning on my walk). We turned back toward home and chit chatted about the other birds in the area; the red-winged black birds that swarm around a very small pond in the field across from the soy field and the dickcissel that perch either on the power lines or any large stem jutting from the overgrown farmland. And then as we reached the end of the road, where it meets the street on which our house resides, we stopped to inspect the milkweed.

Now last year, my daughters and I picked some milkweed and it just so happened that we chose the right one because it came with a little traveler attached: a caterpillar. At first we struggled to identify it, concluding it to be a “parsley worm” or a swallowtail caterpillar. For days we anxiously awaited as the caterpillar fattened up and then transformed into a chrysalis. Then, when the butterfly emerged from its chrysalis, to our immense delight, we discovered it to be a Monarch! It was with great joy that we all walked back over to the field where we originally found the milkweed in order to set the beautiful butterfly free.

On this evening, I had hoped to catch a glimpse of some milkweed with a caterpillar or chrysalis attached. But to no avail. I do believe we waited just a little too long and now all the milkweed was wilted. But, as we walked down into the area where all of the wildflowers and weeds grow, at the corner of where our road and the farm road meet, my son and I observed and investigated other insects and plants around us, including several red milkweed beetles.

As we turned back to the road and made our way up onto the warm asphalt, my son noticed a very small bug on him that he quickly flicked off. For a few minutes we watched this little thing that, if you touched it with a stick, it jumped quite far! So far, in fact, that he had a hard time landing on his own feet and would flop over onto his back, exposing his very red belly. When we eventually arrived home we determined it to be a spittlebug, or froghopper. The name fits!

Now only yards away from home, we crossed the road into our front yard, the clover flower covered grass was a cool contrast to the hot pavement. A couple of bees lingered, attempting to gather some last minute pollen before heading home for the night. Knowing where their hives are located, amongst the vast watermelon field to our southeast, we wondered at how far these little guys had traveled.

We made one more quick examination of the area where a entrance into a skunk’s underground bunker might be located (again unsuccessfully) and were quickly greeted by the three girls who had remained at home. We ventured over to the shed, where I collected the tomato cages my garden now required while my son, the same one who had initially joined me on a walk down the farm road, inspected the three pepper plants he has been diligently nursing this year (he even built the garden box in which they reside).

After providing the care our respective gardens needed, it was time for all of us to head inside the house, as the sun continued to disappear over the horizon.

Bedtime was upon all.

You know how you were only a few hours ago thinking about that item you need to purchase for the house and then when you signed on to Facebook, an ad for that exact thing appeared in your feed? You never spoke it out loud, only thought about it in your mind. Technology is wild. Sometimes that happens with other things too. Like how for the past week or so, I’ve been thinking about changing the name of this publication. “Jessi Bridges” isn’t really anything other than my name.

If you’ve followed me on other social media platforms or are a friend in real life, then you have a better feel for who I am, what I care and write about, and all that “Jessi Bridges” as a publication is about. But if you’re brand new, you have no idea. If you’re shopping Substack, that name means absolutely nothing to you nor does it give you any idea what I write about here (to be honest, I don’t really know half the time).

All that to say, I had been mulling this over in my mind and then the other day a Substack essay came through my feed about the importance of name selection in this space; in any space, really. It confirmed that what I had been thinking was actually the case: it was time to rename and rebrand my Substack.

Now the question became: what in the world do I name this place? I’m not very great with titles. I hate naming essays. Summaries are the bane of my existence. Concision has long been my enemy. The reason I decided to begin a Substack in the first place is because brevity has never been a strong suit of mine. Give me long-form all day long.

What’s AI Got to Do With It?

As I noted a my previous essay, I have recently been listening to a lot of what CR Wiley has had to say on the topic of AI. As a modern man with a medieval mind and a solid Reformed Christian, I appreciate very much the work he has done in attempting to develop a biblical theology of AI and technology. At least he seems to be contributing to that almost non-existent, vitally needed discussion. He’s been on Jon Harris’ show to discuss it, writes about it frequently on X and Facebook, and also gave a series of talks on the topic at New Saint Andrews College. My favorite was titled Spiritual Disciplines to Keep From Becoming Part of AI's 'Internet of Things.'

In fact, last week on the way home from our weekly library trip, I was talking to my kids about that particular lecture, in which he told the audience that we ought to interact with AI the same way that Han Solo interacts with droids. All of my children laughed immediately. They knew exactly what he meant by that. Solo recognized that droids are not real people. They are only tools (which he didn’t really like to use either since he relied on Chewy). But Wiley belabored the point that AI is exactly that for us as well: a tool. He’s talked multiple times about the handful of chatbots he has used as tools in his own research and writing.

And so, when it came time to determine a new name for my Substack, I decided to give AI a try. Perhaps a chatbot could help me take all the things I write about in this space and sum it up into a succinct, alliterative title that would convey exactly what I (try) to write about here.

Here is, in part, what my conversation looked like. I began by asking for the sort of help I needed. It gave me some direction, and we went from there.

Obviously this isn’t the entire conversation, only the main gist. What I appreciated was that I had the opportunity to bounce off ideas with it and ask questions that I knew I’d receive answers to, like definitions and summaries of words and ideas.

In the end, I picked a name that AI didn’t suggest, but one that I determined after considering its suggestions and thinking through the concepts and lists it generated for me. And so, we now have:

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Home

The initial tagline to Jessi Bridges was “life and home to the glory of God.” This Substack will still be about that, but I honestly didn’t ever intended to write only about that. Home is my passion. Homemaking, homeschooling, homesteading (well, our novice attempt at it anyway), homebirthing, and ultimately the idea of returning to home; the place where our roots are established, where we are nurtured physically, mentally, and spiritually, and where we are safe. This includes discussions about family, fertility and children, policy that affects families, and also biblical lessons that I’m learning and teaching my children. I’ve written on these topics here.

History

In previous essays, this has included and will in the future include stories and lessons from world history, church history, family history, and the history of the place in which we live. I believe that it is fundamentally necessary for a people to know their history; the history of their people and their nation. In order to be grounded in the present and prepared for the future, we need to know our past. And not only history in general, although that is very important, but the history that we are connected to. I’ve written about history here.

Heirloom

When we hear the word “heirloom” we often think of an old ring passed down from grandma or an old piece of wooden furniture that sits in an elderly relation’s home. And while it certainly includes those things, heirloom refers to much more. It is also related to the heritage we pass down to our progeny: traditions, customs, folklore, music, liturgy, beauty, and yes, physical inheritance. Heirlooms are the connections we cling to that tie us to our past; our family history and heritage. I’ve written about these sorts of things here.

And so, just like that, my Substack is renamed and rebranded, but essentially remains the same. Hopefully though, now people will have a clearer idea of what this space is about and what my essays are aimed at, at least most of the time.

If you don’t already subscribe, I’d be honored if you did. I’m also opening up paid subscriptions for those who want to support my work financially. I don’t have the bandwidth to create separate content for paying subscribers (maybe one day when I’m no longer actively classically educating five children), but have had multiple people express their desire to support my work because they see the value in it, and there aren’t even words to express how encouraging that is to me.

Keep your eyes open for my next discussion of the 1896 book I’m reading called Home Life Made Beautiful as well as Part 3 of the series I’m working on called Unfettered Sex and the Fall of the West, along with several other essays currently on deck.

It’s going to be difficult to enumerate every way in which God has provided for our family during this time of transition. In case you missed it, we moved from Las Vegas (where my husband and I both grew up and where all of our children, save the one born while Ben was in the Marine Corps, were born) to Kentucky. I’ve explained our decision-making process here. But I’ve yet to give you the reasons for our move. That will have to wait.

As for now, I want to share only a glimpse into the provision of God during our move. There are more blessings; plenty I cannot share and others I just don’t have space for, still others that we probably haven’t even recognized yet. But for now, I want to recount our blessings for you and name them, as the hymn says, one by one.

Let’s rewind to January of 2024. We met with a realtor in Las Vegas the first week of the year, simply wanting to begin the process of deciding whether or not to list our house. We walked the property. He presented estimated numbers and we let him know that pending our trip to Kentucky in two weeks, we’d give him a call with our final decision- to move or not to move.

Shortly before our trip, my husband let our next door neighbor know that we would be out of town and that we were very seriously considering a move. He wanted to give them the heads up before we listed the house because we figured it was the neighborly thing to do.

Her immediate response was, “we want to buy your house.” And she was serious.

Well, alright. With that bit of knowledge, a desire to get out of the city, and family members hoping we’d move to their neck of the woods, we boarded a plane to Kentucky, to scope things out.

During our quick trip we had one primary objective: find a church. We landed in Nashville on a Saturday and drove north to Kentucky. Sunday morning we arrived for Sunday school at the Reformed Baptist church where my mother in law had been attending. We went to service after and then returned again in the evening for the 5:00 PM service.

Let’s just say, we weren’t immediately won over, but we’re always willing to give things another try. My husband called one of the pastors on Monday morning to ask some questions and just get to know him a little better. There were both pros and cons as far as we could tell, which is true of just about any church, by the way.

But we also found another church on Sunday evening as I was looking around online. It was in a different town, a different state even than we had initially thought to look. So Ben gave the pastor of that church a call on Monday as well. They had a very helpful conversation and we walked away feeling hopeful and confident that if the initial church didn’t work out, and we weren’t overly optimistic that it would, there was another church to seriously consider, even though we didn’t have the opportunity to attend while we were in town.

We returned home late on a Tuesday night ready to proceed with the move.

While we had been in Kentucky, we were in communication with our next door neighbors, the ones who wanted to buy our house. They were willing to give us exactly what we asked for the house (which was triple what we had purchased it for in 2013) and had even gone to the bank for preapproval for a loan and had discussed the purchase with their realtor. They were clearly very serious.

So, the last week of January, we signed papers, escrow was opened and we were in the process of selling our house, off market. It was quite the whirlwind. Our close date would be the last day of February, and we would be able to stay in the house until the following week. I can’t tell you how much money we saved because of this situation, but it was the biggest unexpected blessing we could ever imagine.

At the very beginning of February, my husband gave his notice at work. Part of our reason for moving had to do with his job situation and although I won’t be sharing the details of that, I will say that his conversation that day confirmed further for us that we had made the right decision to leave.

And then, as he walked out of the building, mere minutes after that conversation, my husband received a text message from the pastor of the church we hadn’t visited, but that he had spoken to over the phone. He was checking in on our family to see how the moving plans were coming along and to let us know that their church had prayed for our family that weekend. It was the exact encouragement that Ben needed in that moment.

The following week, an appraiser came to look at the house. Unfortunately the appraisal came back 10k under what we had agreed to on the sale of the house, and since their bank wouldn’t give a loan for more than the appraisal, negotiations began.

Back when we had originally signed the purchase agreement, my husband and I had agreed to pay the closing costs for the buyer. It was 8k and I was not thrilled about it, but my husband insisted that it would be alright. Afterall, we were saving a good chunk of money by not having a listing agent.

It turns out, that 8k became a helpful bargaining chip in order to keep the sale intact. We were now able to agree to the appraisal amount so long as the buyer agreed to cover their closing costs that we were initially going to pay. In the end we only “lost” 2k. But compared to the initial net sheet provided by the listing agent we spoke to, that was practically nothing. Because we sold off-market, we paid the buyer’s agent a very reasonable flat rate and a handful of fees at closing.

Now, the reason that the appraisal came back 10k below our initial ask had to do, in part, with a deteriorating patio cover out back. And how that came to be resolved was a series of unforeseen provisions which came about in a way that as a friend from church put it, could only happen “in God’s economy.”

But that story will have to wait for the next installment.

Last month my husband built for me a beautiful laundry line in our backyard. I realize that doesn’t seem very exciting. But over the past month, I’ve been hanging our laundry outside to dry in the fresh, country air (in between rainy days) and I want to share some of the things I have loved about something so simple:

1. The clothes smell amazing and aren’t cooked to death by the dryer. They are also very soft. When I line-dried clothes in Las Vegas, in that dry, hot air, everything was always so stiff and rough. Imagine my surprise when, after my first load of laundry had finished drying that it was… soft! And the smell. Oh the smell. Once, I had finished hanging all of my clean clothes in the closet and closed the door. I returned later to get a fresh pair of socks and upon opening the closet I was smacked in the face with the aroma. And mind you, I use free and clear laundry detergent, so yes, it really was the smell of country air!

2. It makes me slow down. Hanging my laundry, even just one load, takes more time than simply transferring clothes from the washer to the dryer. I have to put it in the basket, carry it upstairs and outside, and then hang and clip each item, one by one. I’m not complaining! This has made me to slow down and be more intentional about when I do the laundry. And I have to get it on the line with enough sun in the sky to dry before dark.

3. It saves us money. Our dryer is gas, and runs on our propane tank. While I’m not sure it uses a ton of propane, it does use some and I’d like to save as much of it for other things (baking, cooking, the heater, etc.) as possible. Line drying our laundry is well, the best price of all: free.

4. It gives me a designated time to pray for each person in my family. A little while back, I noticed that I was hanging clothes that belonged to each person in my family. Naturally as I pulled each item out of the basket to hang it, I thought of that person. Before I knew it, I was praying for each person as I clipped each shirt, sock, or pair of pants to the line. It has now become a regular routine of mine to pray for my husband and children individually as I hang their laundry.

5. I spend time outside (and my kids too) that I would otherwise be indoors. My laundry line, unlike my dryer, is out of doors. This isn’t ideal when we have frigid, winter weather, although I have line dried laundry until my fingers turned red. But in weather like we are having now, and even throughout summer and into fall, I always appreciate an excuse to get outside of the house. Last week as I hung laundry, both of my sons (at different times) read their school books to me. And my girls have run circles around the posts and in between the clothing as I work.

Recently, I viewed a lecture that CR Wiley gave on the topic of AI in which he proposes the antidote for technology entirely taking over our lives. I plan to discuss his talk more in a future Substack post as I’ve been extremely appreciative of what Chris has has to say as a Christian on the topic of AI. But for now, suffice it to say that his antidote included staying grounded in the analog, physical, material world. We need to be connected to the earth (the literal dirt even), to the world around us, the real world, and the physical things within.

I can’t help but think that something as simple as taking the time to hang laundry outside in the fresh country air counts. Especially when our elderly farmer neighbor stops by to let me know that I remind him of “one of those old-fashioned women” and that I ought to get a washboard too.

As a child, I hated to read. School had a way of ruining it for me, making it mundane. I couldn’t enjoy anything I read because there was always a book report or a litany of comprehension questions waiting for me when I finished. I quickly learned that reading cliff notes was simply easier so that I could earn the good grade without the monotonous workload.

When I was in college, as a fairly new Christian, I finally discovered genres of books that I enjoyed, entirely non-fiction. For at least two reasons, I saw absolutely no reason to read fiction:

First of all, I hadn’t enjoyed it while in grade school so certainly it was because stories and myth weren’t for me. I didn’t like fiction, or so I thought, so I didn’t read it.

But secondly, and more to the point of this essay, I found it rather pointless, a waste of time even. In fact, I bragged that I would only read books which were of benefit to my growth spiritually or for increasing my knowledge (and sadly, I didn’t see fiction as being able to do either of those things). Having been recently saved, I was thirsty for truth and knowledge and somewhere along the way, the Puritan view of fiction had rubbed off on me and I picked up the attitude that what I desired could only be found in heady books and through intense study.

It had been taught to me, either directly or indirectly, that my time in books should be spent exclusively in that which would directly inform my Christian walk. I devoured books about theology, apologetics, and Christian living: John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, David Platt, Ron Rhodes, AW Tozer, Gary Thomas, John Piper, and later finding my way to men like R.C. Sproul, James White, Francis Schaefer, Jonathan Edwards, and John Bunyan.

From my perspective, reading fiction meant reading for pleasure and enjoyment while reading non-fiction was solely for the purpose of feeding the mind, growing in knowledge, and maturing the spirit (disregard that fiction can do all of those things, but I was ignorant of this).

I had created a false dichotomy: the earthly versus the spiritual.

I believe that this posture, opposed to fiction and in favor of non-fiction, runs parallel to a broader situation that we face within Evangelicalism today, probably directly influenced by Puritanism (this view was widely adopted by many Puritans and I adore them for so very many things, but this general view of the material world was incorrect).

This is of course a broad generalization, but the society of GK Chesterton has summarized his view of Puritanism this way:

Puritans argue against the goodness of creation, finding the source of evil in material things of pleasure (as tobacco, alcohol, art, and so on) rather than in the disordered human will to misuse the good things nature affords us.

False Dichotomies Abound

Perhaps somewhere along the way you’ve heard phrases like, “this world is not my home, I’m just passing through” or “all I need is Jesus, nothing else matters” or “there is only one King and His name is Jesus.”

All of these are false dichotomies. In all three instances, it’s not a matter of which but instead it’s both, but in proper ranking. And when we take two things that are good and pit them against one another rather than properly grading them in a sort of taxonomy, placing them in rightly ordered categories, we exercise a shallow ability to reason.

For example, my ultimate home is with Jesus in eternity, on a new earth, but that doesn’t negate the fact that right now, this is my home; this earth, this nation, this neighborhood, this physical house where my family resides. It’s not permanent, but it is real and true. And to deny that truth is to deny reality.

I understand Jim Reeve’s heart when he sang that song, but it was not only faulty logic, but unbiblical. I’ve written and continue to write regularly about the broad and specific concept of home. There are both physical and spiritual ramifications of neglecting such a thing out of an inability to rightly order our affections and what we value. As I’ve said before:

Our home on this earth is temporal, of course. But it points to something eternal, which is our heavenly home. This means that it is not unimportant, but instead should be treated as an essential to this physical life. Our homes then ought to reflect the things of God, especially His Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that the saints before us desired “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). The implication here is gradation. Better does not mean singular, but instead it implies superior. There is a ranking, an order. The entire book of Hebrews demonstrates this ordering. Think of it in terms of good, better, best.

A Lesson from the Exile of Judah

We understand that Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, as a geographic earthly location ultimately points to “a better country” but we also understand that for a time, Canaan was a literal, physical home for God’s people. Israel was to defend their country, divide up the land specifically as God instructed, treat the land according to His law, and build and decorate His tabernacle and later His temple according to divine specifications. Just because it pointed toward something eternal does not erase its value and significance as something material. In fact, God exiled Judah in part because they did not properly treat the physical land according to His command in Leviticus 25:2-4,

Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, “When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord.”

Shortly after handing down this command through Moses, the Lord recounts what the punishment will be if Israel disobeys:

And I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be appalled at it. And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. “Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it. Leviticus 26:32-34

Seems like such severe punishment for something that “doesn’t really matter.” What I think we can draw from this is that the material matters precisely because it is tied to the spiritual, the eternal. We cannot sever that connection without there being truly devastating consequences.

Do I get to take my home with me when I die? Of course not. But does the state of my home impact and affect the life that I live before death comes? Absolutely. Let’s not be so simplistic in our thinking that we miss, or even reject, the good and beautiful things God has granted to us in the here and now.

Paul understood this connection between the physical and the spiritual when he writes this warning for Timothy to pass along to the rich:

As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 1 Timothy 6:17

He doesn’t say to throw it all out, or consider it as unimportant. He tells the rich to rightly order their affections toward their riches. Our ultimate hope is not in them, but on God, the One who gave them for our enjoyment.

Proper Ranking is Biblical

We miss something when we simply reject good things because we erroneously pit them against their Creator. We miss the reason God has given us these wonderful things, because we miss the ranking He’s woven into scripture. Consider Psalm 19:10 and what it says about the precepts of God:

More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.

Do you see the ordering here? More to be desired than gold. Sweeter than honey. In both cases, the implication is that gold is to be desired and honey is sweet. But God’s Law is more so. There is the good, better, best structure. We see it, as I mentioned earlier, in the book of Hebrews when the writer compares the Old and New Covenants. The New is better, but that doesn’t mean the Old is to be trashed. No, Paul tells us in Romans 7:12 that it is good. Jesus is better than the angels. But that doesn’t mean the angels are of no use or value.

They are not unimportant, even though when compared to Jesus they are relatively unimportant.

And the same applies to material possessions, life on earth, and temporal things. They aren’t the best. They aren’t supreme. They aren’t sweeter or better. But they are good gifts from the Father of lights (James 1:17) given to us for our enjoyment because God desires for us to enjoy even little things. Ultimately the purpose for all of these things down here is to point us back to the One who gave it all to us. Without them, we’d have a harder time recognizing His goodness.

The Integrated Approach

Joe Rigney refers to this, in his book Strangely Bright, as “the integrated approach” in which “God and his gifts are enjoyed together so that we don’t separate them or treat them as rivals.” He makes the very apt point that in order for us to treat God’s gifts rightly, as a way for us to recognize His better goodness and better sweetness, we need to be able to enjoy the gifts themselves. If we relegate them to merely “unimportant”, then relative to those things, God isn’t all that magnificent. But if the honey truly is deliciously sweet and our home really is very warm and inviting and if the art on our wall is beautiful and the view on our hike breathtaking, then wow is God so much higher and better and more beautiful and lovely than those really, really good things.

It’s actually a necessity that we appreciate the temporal things in order that we may rightly order our affections for God Himself as the Maker of things that are just so unimaginably good. To deprecate the gifts belittles God in our eyes. But to elevate the gifts to their right place, elevates our view of God as well.

Enjoy that magnificent sunset, and let it drive you to consider how immensely more magnificent the Artist is who painted it.

Ultimately what Rigney says is that instead of treating the gifts and the gift Giver as rivals, pitting them against one another and comparing, what we ought to be doing is enjoying God in everything and everything in God. As he writes,

God’s gifts can serve our love for him by creating mental categories and emotional frameworks for engaging and delighting in God himself. Because God’s goodness is really present in his gifts, we are free to enjoy them deeply for his sake. God’s gifts become avenues for enjoying him, beams of glory that we chase back to the source.

But What About Idolatry?

This brings me to one reason I believe some people are apt to misorder affections, or reject the goodness of created things altogether (I don’t think anyone actually does this in practice, short of the monk who takes a vow of poverty, but despite their inconsistency, the heart posture remains: nothing down here matters).

The concern we hear most, especially from TGC and the like is, “if you enjoy it, it must be idolatry!” (As an aside, Graham Gunden does an amazing job countering that claim about family in this Founders Ministry lecture.)

This betrays, yet again, a lack of thinking in proper categories. The gifts and the Giver of the gifts are not mutually exclusive. If you love one, it doesn’t preclude that you don’t love the other. It also doesn’t mean that you worship the thing you love simply because you love at all, or even a lot (you better love your spouse and children a lot!).

We can rightly order our affections. Scripture requires, commands even, that we do so. Instead of rejecting a thing altogether because it might become an idol, we obey God rightly. We love our neighbor the way He commands us to. We love our husband or wife the way scripture requires us to. And we enjoy the gifts that God has given us, with proper gratitude and thanksgiving, just how Paul instructs us to.

This doesn’t mean that we aren’t on guard for idolatry. Calvin is right after all that the heart is an idol factory. As Rigney writes:

Idolatry, then, is the separation of the gifts from the giver and then a preference for the gifts over the giver. We separate, and then we elevate. We exalt created things, including ourselves, above God. God’s gifts ought to be avenues for enjoying him, beams we follow back to the sun. Instead, we make them into his rivals, rejecting him in favor of them.

Gratitude and Adoration

We fight against idolatry with gratitude and adoration.

Speaking of beams back to the sun, it was C.S. Lewis who wrote. “Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.”

We must be able to enjoy temporal gifts from God as a means of gratitude and adoration for Him. Obviously we don’t worship the things, but to love them and to thank and adore God for them isn’t idolatry. And it isn’t wrong. It’s actually necessary. Let us conclude with more from Lewis’ letter:

The distinction ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible; to receive it and to recognise its divine source are a single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany is itself to adore.

We can look forward to those “pleasures for evermore” precisely because we’ve been able to experience pleasures on earth. Sunbeams.

And so I conclude by imploring you, Christian, to rightly order your affections in this area. You know when I began to realize that reading fiction for pleasure might actually be alright? When I learned that the favorite book of my favorite modern theologian, R. C. Sproul, was Moby Dick.

There are material and temporal things in your life that are good. They are not better so don’t get it misordered. But they also are not unimportant, so don’t reject them either. Instead, enjoy God in everything and everything in God.

It’s always exciting when the multiple things I’m reading happen to line up. This morning as I read the next essay (I will always link to the essay about which I’m writing so you can read it for yourself if you’d like) in Home Life Made Beautiful, her plea for a wife to understand the immeasurable value of her husband and his hard work just so happened to coincide with the CR Wiley book on my bedside table titled The Household and the War for the Cosmos.

But we’ll come back to their similarities in a moment. First a summary of Ms. Sangster’s convicting words to wives. She writes,

The old meaning of the word husband, signifying the bond that unites the family, perhaps even the foundation on which the home rests, appeals to us with a new pathos when we observe how little some husbands and fathers are considered by those who depend upon them for support.

A few things here. First, remember that this book was written in 1896 when households were not “dual income” (which is almost an entirely different conversation we don’t have time for). By Sangster’s time, they were likely “single income” but even so, prior to the Industrial Revolution and even after, it wasn’t that women didn’t work; they worked tirelessly to keep the home and in many cases contribute to the household economy. It wasn’t as if there were dual incomes, but instead multiple streams of income into the one economy by what was produced under the one roof. We’re talking farming, production of household goods, etc. that were either grown, made, or developed for the family itself to keep, for the purpose of trade, or for sale. Women worked. But they didn’t work outside the home in order to bring home a paycheck.

Second, and more to the point, this was in line with the hierarchical, natural order of the household as God designed it. As Wiley points out in his book (which I cannot commend to you more highly. It ought to be required reading for every Christian),

in the first century a father’s authority was unquestioned. People just depended on him for so much that life without him was hard to imagine. He adjudicated household disputes; in a world where the police were never a phone call away, he defended and enforced its boundaries. And he spoke for the household’s interests in public forums. A father was so important, his untimely death often led to the breaking up of a household and the distribution of its members to his relations.

Clearly in our modern world today, we have outsourced most of those responsibilities, no obligations, to other entities. And this progressive change is not for the better. It’s entirely to our detriment because of who the husband is, by God’s design. We haven’t progressed, we’ve rebelled.

Wiley also informs his readers that in Ephesians 3:14-15, where translators use the word family, the Greek word “patria” literally means father and the point me makes is that in Greek, you cannot say the word family without saying father. This is patriarchy. The household is a hierarchical structure built around the father. And this microcosm, reflects the macrocosm- God as Father. “The reason we have fathers- and families as well- is because there is a Father in heaven.”

And so Sangster is entirely correct when she points out that it is the husband who unites the family and who is the foundation on which the family rests, by God’s design. It’s baked into the structure of the world. Our modern minds may try to reject it, suppress it, deny it, or rewrite it, but any and all attempts to do so will, without fail, lead to chaos. The tragic statistical outcome of children from single mother homes are only one indication of this.

But let’s return to Ms. Sangster’s caution to properly appreciate the paterfamilia of our homes:

Many a clerk toils patiently a whole week during long hours, drudging over columns of figures, handling heavy bales of goods, helping by faithful industry to build up a great business, in the profits of which he never expects to share, does all this year after year without complaint, and unselfishly devotes almost his entire earnings to the comfort and luxury of others… Certainly a man is duty bound to look well to the ways of his family, and the American husband is the last person on earth to crave pity for doing his duty.

I’ve read those words multiple times now and they’ve truly compelled me to a deeper appreciation for my husband. And even in reflection of my childhood, for my own father as well. Mothers and wives often complain on the internet that their job is a thankless one, but I think women have no idea (and I don’t mean this in a competitive way- who works harder with less thanks). I bring this up to say, ladies we need to stop thinking so much about ourselves. Stop and consider, truly, the weight and burden that our husbands carry on their backs day in and day out, and ask no pity or sympathy. They just do because they are obligated by the very nature of who God made them to be.

We should be in awe and filled with gratitude.

Ms. Sangster goes on:

The good man of the house, we submit, has a right to be treated with loving consideration by wife and children. Though occasionally he may repeat in their hearing some twice-told tale, or expect them to laugh at a jest which is somewhat worn, it is small credit to young people to be patient and polite, even deferential, to their faither. The loving wife, is patient with the husband, tolerating his foibles and humoring his moods, knowing full well that in the years of their wedded lives he has always done the same with hers.

Deferential. That’s a word which rarely comes up when we think about how fathers are treated in today’s society. Certainly not when we look at commercials, sit-coms, and movies. No deference detected. Husbands and fathers are always depicted as goofy, incompetent, not worthy of respect and certainly not shown any. Children always know best and father is always wrong. Irreverence is more accurate.

We’ve even reached the point of pretty much asking, “what are fathers even for?” We have food stamps, (I’m sorry, SNAP), WIC, Medicaid, police departments, handyman services, public schools, and independent women.

We have lost all deference for fathers as a society and I can only assume such a thing is a reflection of the attitude toward fathers in individual households. Instead, husbands as Sangster reminds us, are due our loving consideration, patience, toleration, and even more than that, our care:

Another commonplace right of the husband and father is to be properly fed and starched and mended under his own roof. If he have a preference for corned beef and cabbage, or other homely fare, over what he is pleased to denominate French frippery in cooking, by all means let him be gratified. Let his linen be immaculate; not frayed at the edges nor minus its buttons.

I’m sure some of you are reading this and thinking to yourself, “oh this is so outdated.” But if we return to Ms. Sangster’s original point, as the foundation of the home, by nature, our husbands are due a certain treatment. I’m not advocating he be served like a king, but he certainly ought to be treated like the lord of his home, because he is. If there is a meal he likes, cook it. If his pants need mending, mend them. If his shirts are wrinkled, iron them. Not as a servant to a master, but as a loving wife to her husband.

Let us conclude this essay by returning to how we began. These are Ms. Sangster’s closing words:

Earthly fatherhood, imperfect though it may be, gives to our poor mortality the truest conception of the divine Father, who gathers us ever, when most we need it, into the sheltering circle of the everlasting arms. We cannot be too tenderly thoughtful for the good man of the house.

I am not going to spend my time going through all of the nuanced “what ifs.” I know there are lots, but I’m not interested in parsing out how this sin disqualifies a husband from that treatment or how that sin disqualifies a father from this treatment. We spend far too much time defining the rule by the exception in our day.

We all know that our husbands sin. This is no surprise. And therefore they are not perfect representations of our Father in heaven, nor are they meant to be. But they exist because we have a Father in heaven. And that Father has directed a particular type of treatment to the man of the house. He requires honor and we as wives are to give it, and to demonstrate it to our children as well. There’s far too much rebellion in our society and it begins in the home.

If we want to see a recovery of order, it’s going to need to start in the home. And I think a very good place to start is with wives rightly honoring their husbands.

Margaret Sangster begins Home Life Made Beautiful with an essay about the new home of newly weds.

(Yes, I realize the striking similarity of the author’s name to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who despised the home and family as much as Margaret Sangster seems to have loved and adored them. Apparently that St. in her name makes all the difference. But this reminds me to inform you that the next installment of my essay series: Unfettered Sex and the Fall of the West will be about Margaret Sanger.)

Ms. Sangster writes:

A tender and sacred interest attaches itself to our thought of the new home, by which we mean the home first set up by a newly married husband and wife. It may be, in its way, of the order of a tent, simply a room or two in a boarding house, or better, because containing true homeliness, a modest apartment on an obscure street. But be it what or where it may, this new home is a starting point for influences and events which shall reach forward to eternity.

This section was a sweet reminder of our very first home. My husband had been newly transferred to the West Coast after 2 years as a bachelor in Norfolk, VA where he resided in nearly-condemned Navy barracks with dozens of other young Marines. Young, newly married, and childless, we accepted on-base housing near the back gate of Camp Pendleton; a small apartment without even a single bedroom, only a loft.

Our first meal was shared over a foosball table on which I had placed a framed corkboard and covered with a table cloth. We sat on slouched camping chairs and ate shrimp and pasta, a meal I knew he would enjoy. I still remember the feeling of working to make sure a hot meal was ready for my new husband when he returned home to me from a long, hard day’s work.

In the days to follow I spent much of my time attempting to turn that tiny apartment into a home. We made trips to Ikea for furniture and I shopped, on a shoestring budget, for decor. Things were simple, but it quickly became a home. Our home. And little did I realize the significance of that simple home of ours and what it would become over the years. As Sangster writes, “this home is a starting point for influences and events which shall reach forward to eternity.”

Whether we recognize it or not, these temporal homes of ours, and particularly those of newlyweds, have eternal implications. They are shaping immortal souls and they have a starting point. Whether smooth or rough, rich or poor, our lives together and the homes we establish have a beginning and a trajectory which is founded and established in those crucial early days.

Ms. Sangster then moves on to practical things, namely housekeeping. As householders, she reminds us that the newlyweds now have responsibilities, to one another and to their home. She writes,

Any moderately intelligent young woman ought to grasp the principles of housekeeping and put them into creditable practice in six weeks, especially if she have as a motive the pleasure and profit of the man she loves best out of the whole world. Once it may have been a more formidable task to keep house notably to the comfort and well-being of a family, but applied science and wonderful modern conveniences have smoothed the path for the feet of the bride, and she cannot, unless in a new country, encounter many obstacles to success.

Her reference to “modern conveniences” made me giggle. I can only imagine what those must have been in the year 1896. And yet today, over a century later, we have women complaining that housework is too much to handle and who expect their husbands to give them a hand. If only these women could spend a day in the shoes of their great-great-grandmothers!

But Ms. Sangster didn’t expect husbands to share the duties of housekeeping. She sweetly reminds wives that her motivation, in part, is “the pleasure and profit of the man she loves best out of the whole world” (and she will, in later essays, give a stern reminder to wives of just how much a husband gives of himself without complaint for the sake of his wife and children). A husband works hard to provide and care for his wife, and she ought to keep their home in such a way as he can rest and feel comfortable when he isn’t at work.

I often make the point that I am my husband’s helper, he isn’t mine. Surely I’m not going to complain if he steps in to to do the dishes when he recognizes I’ve had a long, difficult day. But I don’t ever expect that from him.

But back to the point. Those first several weeks, and let’s be honest, even years, of establishing a housekeeping routine can be a challenge. I learned many lessons the hard way, having only basic domestic skills instilled in me as a girl: how to clean a bathroom, run a load of laundry, sweep a floor, cook a modest meal, wash the dishes by hand and clean the kitchen after dinner.

The very first week in our apartment, I was loading the dishwasher at the end of the day. My husband was not at home, training overnight in the field, which in those early days of the war in Iraq was normal. (He was either training for war or oversees serving in war.) We had a received a welcome basket from the base which included dish soap. In my naivety, I assumed it could be used in the dishwasher and so I filled the the slot, closed the door, and pushed the start button. Moments later, the dishwasher was bubbling over, literally, and my kitchen floor was covered in soap suds. I knew not what to do but call maintenance. I noted a valuable housekeeping lesson that day: dish soap and dishwasher detergent are two very different things.

I don’t have the time (I need to make breakfast before beginning a new day of school with my children) to adequately address all of what else Sangster covers in this first essay (the link above will allow you to read her words in their entirety and I highly recommend you do) and so I must summarize. She deals with the issue of finances and budget, imploring newlyweds to “build the new home on the self-respecting cornerstone of freedom not only from debt, but from worry lest debt should be incurred.”

And then she moves to spiritual matters writing,

In the very beginning let the altar of the Lord be set up, and in no circumstances suffer it to be neglected. A blessing asked at the table, family prayer, the habit of church-going, the habit of Sabbath-keeping- these go far to insure the lasting happiness of those who have entered into relations which are not for a day, nor for a year, but for all time. The new home will have its occasional flurries, for two people brought up under different family influences cannot settle at once into complete harmony. But the little breezes will blow away and the sun come out the brighter, if there be love, conscience, and mutual respect on the part of the married pair.

I don’t have much to add here other than, she’s absolutely correct on all accounts.

Let us conclude with Sangster’s reminder that it isn’t only the wife who makes the home, even though she is given the title of “homemaker.” Our houses become a home through the actions, experiences, and affections of all who reside in that physical place. And in that sense, I can’t help but agree when she writes of both husband and wife,

Neither party alone is the home-maker. The sweet privilege of home-building belongs to both.

I must first recount how I stumbled upon such a lovely, old book.

Apparently, and to my delight, every year in October there is a 200 mile yard sale near our home. Families all along this one road, for 200 miles, participate. On that particular Friday afternoon I was heading home from town and decided to stop at just one such sale. I parked (in the grass, which is so unusual to me but apparently that’s what you do here) and as I walked up the driveway toward the house I noticed a trailer to my left with a large sign that read “FREE.” As I approached the trailer I realized, again to my delight, that it was filled with boxes and boxes of books.

Immediately I began digging through each box, reading the cover of each and every book. I began making a pile of my newfound treasures when the gentleman running the yard sale came over to see how I was doing and to bring me a box for my books.

I asked him if this had been someone’s library and he explained that his wife’s father had recently passed away and these were most of his books. They had kept some for themselves but didn’t have room for all of them, and so they decided to simply give them away. He joked that I was free to take the entire trailer of books if I liked. I joked that my husband wouldn’t be very thrilled if I did so.

In the end I left there with a box full of very old books including an entire set of McGuffey readers and a book written in 1896 by Margaret E. Sangster titled Home Life Made Beautiful.

I sat down that evening and thumbed through my newly acquired treasure. The illustrations were beautiful, the poetry lovely, and the advice Sangster shared was of great encouragement. I decided that not only would I read the book from cover to cover, but that I would write about it as I did so. It contains a lost, and very needed perspective of all things family and home. I must share it with others!

When I initially began this Substack, my focus was to be primarily about life and home to the glory of God, and I certainly do weave that into my essays and return to it regularly. But this series of essays, sharing my gleanings from this particular book with my readers, will give me an opportunity to focus singularly on my primary purpose. I hope you don’t mind.

I want to begin with Sangster’s preface. She writes,

For a pleasant home is a necessity to us, and let it be ever so plain or ever so elegant, it is not home unless it ministers to what is best in our nature and gives scope to our energies, a reason for our ambitions, a place for our children to grow in, and a haven for us from the storm and the tempest.

Pure poetry, isn’t it?

I have written before about home. A home isn’t simply a house where someone resides, although it seems as though in our day and age we have reduced it to only that: a recharging station for someone who spends the majority of his life in another place with people who aren’t his family, be it work or school or participating in any number of recreational activities.

Home has become just a place to shower, grab food (which was likely frozen and requires limited preparation), recharge your devices, and get a wink of sleep, not even thorough rest.

But that is not what Sangster describes. She presents home as a necessity, and not only a home but a pleasant home. And why is it a necessity? Because it ministers to us, it provides opportunity for our strengths and abilities to be utilized and exercised, it gives us purpose for passions, a place for our children to be nurtured, to grow, and feel safe doing so, and it’s a safe place from the weary world outside of its four walls.

She continues:

I do not care Gentle Reader of mine, whether you dwell on a farm or in a crowded city, whether your home is by the great ocean or beside a brook, whether you have a long bank account or a pittance, whether you have lived many years or are young and have life before you. Home matters more to you than does any other thing on earth. You need a book like this to give you glimpses of what the household may be, how heavenly, how divine

Home: the place that matters to a divine degree, but has been under appreciated or overly attacked (and at the very least, not honored as it ought). The world would have us believe that home is just a place to live, unattached to history, ancestry, beauty, and love. Even a box will suffice. Evangelicals would have us believe that home is insignificant or at the very least, trivial, because we’re only passing through, after all.

But as Sangster makes the central theme of her book, home is necessary. Home shapes us for eternity and so we are obligated to shape it while we are here on earth. Through our affections and our activities in a particular place, we shape it into a home for the sake of the people we love who live in that particular place. This is what homemaking is. And we should desire to make that home life beautiful.

Over the next few months, as I continue to read the essays and poems of Margaret Sangster in her book Home Life Made Beautiful, I’ll be sure to share her insights with you here.

Several years ago, I cannot remember exactly how many, I opened my mailbox to find a Christmas card from my sweet friend, Jen (who writes The Truth Teller). What caught my attention about her salutations were not so much the beautiful family photos or sleek design (although she does have a beautiful family and a knack for creating a lovely Holiday card!). Instead what struck me was how beautifully she wove the gospel into her Christmas correspondence.

My immediate reaction was, obviously, to copy her method. (Don’t worry. She doesn’t mind. We’ve talked about it. We even have a hashtag for it if you want to copy her too and join in! #merrygospelchristmas).

I realized that we have a unique opportunity every single year to put the gospel into the hands of all of our friends and family; especially for those who are reluctant to listen or who we don’t have much communication with during the year. As they eagerly read our family newsletter, we also get to share why we celebrate Christmas and give an answer and reason for the hope that is in us!

How simple. How beautiful. How very lovely.

This year I thought it would be encouraging to share the words of my family’s Christmas card. These words were shared along with family photos and scripture printed on the envelopes. My daughter helped me to stuff, seal, and stamp each envelope. It was a labor of love, done in joy, so that we could share the good news of Jesus with those we love.

Merry Christmas from the Bridges!

2024 has been a full and fun year for us. As most of you know, in March of this year we sold our home in Las Vegas and moved to Western Kentucky. It has proven to be quite an adventure for the Bridges brood.

We spent our first 2 months in Kentucky living in a fifth wheel on the side of Ben’s mom and step-father’s home. The weather happened to be absolutely beautiful during those 2 months and so we spent a lot of time outside, on the pond, fishing, kayaking, and studying all of the birds, trees, and flowers that were brand new to us desert and city folk. The kids made friends with a homeschooling family across the street and settled in right away.

In May, we were blessed to pay cash for a house; a 1950’s farmhouse that sits across the street from and surrounded by fields of corn and soy. Having left a city of 2.5 million people, we’ve found ourselves in a small town of just 600. It’s like a dream come true. God is truly so kind.

We spent our summer months updating, decorating, and moving into our new home. The boys enjoy having their own space downstairs in the basement. We have a basement! The girls enjoy both their porch swing and their tire swing in the yard. Everyone is enjoying the seasons, the grass, the trees, and the space! We have wonderful neighbors and have settled into a sweet church across the Ohio River in Indiana.

Omitted: a few short paragraphs to update family and friends about the lives of our five children by name and age, and details about my husband’s work and our personal lives.

We pray that this letter and Christmas tidings find you and your family well. 2024 has surely been a wild year for everyone, but with Christmas around the corner, we are reminded that our hope is not in money, any politician, the government, the media, or other worldly institutions, because those will all pass away. But instead, our hope is ultimately in Jesus Christ.

After all, He is why we are all immersed in celebration- listening to seasonal music, decorating our homes, giving wonderful gifts, sharing meals, and spending time with family and friends- all in celebration of the God who became a man. Two thousand years ago a baby was born who would go on to live a perfect life according to God’s Law, die the death we all deserve for our grievous sins, and rise from the dead three days later. All who repent of their sins and believe in Jesus receive forgiveness of sins because of His death and eternal life because of His resurrection.

This is the hope we cling to in a time like ours and always; a sure anchor, a confident hope in the person of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, a living hope who has ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, ruling and reigning as Lord over the world that was created through Him, and by Him, and for Him.

We pray that this Christmas and New Year, you will cling to that true hope: Jesus Christ who is alive and will return!

Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

Love, The Bridges

Several states across the United States have already passed some form of School Choice legislation. Next month, the people of Kentucky will vote to open the door for School Choice in the form of Amendment 2, which amends the state constitution (red flag number one). It reads as follows:

The General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools. The General Assembly may exercise this authority by law, sections, [and then they are enumerated] of this constitution notwithstanding.

Many conservative and Christian organizations across the state have voiced their hearty approval of the amendment. Big names have as well including Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Albert Mohler. Even many homeschoolers are excited to support this open door for allowing the Kentucky legislature to consider publicly funding all educational options.

Speaking of homeschoolers, I’ve noticed that discussion about the pros and cons of such an amendment has been almost entirely squashed in homeschool forums and FB groups. In fact, the moderators of the Kentucky homeschool FB group I am apart of turn off comments on any discussion about the amendment the moment someone points out its flaws. They have also entirely blocked and denied posts suggesting reasons to vote “no” (ask me how I know). I’ve seen others complain about similar situations elsewhere.

For the most part, the political and religious right is firmly on board with not only Amendment 2 in Kentucky, but School Choice in general. I’ve written about why I oppose such a concept as it is not a conservative solution in the least. You can also read more about its flaws from Nicki Truesdell, Israel Wayne, Toby Sumpter, and probably most importantly, the HSLDA. I encourage you to take the time to consider all of the arguments in opposition, from the Christian, conservative perspective.

Whose Side Are We On?

I have had moms express to me that while they agree School Choice is not a good idea, it feels weird to be on the same side as the left when it comes to any issue. True, the loudest voices in opposition to such propositions are Teacher Unions and Democrat politicians. But as someone once said, politics sometimes makes for strange bedfellows. And while we may oppose the same thing, it is for radically different reasons, I assure you.

I oppose School Choice because I am a conservative. I oppose it because I believe in freedom and I believe that one of the most fundamental freedoms we ought to fight to protect for our sake and for the sake of our children and future generations, is to maintain the liberty of Christian discipleship, unfettered from government intrusion and regulation.

Assuredly the Democrats do not oppose School Choice for the same reasons.

So if it’s such a threat to educational freedom, why would Republicans support it?

Why Republicans Support School Choice

Dr. Albert Mohler recently expressed his support for Amendment 2 out of a concern that the State currently has a monopoly on education. On Thursday, he stated in an episode of The Briefing, “it is a matter of voters who understand that a monopoly is not a good thing. And when the public school has an absolute monopoly on education, that is a very dangerous reality.”

From Mohler’s perspective and others, the government currently has “an absolute monopoly” on education in the form of public school. And while it is true that the majority of children are educated in public schools, I don’t know that I’d frame such a statement the same way. It’s not as though other choices don’t already exist. The reason so many have chosen public school is not because there is a lack of choice, but rather for myriad reasons, the which we don’t have time to consider in this particular essay.

But the point is: choice does already exist. The assertion has been falsely framed to say that we need school choice when the fact of the matter is that we already have a plethora of educational choices. I homeschool. I have friends who send their children to public school. I know families who have enrolled their children in private school. Others have kids who attend a charter school. Still others have their children in online school. Many are somewhere in between.

No one has stopped any of us from making a choice for our children when it comes to education.

But Herein Lies the Deception

The argument being made on the surface is that we need School Choice because we don’t have it (while we do, actually), but the underlying assertion is that we need our educational choice to be funded by the State in order to have true choice. And this is where, if we’re honest, things begin to get very progressive.

When the government funds a program used to aid the people in its nation, we call it public welfare. Here are a couple of definitions:

any aid or relief granted to or on behalf of an eligible person (source)

help given, especially by the state or an organization, to people who need it, especially because they do not have (source)

Now, of course, no one is going to want to label School Choice as public welfare, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. ESAs, vouchers, and School Choice are funded publicly, with tax dollars. That money is then distributed to those who apply to be a part of the system and when those dollars are distributed to the recipients, they come with regulations and rules (maybe not at first, but regulations will come). There is no welfare program in the United States that functions with no oversight.

And so, School Choice, in simple terms, is actually an enormous invitation to the government to come into your home and tell you how to educate your children. There is no such thing as free money. And in this case, it will only cost you your educational freedom.

But let’s return to the claim about public school being an absolute monopoly. The solution proposed is that School Choice will, like Teddy Roosevelt, “trust-bust” said monopoly.

School Choice Is a Misnomer, In More Ways Than One

First of all, as I’ve just stated, choice already exists, so we don’t need School Choice.

But Secondly, if we decide to head down this road of adopting so-called School Choice, the end will be that we (and likely not us, but our own children as they educate our grandchildren) are truly stripped of educational choice. When all education is publicly funded, all education is publicly scrutinized and regulated, and all education becomes public education. Talk about a monopoly.

In the words of Nicki Truesdell,

So, it’s clear that government funded Education Savings Accounts are not a “free market” tool.  If the state is funding and overseeing all the education — public, private, and home — that’s a monopoly.

We need to very seriously take into consideration that we currently do have the freedom to privately educate our children without interference from the State. I realize there are stricter laws in some states than others, but speaking on behalf of a large swath of the homeschooling and private schooling parents in this nation, we are free to educate and choose an education that we see fit. As homeschoolers we have the freedom to direct and oversee our children’s education.

If School Choice (ESA, vouchers, etc.) is allowed to take hold in states across this nation, when those tax dollars, those public funds start making their way into the pocket books and bank accounts of homeschoolers and private institutions, that will be the beginning of a true monopoly of the State over education. All education will be public education.

For, whoever funds the thing, runs the thing.

This Calls for Shrewdness

As Toby Sumpter has rightly said, “conservative Christians have a bad habit of being manipulated through soundbites and ending up in worse positions than before.” I believe Amendment 2 to be an example of this.

“But!,” they’ll say, “Amendment 2 doesn’t actually propose funds for any particular education at this point. It simply gives the legislators the ability to release funds for education in the future.”

To which I would simply reply: if we know where this road inevitably ends, whether it be in our generation, or our children’s generation as they seek to freely educate our grandkids, why on God’s green earth would we even want to consider cracking that door open? We are all familiar with the metaphor of the camel’s nose.

I understand that this feels like a win against the progressive left and their propaganda-engulfed behemoth of a school system, but I and others assure you, this is not the win you think it is.

As conservative Christians we have an opportunity, nay an obligation, to be shrewd in this situation. We don’t have to canon ball into the pool simply because our political party tells us “the water is just fine, so come on in.” We are talking about something fundamental to maintaining freedom in this nation: the ability to feely educate and disciple the next generation without government intrusion. That is not something to give only a moment’s thought to.

This is the time to consider the ramifications deeply and thoroughly. This is not the time to jump feet first into a thing because it looks and sounds good. This is the time to examine the thing to consider whether it’s really as good as it claims or too good to be true. This is the time for shrewdness.

And so if you are in Kentucky (or any state with a similar proposal), don’t take the bait. Keep the door shut. Don’t let even so much as a camel’s nose under the tent because it never ends well. Remember, with shekels come shackles. And even lightweight shackles are too heavy when it comes to educational liberty.

We live in the midst of a culture that loves death (Proverbs 8:36). I’m not sure we can deny it much longer. No one wants to actually admit that a people’s first love is decay, but given that which our culture, particularly in the West, celebrates and upholds as virtuous, I can come to no other conclusion: deterioration, rot, and ultimately death are both our trajectory and our inevitable end.

Abortion, anti-natalism, birth control, sterilization, homosexuality, transgenderism, mutilation and castration of both adults and children (what we’ve deemed as “gender affirming care”), unfettered mass immigration of entirely different cultures and religions (one which particularly hates Christianity and wants to see the death of so-called infidels), a broad acceptance of pets as children, all have one thing in common: death.

The death of individuals and the death of a culture and a nation.

In 1973 we made it clear to God what mattered most to us as a nation. We enshrined the right of every mother to murder her own flesh and blood, her own kin, her very own children. And ever since then, we’ve continued to vote en masse for candidates and laws which go against our own children’s best interest, if we even have children at all. We have collectively rejected fruitfulness and willingly embraced barrenness.

And given what has come to pass in only the past two decades, it would seem that God has heard the desire of our hearts, which are desperately wicked above all things, and has handed us over to those murderous desires. Three times in Romans 1 Paul explains that those who continue to exchange the truth for a lie, worship creation, and refuse to acknowledge God will be handed over by Him to their own debased mind. That sort of judgement is terrifying.

It would seem that when we signaled to the God of life that we wanted barrenness enshrined in our law, He saw fit to reciprocate by handing us over to barrenness. And now at every turn unfruitfulness is shoved down our throats from gay pride parades, to drag queen story time, to tax-payer funded abortion and birth control, to dogs in the grocery store carted around as children, to grown adults who scoff at children in public. And now, here we are, choking on barrenness.

Our Homes as Fruit Baskets

But this doesn’t have to be the case in our homes. Our homes can be and ought to be a haven from a dying world. It may reek of death and decay when we step outside, but inside the walls of our homes we have opportunity to create the sweet-smelling fragrance of joy, hope, goodness, beauty, and life.

It may be a barren wasteland in the West, but our homes can be bountiful baskets of colorful, sweet fruit.

Practically that looks like applying simple consistent family ways (creed- what we believe and code- what our beliefs obligate us to) in to establish an atmosphere and culture that not only counters the world, but builds a biblical foundation and rightly orders the appetites and affections of our children to prepare them to be bright shining stars in the day that they will inevitably step into that dark and dying world.

Philippians 2:14-16 has long been the prayer and plea of my heart for my children:

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

I want to offer some practical ways that we have worked, over the course of many years, to establish a fruitful and joyful culture in our home.

Establish habits with our children: Be at the breakfast table when called, clear dishes after meals, brush teeth before school, finish independent school work in a timely manner, get ready for bed when told, etc. These are simply the basic expectations of being a part of this household and they benefit not only the individual child, but our family as a whole.

Habits also include chores for which each child is responsible including feeding animals, keeping rooms tidy, making beds, and loading and unloading the dishwasher.

This also includes hard work, especially on the part of our boys. For example, every Wednesday is our dump-run day. The boys hook the trailer up to the car, load the trash cans and any other garbage, and strap everything down. When they arrive to the dump with their dad, they dispose of it all. They don’t earn an allowance for any of their chores because it’s simply expected that to be a part of this family means pitching in, but on Wednesdays, they do often get a reward of some kind, especially if they get their work done with good attitudes, usually in the form of a soda.

Along with hard work comes lots of play. We spend much of our days engaged in school work and upkeep of the home, but we also make time for games- both board games and video games, playing outside, going to the park, swimming, pickle ball, hiking, exploring, family walks, and other “just for fun” activities. We want to instill in our children that there should be plenty of time for fun and enjoyment, but that hard work must also be done. Play is often the reward that comes afterward.

Whether we are working or playing, we are listening to music or singing it loudly. At the heart of the atmosphere we’ve cultivated in our home is melody and music. This includes Christian hip hop, traditional hymns, psalms, classical music, oldies, children’s music, and classic rock. We listen to Pandora, records, CDs, Spotify, and cassette tapes. We take trips to see it performed in parks, churches, concert halls, and performing arts centers. We play it loud, we play it quietly in the background, we listen, we sing together, and we dance.

I have sweet memories of dancing with my children to an Aquabats CD from my own childhood, singing The Postal Service at the top of our lungs in the car together, helping them learn the words to There is a Fountain around the kitchen table, witnessing my daughter’s eyes light up seeing Handel’s Messiah for the first time, and listening to my youngest child belt out the Doxology at the close of every worship service on Sunday mornings and evenings. Music is an integral part of our family life.

Hymns in particular as so very profitable. I often think of what it would be like in a jail cell if the day comes when myself or my children are arrested for our faith. How would we pass our time? Would we sing? What would we sing? Certainly I’d want it to be the rich doctrine and truth of the hymns we’ve been singing their whole lives at home and in church. What joy that would ignite and what glory it would bring to God.

After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Acts 16:23-25

We memorize scripture and catechism answers together. When I think back on the stories of our Christian brothers and sisters who have been martyred throughout church history, there’s something that has always stuck with me: when squeezed, what came out was that which they had stored in their hearts. They prayed scripture and sang hymns. They spoke truth to one another and sang.

Only what is put in can come out. And so I work diligently to fill my children’s hearts and minds with the truth of God’s word in scripture and song so that, if or when pressed, that is going to be what seeps out of them, for their own benefit and to the edification of those around them.

This is mostly accomplished as a portion of the Christ-centered education we provide to them. The first subject of the day is bible, which is the foundation for all other subjects and discussions that follow. My children understand that history belongs to the Lord because it’s the story He is writing. Church history and missionary stories are especially emphasized with regularity. They recognize that math exists because it was written by God to hold our world together. Our study of nature and science is the study of the world that God has made. And so on and so forth.

We read and tell stories that serve to build moral imaginations. We read and memorize poetry that do the same, but also connect them to others, inspire creativity, and cultivate thoughtfulness. Some of our favorite family read aloud books have been: Little House on the Prairie (and the entire series), Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Crispin, and The Pilgrim’s Progress.

We pray together. Our mornings always begin with prayer. Throughout the week each child gets the chance to pray aloud- something I want them to all be comfortable doing. We pray in the evenings, always before bed, but also on Saturdays in preparation for the Lord’s Day. I’ve written about all the ways we prepare for Sundays in our home. One significant way is that we pray together and we encourage our children to pray on their own. We repent of sins and ask that the Lord would prepare hearts and minds and turn our affections to Him, along with prayer for our elders, deacons, and the rest of our church body.

We set the Lord’s Day aside every week as distinct from the other 6 days. We gather with our local church body in the morning for Sunday School and worship. Afterward we stay for Lord’s Day lunch, where our children have the opportunity to deepen their friendships and relationships with church members of all ages. Our youngest is known for regularly inviting herself to sit with the teenagers. We head home for naps and restful activities like water coloring, reading, or a couple of cartoons on the oldies channel. Then in the evening we head back to church for bible study and evening worship. Dinner is usually leftovers or a cheese and meat platter that one of my daughters prepares earlier in the day.

We always eat dinner around the table as a family. This is a non-negotiable and I think one of the strongest adhesives available to us as parents. This simple routine is paramount so much so that even when our boys were in Jiu Jitsu multiple nights a week and didn’t get home until shortly after 7, we shifted our meal to later. Or when the children were young and in Awana which required us to leave the house by 5:30 pm, we shifted our meal to earlier. No matter what has gone on in the day, how many different places people have been, how tired people are, we always come together for a shared meal around the table in the evening.

An Identity Securely Moored

Ultimately what we are doing in our home is cultivating a place where our children have their identity rooted, deeply, in something. Our kids know they are made in the image of God, created by the one true God of the universe. They are not cosmic accidents needing to create themselves and their own identity. They know that their God came to earth as a man to perfectly obey the Law, to give His life as a payment to redeem them, and to be resurrected after three days in the grave in order to give them eternal life. They hear the gospel regularly, if not daily.

My children have roots connected to their nuclear family and our home, but also to generations of family members who came before them and to a church family who loves and cares for their physical and spiritual well-being. They have a national identity as Americans who love their country and their country’s rich history, traditions, and values. These things serve to keep children moored to something as they grow and begin to enter into a world that is constantly shifting and unsettled.

As we realistically consider that our children may very well be persecuted in the future, but that they absolutely will be confronted with a world that hates God and loves death, we need to be firmly committed to establishing family ways that cultivate joy-filled, fruitful, warm, and rich homes which prepare their minds and bodies for what is to come.

For further consideration, I highly recommend this talk by Andrew Pudewa titled Preparing for Persecution – A Curriculum Proposal. I had the opportunity to see him present this talk live at an HSLDA conference in 2022. If you have the time, it will be an encouragement to you. Here is the description:

In the future is it imaginable that freedom of speech and freedom of religion could be suppressed where we live? History indicates so. Andrew Pudewa discusses ways to prepare for such a contingency, which may include persecution and even martyrdom. He also explains how to cultivate necessary virtues without sparking burdensome fears. Although this is not a pleasant subject to contemplate, it is an important one.

A few other essays related to this topic:

Fruit in a Death Culture: Why are we Asking “What is a Woman?”

We are a Homelessly Housed Generation: The Importance of Home and a Definition

Perhaps you are familiar with the analogy of sex being a fire which is powerful and burns red-hot. Kept in its appropriate place, the confines of a fireplace or wood stove, a fire can be harnessed for great good: warmth, cooking, and light. Similarly, sex kept in its appropriate place keeps a husband and wife bound together, brings one another pleasure, produces children, bringing about life and growing families which are the building block of healthy society. But this can be when and only when sex is kept in its proper place: inside the boundary created by God which is biblically defined marriage.

For all of time this has been a point of rebellion for mankind. The heart is wicked and the flesh wants what it wants. Confine sex? That sounds like slavery. But unfettered sex, outside of boundaries set by someone else, now that sounds like freedom, liberty, salvation even! This is why even the earliest sex radicals hated marriage. In their eyes, biblical morality, including marriage, was a restraint to their freedom. Over the course of at least the past century, this view of sexual salvation has taken route and has spread like wildfire.

Little by little, passed from one generation to the next, the philosophy I shared in part one of Free Love, paired with birth control and abortion (to be discussed in the next installment) and “scientific research”, the fire has been allowed to spread outside of the fire place, released from confinement and the shackles of so-called slavery. The result is that it has set Western civilization on fire and we are witnessing its destruction as the West is engulfed in an inferno of utter destruction.

Scientist or Insurgent?

One of the primary arsonists was a scientist by the name of Alfred Charles Kinsey. It’s possible that you’ve heard of this man in recent years. Thanks to several authors and podcasters, his influence on our current sexual culture has been exposed. The state of Indiana even recently banned public funding for the Kinsey Institute.

I first learned about Kinsey in college. As a psychology major I was required to take a human sexuality course. His work was introduced and, of course, lauded. My knowledge of him was limited, but I understood that his work was vital to the field of human sexuality. I’d later come to realize, thanks specifically to a book I read in 2008 called The Marketing of Evil, that it was vital not so much in the way I’d been taught, but to the carnage of a biblical sexual ethic.

In their 1999 book, How Now Shall We Live (which, along with the workbook ought to be required reading for everyone, especially every teenager), Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey write about Kinsey, “he was committed to an ideology that defined morality as a harmful force to be opposed and that elevated sexuality into a means of salvation.”

In 1997, biographer James H. Jones, a supporter of Kinsey, wrote for the The New Yorker that Kinsey,

approached his work with missionary fervor… He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of restraint… Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent his every waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender laws of the United States.

This man had an objective and nefarious motivations. He wasn’t simply a scientist following the research. He had a predetermined purpose that he was working toward.

My focus in this essay is not the details of Alfred Kinsey’s sexual “research.” Much has been written on the twisted, morally repugnant, and downright evil that took place as he collected and published data over the years. Dr. Judith Reisman is credited with exposing the child abuse, categorized as research, which was accepted by the scientific field at the time. David Kupelian does an excellent job of summarizing Kinsey’s work in The Marketing of Evil. And similarly, Voddie Baucham has lectured on Kinsey several times. This talk is helpful (but don’t listen around young ears).

What I do want to point to here, is how Kinsey “softened the rules of restraint” and how his work is directly connected to the sexual debauchery on full display today.

About the Man

Alfred Kinsey began his career about 100 years ago, in 1920, as an assistant professor of zoology at the University of Indiana. His education had been in zoology, Darwinian evolution, and psychology. While at UI, he collected and studied wasps until 1938 when the university decided to offer a course on marriage for students who were either already married or interested in marriage. Apparently Kinsey was “popular with the students” and so he was asked to coordinate the course, called “Marriage and Family.” According to the Kinsey Institute:

Faced with questions from students about sexuality, Kinsey could find little scientific information on human sexual behavior that was not value-laden or based on small samples from clinical trials. His interest in the topic was piqued by this "gap in our knowledge," and he began collecting sex histories, first from his students, and then from groups and individuals in Bloomington and throughout Indiana.  

This opened the door for Kinsey to begin his professional career in sex research and in 1947 he founded and became the director of the Institute for Sex Research at UI.

The irony here cannot be lost on us. His career into sex research, which gave the Free Love sexual revolution a shot in the arm and left marriages and families demolished in its wake, began because of a class that was intended to benefit marriages and families. We will see the exact same thing when it comes to Planned Parenthood and the eventual universal acceptance of birth control.

The enemy is a master of taking what is good and twisting it to bring about evil and destruction among human beings, especially when it comes to corrupting the marriage bed and dismantling the family.

Three Weapons of Mass Destruction

I want to cover three ways in which Kinsey’s work has directly shaped the sexual landscape of our day.

First, as a Darwinian Evolutionist, Kinsey regarded human beings simply as animals who had evolved rather than created in the image of God. As a zoologist, he saw the animal world as parallel to the human world; if animals do it, then it’s natural and therefore perfectly acceptable and normative for humans to do it as well.

Decades later, this sort of attitude towards human beings is pervasive. In the 1990’s bands like Nine Inch Nails and the Bloodhound Gang referred to having sex “like an animal” or like they do “on the discovery channel.” Today, we see entire documentary series dedicated to the “Queer Planet.”

According to NBC reporter Jo Yurcaba, “In the documentary, Wilkinson says queer and transgender people have been treated by other humans as being ‘unnatural’ or ‘against nature.’ However, ‘Queer Planet’ suggests otherwise: that nature has always been queer.”

All of this is directly descended from Kinsey; his grandchildren so to speak.

This rejection of the good created order that God designed and established which is then exchanged for something completely debased and bestial comes directly from Kinsey.

Second, as Colson and Pearcey point out, Kinsey utilized massive amounts of data from unrepresentative samples in his research:

including a disproportionate percentage of sexual offenders and other deviants. It is hardly scientific to use such skewed samples to define ‘normal’ sexuality, and yet, as biography James Jones documents, Kinsey persistently studied people who were on the margins, and even beyond the pale, in their sexual behavior: homosexuals, sadomasochists, voyeurs, exhibitionists, pedophiles, transsexuals, and fetishists.

Kinsey himself was a masochist, voyeur, and exhibitionist, who had affairs with men, encouraged open marriages among his staff, and died due to a disease caused by his own “brutally masochistic masturbation methods” all of which have been documented by multiple biographers and recounted by Kupelian.

This work of his to “undermine traditional morality” and “soften the rules of restraint” was deeply personal. He was a man on the margins who wanted his sexual deviance to be accepted into greater society. And so his research made the abnormal normal. Using reports from the aberrant male population (as recounted above), Kinsey applied them to the greater population. If you’ve ever heard the claim that “10% of the population is gay” that’s a direct result of Kinsey.

With the publication of his fraudulent findings and plenty of protégés to carry the torch and spread the lies like wildfire, what was once considered obscure, abnormal, deviant, and weird moved from shunned and shamed, to tolerated and permitted, to accepted and celebrated. The abnormal has become normal almost entirely do to the lies that Kinsey was allowed to publish as scientific research.

Third, Kinsey’s fraudulent research included “findings” on childhood sexuality which led him and others to believe that children are sexual beings from birth. According to Riesman, Kinsey solicited data from pedophiles who sexually abused as many as 2000 infants and children as young as 5 months old.

Why are there proponents of “family friendly” drag queen shows, where men dress as hypersexualized caricatures of women and dance half-naked for children, who claim that innocence is a social construct and children should get to experience and enjoy sexuality of all kinds on full display? Because of Kinsey.

Why is the idea of a MAP (minor attracted person) “orientation” even entertained? Because of Kinsey.

Why do we see campaigns to get sex education into schools at earlier and earlier grades regardless of the opposition of parents? Because of Kinsey. If children are sexual beings, as he suggests, then why shouldn’t they be educated about sex as early as possible?

In fact, one of Kinsey’s protégés, Wardell Pomeroy, who according to the New York Times helped to “rechart the sexual landscape of America” co-founded the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which is motivated by “the belief that sex education is necessary for providing young people with the information they need to ensure their own lifelong sexual health and well-being.” The first executive director of SIECUS was another Kinsey associate by the name of Mary Calderone, who had previously been the medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1953 to 1964.

Which leads us to the next installment of this series which will discuss Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood, and the institutionalization of birth control.

But this is never the case. What we are experiencing and witnessing is years, decades, even centuries in the making. All of human history is connected. Ideas beget ideas. Where we are now is the result of those ideas, believed, championed, and propagated from one person to the next over the course of time. Like a relay race, the baton is passed from one generation to another and as history unfolds the ideas passed down become stronger, grow teeth, and before we know it, they will sink their teeth deep into the foundations of a people, a culture, and a nation.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that most would look at the rampant sexual degeneracy which surrounds us and link it back to the “Summer of Love” and sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

But the methodical dismantling of sexual ethics in the West began long before the hippies were even born.

This series will include several major points and people in recent history which have brought us to today. Ultimately my goal is to demonstrate that the Christian biblical sexual ethic is a significant foundation for Western civilization, and as we’ve watched sexual deviance and immorality take hold, we’re simultaneously watching the collapse of a modern empire.

I’m not going to go back to where it all began. Afterall, it was probably in the garden where Eve didn’t believe and trust God but instead took things in to her own hands, but I digress. Instead I will begin over a hundred and fifty years ago. All the way back in the 19th century, before cars and airplanes, and long before social media.

I want to introduce you to a woman named Victoria Woodhull, a true feminist before the title or concept was institutionalized. She was the first woman to run for president in the United States, and wouldn’t you know it, she strongly believed in “free and unrestricted” love and the expression thereof without hindrance by law or religion.

In 1871, an entire century before the sexual revolution, she spoke to three thousand people about this “free love”:

Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. And I have the further right to demand a free and unrestricted exercise of that right, and it is your duty not only to accord it, but, as a community, to see that I am protected in it. I trust that I am fully understood, for I mean just that, and nothing less! (emphasis mine)

Please realize that what we’re witnessing today has its roots in this wicked and sinful mindset. Not only did she claim a constitutional right to love (which includes sex with that individual) whoever she wanted whenever she wanted, but it was paired with a demand that everyone else protect this so-called constitutional right.

In 2019, Time Magazine published an article connecting Woodhull’s ideology to the modern LGTB-rights movement. In fact author Michael Bronski points out that the Supreme Court decision in 2003, which declared anti-sodomy laws across the country unconstitutional, and made “all forms of private, consensual non-procreative sexual activities between two consenting individuals of either sex (especially of the same sex) legal in every U.S. state and territory” (source) perfectly reflects the beliefs and sentiments of Woodhull.

Bronski goes on to explain that, “Free Love was a robust, national, often middle-class phenomenon that emerged from utopian socialism, early feminism and the deep American tradition of resistance to government.” I’m not going to take the time in this essay to get into the depths of the strong thread that runs directly through Feminism, Women’s Suffrage, Utopian Socialism, Spiritualism, Eugenics, and leading all the way to the modern Gay-Rights agenda. But it’s there.

It seems that Victoria’s second husband, Colonel James Blood, had a significant influence on her beliefs. He was “a political and social radical—he called himself a ‘free lover’—who encouraged Victoria’s self-education and interest in women’s rights.”

He was also a spiritualist during a time when such a thing was growing in popularity. Victoria, who had been a traveling clairvoyant and faith healer for her father as a child, partnered with her sister to work as spiritualists (communicating with the dead) in New York. Weird sisters it seems.

When we hear “free love” I assume most of us think of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and 70’s. But in Woodhull we see its same philosophies. She adamantly believed that the government had no place in the sexual lives of the people. The state ought to have no say in regulating who men and women love and how they express that love. Her critics rightly recognized that such an ideology would be disastrous for public morality and social norms. The recent explosion of demonic “family friendly” drag queen shows for children across this nation has vindicated her critics.

Harriett Beecher Stowe called her an “impudent witch.”

Others deemed her “Mrs. Satan.”

Perhaps her opposition knew what they were talking about, for 90 years later, Anton LaVey would found the Satanic Church which held to her same beliefs. The Satanic Bible says,

Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires- be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex-life, so long as it involves no one who does not wish to be involved.

As David Kupelian writes, “Satanism simply champions our prideful, lower nature- in rebellion against the Creator and His plan for mankind… having bought into a phony notion of freedom that really delivers exactly the opposite- bondage, addiction, and misery.”

Victoria Woodhull, the Satanic Church, and modern day sexuality share the same worldview and philosophy: do what you want, with whomever you want, however you want because indulging inner desires brings true liberty and freedom. Liberation through sex. No religion, no state, no church, no culture, and certainly not God Himself, has the right to shame you, regulate your actions, or pass judgement upon your lifestyle because love is love and sex is simply an instinct we are meant to fulfill, just like the animals we are.

Which brings me to Indiana University Zoologist and Darwinist Alfred Charles Kinsey, known universally as the “father of the sexual revolution.” In the next installment, I’ll cover how his “research” “provided a ‘documentable’ scientific cover for the latent rebellion against God’s laws” that has overtaken a once Christian society (quote from The Marketing of Evil).

Multiculturalism is killing us. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. We all know it to be true. And I’m not saying that acceptance of people from other countries and cultures into this great nation is killing us. I’m saying that the delusional belief that we can remain a cohesive country, while allowing different cultures to “coexist” but never assimilate into one America, is killing us.

Senator JD Vance said several excellent things last night in his speech at the RNC, but his emphasis on America not being an idea, but instead our homeland and a nation was by far the most important thing he said (along with criticizing the war in Iraq. He gets major points from me on that one). From his speech:

America is not just an idea. It’s a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

America does welcome newcomers. But we welcome them on our terms.

Excellent. He points here to what a nation truly is. She is not just a piece of land that people share. It’s a place where people share a piece of land and a common history, language, a heritage, experiences, and values. We have always welcomed newcomers, but like Vance said, newcomers are welcomed on American’s terms. Sadly, a statement like that makes some people squirm in their seats these days.

America is for Americans

As William Wolfe tweeted last night: America is for Americans.

But if all it means to be American is to embrace the ideas of liberty and “democracy” (whatever that means these days), then anyone anywhere can be America. And if everyone is American, then no one is American.

In recent years the left has made it clear that Americans aren’t allowed to have their own country. Swedes can have Sweden. Brazilians can have Brazil. Mexicans can have Mexico. Japanese can have Japan. But Americans, you have to share with everyone. It’s racist and white supremacist to expect, as an American, to have your own country without having to share it.

And when I say “share it” I don’t mean others coming in to enjoy the greatness of this place alongside us. I mean that we have to cede our own culture and history to make room for something else; something that isn’t actually American. We are expected to stand by and watch as what this nation, our homeland, has been since its founding, is slowly eroded away. Our history books have been altered. Statues to our honorable heroes have been vandalized, destroyed, and torn down, replaced by modern “art” and tributes to criminals or worse. Our calendar is being filled with holidays (holy days) that honor blasphemy and debauchery. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Multicultural Madness

Last week I shared a quote on Instagram from a 2005 book that I’m rereading called The Marketing of Evil. In chapter 4, David Kupelian describes what he calls “Multicultural Madness: How Western Culture Was Turned Upside Down in One Generation.” In the section where he discusses 9/11 and the overwhelming reaction by the media to down-play Islamic extremism, he offers this quotation from Carole Iannone as a brilliant explanation for why 9/11 was allowed to occur on American soil:

Quite simply, it happened because America lost its grasp of its own historic character, and embraced ‘diversity’ as a national goal. In the name of equality and nondiscrimination we invited mass immigration from every part of the globe, and made no demands on the newcomers to become Americans. In fact, we gave up our American core, adopted multiculturalism and declared all cultures equal. We invited new groups to celebrate themselves while we cravenly permitted libelous denigration of our own past. Like fools we prated that diversity is our strength, when common sense and all of history tell us that strength comes from unity.

I can’t believe this was written in 2001. Clearly we didn’t heed this lesson from 9/11 or from anyone who warned against the rise of multiculturalism in our nation. Instead we’ve made it a credit requirement in our universities and continue to elevate it as a virtue to be praised.

Iannone rightly points out how we don’t just allow these new cultures to come here in the name of diversity, but we simultaneously allow them to replace our own or as she says, “we cravenly permitted libelous denigration of our own past.” She’s describing what many now have called “the woke mind virus” and she’s doing it 20 years before we saw the results of that rot during the 2020 “summer of love”, “mostly peaceful” protests.

Diversity is Strength?

Jon Harris recently made the very helpful observation that not only do we “give up our American core” as the left encourages other cultures to replace that of our own shared American history and values, but what is put in its place is used as a wedge to divide America by pointing to our failures and ostracizing particular people, rather than uniting and reconciling. The claim is that diversity makes us strong, but the reality is that it divides, which is interesting considering that the prefix of both words, “di”, means to separate or split.

And then I think of Julius Caesar’s famous saying, “divide and conquer” and consider how in doing this to ourselves, we’ve made America susceptible to being conquered. We all know, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” But I’m now going down a rabbit trail, so let’s return.

Iannone continues:

Absolute nondiscrimination meant we no longer enforced standards, made judgements, distinguished between good and evil, friend and foe. We grew lazy, stupid and careless- about our borders, about national security, even about previous terrorist attacks against us. We worried over our ‘hate crimes’ and our ‘racial profiling,’ while men resided in our midst who seethed with murderous fury even against our children and plotted our destruction.

I have zero doubt in my mind that her last sentence is a reality as a type these words.

As evidence of her claims consider how we have been made to feel about the word “discriminate.” In the modern American mind, discrimination is always wrong. But it isn’t actually wrong to discriminate. It’s actually a requirement for just and righteous living, one that Jesus commands us to do even. But as Iannone says, we’ve adopted “absolute nondiscrimination” which basically means we’ve given up discernment altogether. All because we’ve been told for a long time that any kind of discrimination is immoral. And to our own demise.

It’s not wrong to say that some cultures are better than others.

Iron and Clay Don’t Mix

As the church, we allowed ourselves to believe that Revelation 5 means we are to live in America alongside every other culture and never expect anyone to assimilate to our American culture and way of life. All the while, neglecting verses of scripture that seem to warn against multiculturalism.

In Daniel 2, we see the dream God gave to Nebuchadnezzar of the statue with a head of gold, shoulders of silver, a belly of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay. And then Daniel interprets the dream for the king and when he gets to the feet, which is a description of Rome, and he says,

And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay.

Pluralism and multiculturalism clearly played a role in the ultimate fall of Rome. Diversity was not its strength, but its demise. When differing cultures do not mix, but instead act as though they can all function adjacent to one another in the same nation, there is no strength to be had. That is not a nation, but an empire, and one whose future is not bright.

Growth Through Immigration

NBC released an article last week discussing the fertility rate and population declines across the globe. When reporting on the numbers in America reporters stated:

Were it not for immigration, the United States would also be facing population declines — it’s one of about 50 places projected to be able to keep growing due to immigration gains. The U.S. is projected to grow from 345 million in 2024 to 421 million by the end of the century.

It’s incredibly significant that the population of a nation isn’t replacing itself. But it’s even more significant that the population will continue to grow because of immigration. There is no way that a nation can maintain its culture, heritage, history, and unity in that situation. It’s national and cultural suicide.

But as we’ve seen, multiculturalism has replaced assimilation. And no matter how many times the phrase “diversity is strength” is repeated, like “war is peace” and “freedom is slavery” from 1984, the phrase simply isn’t true. People will only fight for a place that is theirs because they have become a part of it and taken on its culture.

What is a Home?

And so I return to the words of JD Vance from last night, “People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.” A home is a place where people have roots, connections to the past and to the people presently there. I can’t help but be reminded of an excellent Roger Scruton quote about home:

Home is not a home without the implication of community. Home is not occupied only by us: it is inhabited by the ghosts of our ancestors, and by the premonition of children who are yet to be. Its essence is continuity, and it provides the archetype of every experience of peace.

As I have written about before, we have lost our sense of home. Not only in our physical, literal familial houses, but as a nation with a culture as well. We have been untethered from our own culture and smothered by many other cultures. We’ve lost the will to fight for our home because we don’t even recognize our home anymore. I look around and I don’t see the America I was taught to know and love.

And so this is where we are. I don’t have any great words of encouragement as I look into the future. I have no idea where we’ll go from here. But it’s clear that we can’t continue on successfully as a nation under the false claim that diversity is strength. Multiculturalism will kill us unless we recognize what is happening, connect ourselves to our own history, protect (conserve might I say?) American Christian values, secure our borders, and require assimilation.

We must, as Vance says, recover a shared history and a common future.

In April we celebrated my middle daughter’s eighth birthday. We spent the day as a family in St. Louis, where we could take advantage of all the free activities the city has to offer. It’s a shame that the city is in such shambles because it’s an otherwise lovely place.

After a morning at the zoo and art museum, we drove down Union Blvd. The decay was heart wrenching: home after home that had been burned down or boarded up. The street was in such disrepair we worried it might swallow up our car if we drove over the wrong pothole. But I digress. The reason we drove down Union Blvd was to get from the art museum to Bellefontaine Cemetery.

We are a homeschooling family. Recently we read a book together in our morning time called Of Courage Undaunted by James Daugherty about the expedition of Lewis and Clark. It’s precious the affection my kids now feel for those two men, and Sacajawea as a result of spending close to 12 weeks alongside them and the other individuals who accompanied them on that 28 month journey from sea to sea and back. As we read, we followed along on maps, consulted books that showed pictures of their various stops, and charted each Indian territory through which they passed.

When we decided to move to Kentucky earlier this year, we knew we’d need to find places of importance relating to Lewis and Clark. And so, we added William Clark’s gravesite to our list of family activities while in St. Louis.

I know it seems odd.

I’ll also admit that we didn’t visit Bellefontaine Cemetery solely for that purpose. We also visited it because well, that’s just what we do. We take our children to cemeteries.

Every year on Memorial Day, my husband has taken our two sons to the Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City (just outside of Las Vegas) in order to visit the gravesite of a fellow Marine and friend of his. He would use the opportunity to explain the importance of the holiday and why this young man is no longer with us. Last year, we decided to take all of the kids. The girls, still too young to truly understand the significance learned at least the tradition of leaving a penny on the headstone of the military person’s grave.

But it isn’t just on birthdays and Memorial Day that our children have visited cemeteries with us. We decided a long time ago that it was something we needed to include in their lives. Here are a few reasons why (in no particular order):

Maintain a Connection to the Past

We love to visit both historic and family cemeteries. There is so much rich history in this nation and that history is because of the people who lived before us. Whenever we spend time among these buried people of the past, we search for family plots, look for the oldest grave, and often stumble upon the graves of children, all of which leads to conversations about who and what came before.

Our children need to understand that they aren’t the first generation, not even close, because it seems like a lot of young people today have that attitude. But we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. No, we may have no familial connection to them, but our stories and experiences are all somewhat related. And the more history our children know, the better. That connection to history grows deeper when they can physically stand in a place that has captured and entombed it.

Ponder the Beauty

In older cemeteries especially, the architecture of chapels and mausoleums are often something to behold. But even some of the headstones are beautiful. They betray the time, care and consideration taken by someone in order to remember a loved one. There’s the sound of the bells from the chapel, the stillness and tranquility all around, the order, the landscaping and maintenance thereof, the mature trees, the robins hopping in the grass, or as we witnessed on our last visit, a fox scurrying between graves. So much to take in and consider, all in a place most people drive by without giving it a second thought.

Expose Them to Death

We live in a culture shielded from death. Ironically we are overloaded with glorified, fictional death in entertainment, but in our daily lives, death and dying are avoided at all cost. It makes us uncomfortable so we send elderly and dying family members to facilities for the experts to handle. We don’t slaughter our own animals anymore. And we put off death as long as possible with the use of medical advancements and other means.

But death is a part of life. Of course I’m not interested in frightening my children, but it is a necessary and needed conversation. And I find that exposing them to death in a cemetery is a gentle way of doing so. As I just mentioned, it’s a beautiful and peaceful place which contains rich history and the stories of the lives of people who mattered. What better way to discuss death than surrounded by such things?

Practice Manners and Respect for the Dead

The last time we visited a cemetery, as we were getting out of the car my 8 year old said, “remember to be quiet and show respect for the dead.” There is a proper way to act in a cemetery just as there is a proper way to act in a church or in a grocery store or in a library, etc. I fear our culture as forgotten this.

It seems as though manners and etiquette have been tossed into the dustbin of history. But I refuse to let such things be forgotten in our house. There is such a thing as cemetery etiquette and there is a way that is right to act among those who have been laid to rest. Here is a very helpful list.

Honor Those Who Sacrificed

On our way home from church recently we stopped at a historic cemetery in Indiana where several prominent politicians are buried among other well-known people from history. There are also 527 Civil War soldiers buried there, both Union and Confederate. We took the time to read several of their names and the states from which they hailed. When we point out these things to our children, they have a chance to think about what the sacrifice and death of these men meant for our nation. Having those conversations at someone’s grave has a deeper impact.

I look forward to they day (hopefully soon!) that we’ll be able to take our children to Arlington National Cemetery. That was the first cemetery I had been to where it truly made me stop and consider. The beauty, the order, the tranquility, but most of all, the sweeping selflessness that surrounded me. It would also give us the chance to visit the gravesite of our great uncle who died while fighting in France, after landing in Normandy and surviving D-Day.

Remember Loved Ones Who Have Died

This is probably the most common reason people visit a cemetery. And it is an important thing to do with our children. While as Christians we recognize that our loved ones aren’t actually there in the ground, their gravesite is a place to honor their memory.

Many of you know the story of our eldest daughter who perished in my womb at 25 weeks. We buried her tiny body and have since taken our children there on numerous occasions. And while we speak of her apart from visiting that gravesite, there is a precious time of remembrance and consideration that takes place when we are physically present where her body lies. It has kindled many conversations about the dignity of the life of the preborn, what it would have been like to have her as a big sister, why she isn’t here with us, where she is now, and on and on.

While these can be hard conversations to have, they are good and beneficial both for myself and my children. It is good to talk about and remember those we have lost.

Point Them to Our Hope in Christ and the Resurrection to Come

The sermon at our church last Sunday was on 1 Corinthians 15, specifically about the resurrection for believers and the new bodies we will receive. While death is an enemy of God and as Christians we ought to view it that way, for Christians it is also a doorway into eternity with the Lord. And because Jesus was raised from the dead, we have hope that our bodies will likewise be raised.

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 1 Corinthians 15:35-38

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 1 Corinthians 15:42-44

Our physical bodies, currently wasting away, will one day perish and be put in the ground like a seed. The perishable seed is sewn, but what will be raised will be imperishable. We will have glorified bodies, perfect, without sin and we will be with Christ.

So right now, as we pass through graveyards filled with the perishable seed that has been sown into the ground, we remind our children that the story isn’t over. For those who are in Christ, they are currently at home with Him, but they will also receive a new body, untouched by sin and death. And that in believing in Christ we have not only the same hope, but the Holy Spirit in us as a guarantee of what is to come.

One of my favorite passages of scripture seems like a good way to conclude here. I have jokingly told my husband for years that I want the epitaph on my grave marker to read: “Here lies Jessi’s tent” because that is what these deteriorating bodies of ours are: temporary tabernacles. We look and long for our heavenly dwelling and being in a cemetery brings that reality all the more into the forefront.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:1-8