I have heard that Rachel Saint and Elisabeth Elliot never shared many details about why they could not get along. Rachel had lost her brother, and Elisabeth her husband, when both men were speared to death by members of the Waorani tribe in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. They both moved to a settlement village with the very people who killed their family members. This act of bravery was watched by the world. They had survived deep loss, they shared a faith, they shared a mission. Surely, they would find a way to get along with each other.

When it was clear that one of them was going to have to go because of the tension between them, Elisabeth Elliot left. I thought about this past when I read the riveting but difficult memoir, We Will Be Jaguars, by Nemonte Nequimo. Nemonte was raised in the village that Rachel Saint essentially ruled with an iron fist.

Nemonte’s memoir invites us into her story, of seeing what it was like to be a child living between two worlds. She was raised with many of her tribe’s traditions and way of life still present: the hunting, the longhouses, the herbs and medicines they made for themselves from the Amazon forest. She was raised knowing of their tribe’s historical warrior strength and violence, and knowing that some of her tribe chose to continue to live uncontacted in the Amazon, while her family joined those who settled nearer to civilization and with the white missionary women among them.

Nemento’s memoir is often heartbreaking. I found the following quote from Elisabeth Elliot apropos. It is from the epilogue of the 1996 edition of Through Gates of Splendor, the story about the deaths of the five men who were speared to death. This is what she said about their life of youthful missionary zeal and actions:

“We are sinners. And we are buffoons.”1

Elisabeth goes on to say that it’s not our level of spirituality that we depend on, because the work is God’s.

God is working. But yes, too often in our humanity, we are sinners, and we are buffoons. Maybe she was thinking about herself. About Jim. And maybe she was thinking about Rachel too.

Nemento’s story starts when Rachel is old, still doing the work in her village. And, I hate to say this, but it is incredibly hard to feel sympathetic to Rachel. She bribes children to come to church, seems overly controlling, doesn’t seem to understand the difference between bringing the gospel and making unnecessary changes in culture, and scares people into submission with dubious claims about the devil.

I found myself thinking, maybe there was a reason Elisabeth could not get along with this woman.

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Nemonte recounts Rachel, along with Dayuma, the female native convert, teaching children about the devil using a picture book. Rachel reminds the kids that the color of the devil’s heart is black, and that he is a trickster, putting dark thoughts into their hearts. Nemonte is startled as she looks at the picture book.

“The devil had bushy eyebrows, a squat nose, and thick lips. He was dark-skinned and hairy. In fact, he looked exactly like my mom’s father, Donasco. I felt a chill on my skin…Mom’s father was the devil.”

What color is God?” Rachel shouted above the thunderous rain.

“White!” all the kids cried. “God is white.” 2

Nemonte talks to her father, Tiri, about when he was a boy, when he first came to the village with Rachel in the earliest days of Rachel’s work. He told Nemonte that Rachel was “Like when a boa mesmerizes a deer by flicking its tongue. The deer becomes weak, trapped. That’s what happened to our people. It was the things she gave us, and the stories she told. Then the sickness killed us.”

Nemonte asked her father if Rachel was a bad person. He answered. “I don’t know if she is bad. She is not one of us.”

What is clear in Nemonte’s story is the great cultural differences that disrupted so much relationally between the missionaries and at least some members of the tribe. Most heartbreaking of all was seeing the great distortions of theology that only led to misunderstandings and great pain and pushed people away.

According to Tiri, his tribe was healthy and strong when they came to the village, but “We weren’t meant to be there; that was not our place…We were not happy there.”

The elders had talked about “killing the white lady and leaving for good, going back to our old lands. But then the sickness crept into our bones. The sickness they called polio. Many died. Other warriors…could not walk or throw a spear anymore. Rachel prayed to the sky. So did Mincaye and Yowe and the rest of them. But their God didn’t listen. ‘Our Wengongi [their word for the Christian God] is angry,’ they said, ‘and this is your punishment for not believing in him’”3

We are buffoons.

Sometimes we say we bring good news to people. And then we teach them that the devil looks like their grandparents. That God is white. That their suffering is God’s direct punishment for a slow coming to faith. Lies that obscure the truth of a gospel of hope.

As I read Nemonte’s memoir, I found myself hungry to hear the perspective of other tribal members–her mother, the converts, those who experienced the cycle of revenge killings prior to their conversion. Nemonte is telling what it was like as the grandchild of the tribe members who were alive when they speared the Americans. Nemonte is sharing her story and perspective, and I wonder how others see it from theirs. My curiosity led me to search for some details outside her memoir. For example, you don’t understand why Steve Saint came and then left again from her memoir. You only see her pain in the coming and going. Perhaps, language and cultural differences muddied some of the theological teachings she heard as a child. Maybe.

But read this reflection from the International Mission Board on the book God in the Rainforest, by Kathryn T. Long.4 Long shows the fragile humanity of these missionary legends.

Long writes about Rachel Saint,

“Rachel showed a kind of ownership over the people, insisting she knew best and refusing to cooperate with other people and organizations. Over the years, a settlement was established and a church formed among the people. Rachel and Dayomæ domineered the Tewæno, the name of their settlement. Long says that the “most painful and toughest to resolve was the reality that Rachel and Dayomæ ran Tewæno in ways that were unhealthy for all its inhabitants—the other [company] workers and Waorani alike”

Rachel’s control over the ministry reached a breaking point. Her company eventually put her on probation from working directly with the tribe. Then they recalled her to the US. At that point, she retired and lived in Ecuador independently until she died.”

Nemonte is hardly the only one who points out the problematic behavior of Rachel Saint.

Nemonte’s story continues to become more heartbreaking as she goes to mission boarding schools where theology is twisted. She is told, “You look so pretty…a true Christian girl!” and “Now sit up straight, like a Christian girl.” Sitting up straight and looking pretty in long dresses has nothing to do with the gospel, but rather cultural expectations; yet she was taught it was so. She was told that “God wanted me to be a certain way. He wanted me to please him, and if I refused the paddle would teach me. He wanted my shoes lined up neatly on the floor, my clothes folded perfectly in the drawers, bedsheets tucked in without creases. He hated the black clumps of hair that clogged the shower drain. My heart was only as clean as my room, my thoughts only as tidy as the covers on my bed.” 5 While she was an older teen at this point, she was paddled on the regular, told that the paddle was God’s hand of punishment.

But the worst part of it all was the sexual abuse and rape she experienced from the husband who, alongside his wife, ran the first boarding school where she lived. This was a chilling and heartbreaking chapter in Nemonte’s life that illustrates a very real danger. There are far too many predators that go into mission work because they have less oversight, less accountability, and more access to vulnerable children. Too often we send the worst into missions instead of our best. And sometimes evil people slip through our systems and go on to do great harm. This couple is an example of evil done in the name of Jesus.

What a terrible, terrible mess. We are buffoons. We are sinners. And there are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

What is so apparent in Nemonte’s account is how this tribe was vulnerable in so many ways. Their way of life, their leadership, their understanding of the world had been disrupted. The encroaching modern world was at their doorstep, and everyone, including the missionaries, were trying to figure out the best way to help this tribe adapt to a changing world. There was no easy path here. But that doesn’t mean mistakes weren’t made. It also doesn’t mean that “missionaries,” like the husband and wife who came to open a boarding school for native children, didn’t come to exploit that vulnerability. It was the perfect opportunity for a predator.

The second half of Nemonte’s memoir is a story of homecoming, of reconnecting to the wisdom of her elders, her traditions, her land. She becomes the face for the fight to protect the Amazon jungle, her people’s lands. And she has a surprising partner in this venture, an American man, Mitch. He had been living in the jungle, helping tribes make water reclamation systems because the oil companies had poisoned their drinking water. They fall in love.

Mitch has a very different approach to Nemonte and her tribe. He is humble, he watches and learns, he respects their traditions, and adapts to life in the jungle with her. Mitch does not have a conflict between himself and Nemonte because he, from what I can tell, is not Christian, so there is not a religious difference in worldview. Christianity does bring conflict. While Jesus commanded us to bring a gospel of hope to others, it immediately bumps up against other worldviews and causes disruption. I have heard from Christians in other cultures, where they are a small minority, how disruptive their faith is because they don’t participate in ceremonies and cultural and family belief systems anymore. (For example, this is true in Japan, where Japanese Christians generally won’t participate in ancestor veneration. This causes painful disruption within families and communities.)

Religious considerations aside, it was touching how Mitch listened well, was slow to judge, and quick to learn about their culture and beliefs. In Nemonte’s storytelling, Mitch was a trustworthy Westerner who truly embraced her and her heritage, while missionaries and oil companies that claimed to be there to help them did not. Nemonte’s book should be read alongside the accounts of missionaries who served in this area. I think it would also be a good book for any missionary to read, because it demonstrates the great dangers ahead when trying to integrate into any new culture.

Eventually Mitch helps Nemonte stand up against the oil companies that would devastate the Amazon and disrupt the lives of not only her tribe, but many others.

Nemonte acknowledges, “I knew how this all had come to be. It was, in large part, Rachel Saint’s doing…I had no idea that inside the longhouse Rachel Saint was orchestrating her final act: facilitating the delivery of these forests to the blue-eyed, Bible-carrying boss of the oil company Maxus Energy.” 6

Maybe, like Mitch, Rachel should have helped them protect their lands, instead of selling it off to a Christian businessman.

I do know this: I wish that the first half of the memoir recounting Nemonte’s story of trying to understand Christianity, trying to convert and hear God’s voice, and going to Christian boarding schools, wasn’t so depressing. It shows the weakness and dangers of mission work. Her relationship with Mitch is in contrast to her earlier experiences with white people. He is respectful, and learns just as much from her as she does from him. He honors her heritage in many ways, in ways that the missionaries Nemonte interacted with would likely have found uncomfortable. When her Aunt meets Mitch, she asks if he is a missionary. When Nemonte says he isn’t, the aunt replies, “That’s good. The missionaries are liars.” (chapter 17)

When Nemonte dreams of a warning and wakes up to see a poisonous snake by Mitch, she insists that he kill and burn it, telling him that others had sent this snake to kill him. The power of sorcerers and shamans in the tribes is lightly touched on in the book, and something that Mitch does not understand. But he responds with trust that Nemonte understands more than him here.

Later, when their first child is born in the rainforest, he follows her tribe’s traditions after birth, honoring her heritage, which to a Western mindset was full of superstition and unnecessary fears.

But to Nemonte, it was the missionaries’ approach to them that was full of fear. As she remembers a poignant scene from her childhood, when Rachel Saint shuts down a traditional dance her people were participating in, she says,

“I spit the memory on the ground. It had always been about fear. I knew that now. The missionaries were afraid of what they didn’t understand. Fearful of our people, of the other.” 7

I don’t have a neat and tidy way to sum this reflection up. Perhaps Elisabeth Elliot’s comment that we are buffoons is the best one after all.

On a personal note, perhaps part of the reason I have found these accounts so riveting is because there was a time in our early marriage when my husband and I momentarily considered a different pathway for ourselves. It was one that would have brought us in contact with tribes, perhaps even tribes such as Nemonte’s. My husband is a talented musician. He was told about a need for someone to pursue a specific PhD that would prepare him for partnering with tribes in their own musical tradition. As tribes had converted to Christianity, no one wanted to take over their song traditions with Western-style worship music. Instead, they hoped for someone who could partner with them by learning about their music and traditions and helping them incorporate their faith into their heritage.

I thought about that opportunity when Nemento described their oral storytelling tradition, and how those stories are alive and changing over time. Their stories and traditions are not static. Tribes like Nemonte’s are no place for atheists, as Nemonte’s memoir touches on real spiritual power and spiritual realities. A Christian coming in doesn’t have to convince anyone that the spiritual world is real, but rather that their God is the true God and mightier than all other powers. I understand a tiny bit how an encounter with God could be incorporated into their oral storytelling and song traditions now.

I also understand even more the risks of such a life, and the need for people who spend a lifetime among a people group to embrace as much of their culture and lifestyle as possible, so as not to distract and confuse with Western habits.

My husband and I did not go into missions. I am sure that, like Elisabeth Elliot, we would have found out our follies and sins as missionaries, just like we have with our feet on American soil. Part of me hopes that if we had gone, we could have been a little more like Mitch, and a whole lot less like Rachel Saint. But perhaps that is just prideful hope.

Elisabeth Elliot pointed out the problem of always trying to “point to something–anything– and say, ‘This works! This is sure!’ But if it is something other than God Himself we are destined for disappointment.” She goes on asking that God keep us from the “seat of the scornful, concentrating solely on the mistakes, the paltriness of our efforts, the width of the gap between what we hoped for and what we got.” Instead, these questions and acknowledgments of the paltriness of our efforts drive us back to the Cross. Elisabeth says, “There is no explanation there—only the revelation of the love of God.”

In the end, missionary heroes flail and disappoint. Our own efforts seem paltry. But the love of God? That is ever-present and with us.

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Years ago, I dropped my oldest off at a public school in South Dakota for an extracurricular activity for the first time, and my heart clenched. I wanted to argue against the wisdom of this step. I watched her walk confidently into the building and prayed that she would meet good people there.

(She did.)

Like many homeschooling mothers, I was used to having my children with me. Even homeschooling classes often had me on campus, if not teaching the class myself. My experience is the same as many other homeschooling mothers: we can oversee our children in a way that other schooling choices don’t give us. That can feel comfortable when our children are small. But there are downsides to this constant oversight as they grow older. I was aware of that, so I always tried to push my children (and my mother’s heart) outside our comfort zone as they grew.

What school option you choose for your children is one of those hot-button issues. I’m not here to tell you that what we are doing or have done is the “right” path for everyone. I can honestly say that no matter what pathway we’ve been on, I’ve had genuine doubts, at times, whether we were choosing “the best” option for our kids. Instead, I want to share our journey and my own reflections as a mother who has chosen different paths at different times. I see the benefits and disadvantages of our various choices.

The Growing Discontent

The year before we moved to Arizona from South Dakota, our two school-aged children were increasingly discontent with their educational choices. It wasn’t because they were education snobs, but living in a small town outside a small city meant fewer options for them. We were near a very small public school where they were involved in sports and extracurricular activities. But they felt that the atmosphere, despite some great teachers and coaches, wasn’t one they wanted to be stuck in 24/7.

They enjoyed homeschooling, but they needed more community. As newbies to the town, it felt hard to break into the homeschooling friendships that had already been established. In the seven years we lived there, we still tended to feel like outsiders or second-tier friends to those who had been established for a long time. Our church had few homeschooling families with kids our ages, and that also hampered our homeschooling friendship building.1 Joel and I had a wonderful two years running a homeschooling community, but there were some good reasons we needed to step away from it. There were other groups in the area, but the homeschooling kids in them often seemed uninterested in making new friends. I never got involved in the drama, but there was also a lot of division in the homeschooling community the years we were there, and that also discouraged me from entering the fray.

Because of those experiences, our school-aged kids asked to try something new if we moved.

The Change

When we moved to Arizona, we promised our two school-aged children they could try out one of the local private schools that had a good reputation for a year. They had mostly been homeschooled, with my older two kids having spent some time in a half-day private school in Oregon before we moved to South Dakota. So this was a big change.

I was aware of some very poor experiences some homeschooling friends had making similar changes. I was also aware of others who had great experiences. So I knew we would just have to play it by ear.

When we rolled into Arizona last August, I was so very sick with morning sickness. I could hardly manage to eat, and every minute felt like an endurance challenge. Our kids had their very first day of school before we had even gotten into our rental. I was thankful that they had a safe place to learn while I survived my pregnancy at home. While my pregnancy was, medically speaking, uneventful, it was still a strain. I remained thankful that our kids had this option for themselves, despite me missing them so much.

They had a great first year. I will admit that I went through some angst trying to decide if I could really handle them going to school this year, as I do miss them so much. But after a lot of thought, we are supporting them in their wish to return.

Here is what I’ve found so far:

Friend groups and growth

In the homeschooling circles we were in, you often had few choices for friends, so our kids tended to just hope that the students in their activities meshed well with them. This wasn’t always bad, and they learned how to get along with various personalities and found some good friends too.

School was different. In their school setting, both of them had to sort through various friendship groups, how to find a place in them, and also how to lean into the better, healthier friendships. (They did well with this.)

Their school community was also unusually friendly to new people (of course, they still had to make a big effort on their side). Even better, both of their grades had solid peers. I am aware that a grade up or down could have given either of them a different experience entirely.

It was also advantageous to switch to private school later for both of our girls, as they already had a fairly established sense of who they were and what their values were before going to school. I think our years at home and the investment in our family culture helped them in regard to a sense of identity and values.

Extra motivation

The classroom setting also gave them extra motivation to keep up with school and to get the best grades they could. They were motivated at home too. But certainly I think every student benefits from learning from various adults, not just a parent.

I am thankful that our oldest had many opportunities to be taught by other adults before she graduated as a homeschooler.

Confidence building

All of the ups and downs of last year in full-time school ultimately helped build our kids’ confidence as they stepped out of their comfort zone and found they could more than handle the pressures of high school or classroom drama.

I’ve always mothered by the principle that I should encourage our children to pursue their interests by stepping outside their comfort zone (or gently expanding their window of tolerance). As our children have gotten older, they’ve told me how helpful it has been to be gently nudged outside what they felt comfortable doing and having the courage to try hard things. Going to a new school with no prior relationships was a real step of courage, and I was thankful to see them thrive.

Leadership growth

Our high schooler has been given the opportunity to lead in various ways, and our middle schooler is on a leadership team this year as well. These types of opportunities aren’t always easily found in our homeschooling world, and I am thankful that they are being encouraged in their leadership abilities early.

The not as positive aspects

Sleep

I was curious if having our kids in school would change my mind on this, but after a year, I still think that most schools, including our kids’, start too early and go too long. There is evidence that starting even a little later in the morning is helpful in many ways to both students and teachers. With most parents working, the long hours make sense for many families. But if we just isolate what works best for children and teens, evidence often points to the need for a later start time. Personally, we found our children became more fatigued and tired out as the year went on, and their immune system took a hit because of it.

Giving up my educational framework

To make private school work for us, we did have to give up on some of our literature-focused, classical-influenced education model. I still believe in those principles. As AI becomes a bigger and bigger presence, Charlotte Mason and Classical ideas of teaching stand out as even more important to me. I am very concerned about young students today and how much screen time, and now AI, can derail their ability to think deeply and well. While I am thankful for teachers who have continued to give our kids excellent books to read, their school as a whole isn’t trying to go along the same lines of what I did at home, and that does feel like a loss. I would say that our oldest, who graduated homeschooled, because of excellent resources, and wonderful outside teachers along with what we did at home, had a superior education in subjects like history and literature. I also feel the loss of our excellent writing program that our eldest did.

Homeschooling as a lifestyle rather than just an educational choice

There are two very valid ways to homeschool. We had friends years ago who lived in Portland whose children were all put in a variety of schools. Some attended public, some private Catholic (they were Protestant, but this school was the best option for them), and one child was brought home to be homeschooled for several years. Their model was much more about picking the educational model that worked best for each child.

Other homeschoolers concentrate on picking good educational material at home, but their life is much more about having a specific lifestyle. After a year of our children at school, I’ve realized how much I was a homeschooler who also loved the lifestyle: The poems at lunch, the soft start to the day, the flexibility in our schedule, the long hours reading together, and most of all, the time we spent as a family learning together. Yes, I miss this. More than I even want to admit.

People are complicated, and not everyone is good

Listen. This is true of homeschool communities too. And churches. School just gives us another opportunity to remember that people are complicated and not everyone has good intentions. I won’t say much about this aspect, but we were given reasons to remember this as well.

Safety

Finally, there are two safety aspects that weighed heavily on me. One is that sexual abuse is an issue in schools. Both student-to-student and teacher-to-student. The more conservative statistics I found tell us that around 10% of students disclose sexual misconduct by adults K-12th grade. But other research tells us that students were “seven times more likely than adults to sexually assault another student.” This is a serious issue that most schools are not handling well. And then there is gun violence. This, on its own, is a pressing issue that made me hesitate to put our children in school. I am not going to sugarcoat the impact of having our children have to go through training that included information such as them having to choose whether to sit quietly holding a book over their heart, hoping not to be shot, or trying to get to a better hiding spot.

It is unacceptable that we have to fear this.

I understand why parents have pulled their children out to homeschool them over safety issues alone.

Long-term plans?

We are still taking this a year at a time. While we have chosen a smallish private school, there are some worthy public schools in our state as well, and I certainly would never mind going back to homeschooling. Here in Arizona, we have the distinct advantage of getting state funds to put toward school supplies and classes as homeschoolers, which would help make their education robust if we ever returned to it. (It currently helps pay for their private school.)

As our school year starts again (it is early here!), I find myself grateful for the opportunities that our children have found for themselves here. We continue to find our own way of holding on to our bookish values and family culture while our children spread their wings in new ways.

There is no “right” path for everyone in education. And I am finding that to be true for us as we’ve chosen different paths in different seasons too.

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A mom whose children are all grown and raised now told me recently, “I was always so happy when I found out I was pregnant. But then I would think, ‘Oh! But the lack of sleep!’”

Oh, the lack of sleep indeed.

I asked my Dad during the early weeks after the birth of our last child, how he handled his own lack of sleep for so long. He was a truck driver and often got only a handful of hours of sleep at night.

He told me he really didn’t need that much sleep for most of his life, and he was fine.

But I remember the weeks and months of his red-rimmed eyes and obvious fatigue from his grueling work hours. I think he underplayed his experience. I call long-term sleep deprivation sleep torture because it is.

We don’t bat an eye at the strength people have to muster for their ordinary trials and tribulations. They are unremarkable in human experience.

But just because facing sleep deprivation, long hours of work, heartbreak, loneliness, traumas, losses of various kinds, and the death of loved ones, is normal doesn’t mean that it is easy. It takes real bravery and resilience to face.

I think of the single women I know who choose to open their homes and lives to others even though they work long hours supporting themselves and struggle with loneliness and a desire for more. I think of the husband I know who lost his wife to cancer, who is now solo parenting and rebuilding life after loss. I remember the women I interviewed who faced years of terrible spousal abuse, but who got out, only to find themselves stuck being abused through the court system as they battled over custody of their children.

Just within our sphere of contact, there are hundreds of stories of people’s everyday strength and bravery occurring quietly without fanfare. I’m sure they often think they are weak. And all of us have our weak moments. But I wonder if they are able to recognize their strength too?

I haven’t yet watched the new movie, The Odyssey, but I am glad that this epic story is getting renewed attention. I have a respect for ancient literature and what it says about humanity. But I don’t think the original epic tales are discounting the courage it takes to survive an ordinary life.

I think part of the reason we like tales of epic heroics, of long journeys facing various dangers, of superheroes fighting bad guys, of knights fighting dragons, is because they reflect an inner strength every human must find to face life.

In recent years, my family has enjoyed watching K-dramas (Korean dramas), and we were interested in how the characters would often say what sounded like “fighting” to each other with a smile of encouragement and a raised fist, whenever they had to face something difficult (talking to a boss, going for a job interview, a sports game, etc.). You can read about how the English word “fighting” was adapted to “hwaiting” in Korean here and how it is used as encouragement and is similar to wishing someone good luck.

My family has sometimes taken this on, saying to each other, “Fighting!!” when we are off to do something nerve-wracking. I am not Korean, so I can’t say what it means exactly culturally in Korea. For me, it’s been a small way that we can encourage each other to keep strong while we face whatever obstacle is in front of us.

A fighting spirit is helpful for facing this world.

Whenever I think of another night of broken sleep, or the friend weary from a long day of work, or the mother or father up late at night worrying over their children, I think of the heroic strength it takes to face the slog of work and hardship this life brings us while still finding joy in it too.

I think that there are many normal people around us who are heroic, facing burdens often unspoken of, who are fighting just to make do. I have seen the decades of work all put in to support themselves and their families, the parents of medically fragile children who never have a day off, the mothers who sacrifice so much to bring children into this world. I’ve been told of the pain and seen the resiliency shown by widows and widowers, those happily or unhappily single, the divorced.

Our stories aren’t terribly unique. They aren’t rare. But that doesn’t mean that our lives have not taken real courage and strength to live. And so, like a K-drama character, I say as we continue to face whatever burdens we face, “Fighting!” May you continue to find that inner strength for our everyday sorrows and joys.

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Fierce.

That is a one-word descriptor of many of the women I’ve known through the years. I have a pattern of befriending strong women, and I think that is because strong women surrounded me from my earliest days, both in my family and in my community.

My life was shaped by being a homeschooler when it was a strange new trend to most of the world. That meant my early life was well-populated by pioneering, first-generation homeschooling mothers. I don’t know if they recognized their strength. They had a wide variety of personalities, but when pressed, they all had a spine of steel. I respect that.

It should not be surprising to find strength in women. But many of the women I knew might be the first to teach a doctrine of inherent feminine weakness to others.

I think they are wrong. They were stronger than they thought, and so were the women they befriended.

I see their strength even when I disagree, sometimes strongly, with their choices or how they taught womanhood.

You had to have intense convictions to decide to be a pioneering homeschooling parent when it was rare and almost unheard of. There is a lot to say about the early days of homeschooling in our nation, the burdens and pains, joys and accomplishments. One has to untangle the fruit and the thorns grown in the homeschooling community from that era. I have my own story and some complicated feelings, but I have always been thankful for how they blazed a pathway that let my children have more options for their schooling.

One thing is certain: it was a movement that never would have happened without the dogged strength of the mothers who carried the movement on their shoulders.

My corner of the world was influenced by being in the Northwest. Oregon tended to draw independent thinkers, and the mothers I knew were among them. Unlike the southern homeschooling culture, none of the homeschooling mothers I knew used the soft, baby voice that the Duggar family brought national attention to. They had sterner voices than that. But they still shared the same resources and influences.

Before the internet, books, conferences, and magazines reigned supreme. Books such as Mary Pride’s The Way Home, and magazines such as The Teaching Home gave the same inspirational support that websites and social media influencers do for tradwives today. Some joined Bill Gothard’s ATI program, which had its own culture that impacted not only the homeschooling culture in general, but also seeped into evangelical churches. Some formed private homeschool groups that could be as cliquey and hard to break into as high school friend groups.

What I learned from these women in my growing-up years was an embodied learning. I think I first learned to love what we now call “real food,” or “slow food,” when my mom bought a grain grinder and started making fresh bread from fresh flour. It was all the rage with homeschoolers then. I still remember the first time my mom served me a hot-from-the-oven piece of bread topped with butter and homemade strawberry jam made from local Oregon berries. It was a revelation. The scent of wheat bread baking is still one of my favorite smells, even though I am now gluten-free. My parents joked about becoming hippies, their own generation’s association with whole food eating, but all I knew as a kid was that I liked the bread that emerged from the oven.

Books played an important part of my homeschooling childhood, and I carried that love with me into my adult years. One of my favorite bookish times was sitting by the fireplace with a crackling fire while reading a favorite book, the aroma of pine surrounding me. That bookish tradition carried through to my homeschooling years, building on the love of books I learned at home.

I also remember the way my stomach would drop and how I would clench my teeth when I was at my friend’s house, and they would be harshly disciplined in a way that didn’t happen at my house. This, I was told by many, was the Lord’s way. I would watch their mom with a grim, sometimes tired, expression on her face, bring the erring child to a bedroom for a spanking. I was never “switched” at home, but the whistle a young thin branch makes when a child is hit was still part of the soundtrack of my growing-up years. I do not recommend it. My friend or her sibling would reappear with a stubbornly trying-not-to-cry expression as they emerged. Sometimes I would be shown bruises. The books passed around taught parents to break the will of their children via spanking. I saw shame in my friend’s faces, but their wills remained intact.

Speaking of shame, it hung over us especially regarding how we dressed. It was overt. “You should feel ashamed for ever making a man stumble,” was spoken to us by older women in the church who nervously and constantly evaluated what others wore. We were diminished in value because one wrong outfit could prove you a harlot at heart. Yet, we were also given a false sense of power, because even the outfit we picked out could save our fellow brothers (that turned out to be a lie). The shame dug deep, and we all faced up to it in our own way.

A siren song sung over us was that of the biblical womanhood movement of that era. It was heady stuff. It both dismissed a woman’s contribution to the greater world, while also building women up to believe that if they sacrificed, prayed, submitted, and lived well enough, they could heal their marriages and ensure their children’s godly and happy futures.

If only it were that straightforward.

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Distrust whatever and whoever promises you the world and the fulfillment of your deepest desires here on this earth. I remind myself this because like the mothers before me, I want to believe I can control the future happiness of my family and children if I am only doing my part well enough.

Under this siren song that spoke to many mothers, I had the soundtrack of them talking with me and to each other as I grew. They cared deeply about becoming godly, talking earnestly about waking up in the middle of the night to pray and read Scripture. There were exceptions, but I believe they loved their children and husbands wholeheartedly. They eagerly read the newest books from trusted sources on how to homeschool better, how to submit to their husbands better, how to become better women of God.

No one should doubt their earnestness.

They were earnestly against women working outside the home. Against women getting together too often (“Women gossip,” I was told). Against feminism. Against the public schools. Against feeling our feelings too much. Against women gaining power.

Most of these women were against so many things women often do in our modern society. But many of them stood their ground in the family life they were trying to build. They were the neck that turned the head (the husband). Some had dragged their husbands into “taking charge,” pushing him toward more involvement in the family by telling him he was the center and leader of it. They believed sincerely he was the leader, even when they were the power behind the throne.

Many had left promising careers and possibilities to follow this pathway of staying at home, bearing sometimes many children, and homeschooling. It took a strong will to do all of that, and to feel the weight of it all on your shoulders. Many expressed deep contentment and happiness in that pathway.

Once at church a friend had a severe panic attack, and I was impressed with the way the mothers flocked to her, gently aiding her until her body calmed down. I then felt slapped when one of them muttered and shook her head in judgment as she walked away, “She’s only doing it for attention.” It reminded me that sharing weaknesses or emotions can be unsafe, even when others act kindly to your face.

But also, after I lost my firstborn when I was 21, one of the older moms cornered me at church to see how I was doing. “You know, you can take meds if you need to,” she told me seriously. Medicating grief is not the best approach for me. But I recognized that she was trying to reassure me that despite our community’s general disapproval of medication for mental health, she wanted me to have access to it. I appreciate that heart.

We didn’t have Bible studies, but we would have women’s meetings that centered on being wives and mothers. I remember one of the women reading to us an article with tears in her eyes. It went something like this: if you manage to have the perfect house, your children are perfectly cared for, you are able to feed them homemade food and have the laundry done on time and neatly folded, and you are able to keep your husband happy, then and only then can you consider adding in any sort of job. An older mother confronted a young mother who was learning how to run a business online. That was not the sort of mindset mothers should have.

It was a time period when many could economically survive on one income. And so many did.

My family pushed against the limitations these strong women with strong convictions preached to us. I wore sleeveless tops and jeans and generally followed fashion trends, and a percentage of our community was very judgmental about it and made us aware of it. (“You know she only got him because of what she wears,” another mom warned my mother-in-law. An insult to both my husband and myself, when you think about it. Her daughters never showed their shoulders or collarbones.)

My mom worked part-time. My sister and I went to college. Some of our friends, who are some of the smartest people I know, were kept at home as stay-at-home daughters. My mom wouldn’t let me do the same.

The men, as the leaders of our community, of course, played a large role in all of these decisions. But knowing many of these families, I think it’s safe to say that often the strong mothers of the family made it all possible and enforced it.

As many of us got married, these older mothers tried to infuse our future with their values and hopes and dreams too. They passed on to us the books that influenced them, many of them written by Doug and Nancy Wilson, among others. Our wedding and baby showers were full of advice that varied greatly. They tried to share their love of being with children, a value I share to this day. Some gave advice that was damaging. It’s been over twenty years, but I still wince at some of those experiences. Like one friend whose future mother-in-law lectured her in front of their guests on making her husband sexually happy so he wouldn’t use p*rn. I listened to an angry tirade over women’s inability to be submissive at a wedding shower in a sort of uncomfortable trance. These stick out as glaring examples of harmful ideology that spoke lies more than truth.

I have a complicated history with the past, seeing the good and the bad done in our homeschooling culture. Some of that is simply generational. Some of the bad was because of a legalistic framework that hurt many, yet that framework is still beloved by many. But I grimace when people think the women I grew up around were simply weak. They were nothing of the sort.

Most of all, these were women of hope, and I will never argue with hope. We need hope, and our mothering should be infused with it. But what shapes our hope is important. The 1980s-1990s homeschooling culture had a militant hope, one that asked much of the women in its grasp and also promised them the whole world if they could only do their part well enough.

I can’t speak for these women now. This is what I know — some are grandmothers of many, happy still in their pathway, and watching their sons and daughters continue their homeschooling legacies. Others have more complicated stories. Some of them are divorced now. Some of them have complicated relationships with their adult children. Some left their stay-at-home convictions and went back to work or back to college. Some of them have left their faith completely, feeling that what they held was a house of cards in the end. I know of women who wrote books and taught others how to be the best homemakers and submissive wives, who are now in hiding from their abusive husbands. Too many women secretly bore the pain of abuse for years. And many are somewhere in the middle, holding onto what was good from that time period and trying to improve what was not.

I am thankful for their example of strength, and for their influence and support of my desire to be there for my children as much as I possibly could. Like them, I never regret a single minute I’ve had with my children. I am more than grateful for their pioneering spirit in fighting for homeschooling to be legal, because I benefited from it, and so did my children. I can say this better after working through some of the harm others’ legalistic worldview imposed on me. I want to extend the grace that I hope my generation’s children will extend to us.

I am thankful that my parents, although influenced by this world, still tried to make a stand against the worst aspects, and taught me to be okay not trying to live up to everyone else’s impossible standards. (I can’t say that the negative aspects of this culture had no impact on us, because it did.)

Homeschooling isn’t the Promised Land that we were promised. Or perhaps, if we read the Old Testament and find the wars in the Promised Land, the infighting, the generations who did whatever was right in their own eyes, and the impossibility of finding peace and agreement, it’s just that the promised land isn’t Eden.

Life didn’t turn out the way many first-generation homeschoolers thought it would. That’s especially true for those left without a husband, a home, or healthy relationships with their children. But even for those who are still happily married with healthy relationships with their adult children, many (though not all) recognize that a lot of the baggage we carried during those years was an unnecessary burden.

That is all true.

But let no one consider these women weak.

They are some of the strongest women I know.

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Last year I got to go to Germany on a whirlwind of a trip. The year before I was able to visit Scotland with my husband. Besides Canada, these were the first international trips I’ve taken, and they were not only so much fun, but they were genuine highlights of my life.

They also taught me to appreciate my own country better. Not because of any negative connotations or experiences in other countries, but because they gave me a new lens to see what was right in front of me.

As we approach an important landmark Fourth of July, I wince at the deep divides happening in our country right now. I grieve for the continuing splintering of our society that reaches into our churches. I am perplexed by an increasingly bewildering political situation. There is much to be concerned about. It is concerning because we truly have a unique country that is worth preserving.

So how did international travel help me see that more?

Scotland was a ministry-related trip, and what we loved most about our trip were the people we met. I was fascinated by how we all spoke English, yet cultural differences still became apparent in how we used the same words. I loved the good-natured but sharp ribbing we observed and were subjected to on our trip. I laughed so much.

We were also able to arrive a few days early to do some sightseeing and fulfilled our wish to see castles and Edinburgh and a highland lake tour. Edinburgh was even more beautiful and magical than I had been expecting. If you ever get the chance to go to Scotland, do it. I want to go back. We were only in the country for ten days, but it left a mark on my heart.

We also met Americans who had transplanted there, who were raising families in a new country. It was an exciting viewpoint. While we weren’t looking to move overseas, we asked ourselves what it would look like to do so, and if we could envision ever making a similar choice. We could see the goodness available in life in Scotland.

Germany was a whirlwind of a trip, and I again was struck with beautiful churches and buildings that have a long history and lore. As an American, in such a young country, old buildings have always fascinated me. We walked and walked through so many cities, and I only wished that our country was more walkable. There was so much beauty and goodness here, and once again, the people we met were the highlight of the trip for me.

When I was back on American soil, I learned to see the abundance that we have here in a new way. Talking to a lovely Scottish woman who traveled to the United States regularly and brought back American candy and cereal for young friends made me think about our grocery stores in a new way. I’m someone who thinks we’ve gotten things a bit wrong in the United States with our food supply. I listen with envy to friends visiting Italy about how much better, fresher, and cleaner the food is there. But as I listened to my new Scottish friend talk about her nephew’s awe over the abundance of food in grocery stores here, it gave me a new lens of a child’s joy through which to see our country. I had never seen the upside to our food culture here before, and I’m thankful for that glimpse.

The United States is a large and abundant country. In Scotland, even though I theoretically knew it to be true before going, to actually experience a country where you were mere hours away from other countries and a short flight away from many more just blew my mind. I had a weird mix of envy and feeling nearly claustrophobic at the same time. Travel time was viewed differently there. A drive across the entire country seemed to take nearly as long as a drive across one of our sprawling cities at rush hour (and that’s only a small exaggeration).

After we moved to South Dakota from Oregon, we would travel back at least once a year to see family. Driving through so many miles of our country gave us a new appreciation for the vastness of it. We are a large country. I knew that, of course. But I appreciate that fact more now, and feel the burden of responsibility we carry toward it too.

As we close in on the Fourth, most of all, I feel the burden of responsibility we have as a country to protect and better fulfill the ideals our country was founded on. Our constitution declares:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, Insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Justice, domestic tranquillity, promoting the general welfare of our nation and people, securing the great blessings of liberty for ourselves and our children – I believe most Americans still value these deeply, even as rising tensions between political parties grow.

Our founders understood that the country they were founding was an experiment that only time would prove. Ben Franklin quipped it was “A republic, if you can keep it.” George Washington in his first Inaugural address, told the American people that the “preservation of the sacred fire of liberty” as well as the “destiny of the republican model of government” was “entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

This is true of all nations that are shaped by and are shaping their government. Yet Americans have been uniquely tasked with holding the future of our country collectively in our hands since the very first breath of the country took place. Other countries have the weight of a long history on their side; we have the weight of being a young one still tasked with seeing the experiment through.

As a Christian, I don’t think we carry more of God’s love than other nations. There is neither Jew, nor Greek, American nor Mexican, but we are all one in Christ. As a person, I hope to see more of the world and grow to love the world better through it. I think living outside our country would be an exciting possibility.

And as an American, seeing more of the world has only heightened my understanding of the uniqueness of our country and my desire to see it preserved as our founders hoped, and for our ideals to be more fully realized.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

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It’s been absolutely so fun and interesting to read all of your comments on my two-part reflection series on Laura Ingalls Wilder after reading Prairie Fires. Some of you have also shared more resources to learn even more about her, and they are now on my to-be-read list. Read part one here, and part two here.

After spending an inordinate amount of time writing part two of that series last week, here is a fun little bit of our life this summer that I wanted to share with you all.

Life is beautiful, but life is also hectic. Our oldest has thankfully been driving her sisters back and forth to various things this summer when her schedule allows, as our newborn is not a fan of the car. My husband is maintaining his normal work hours and coming home to help fill in the gaps. And I am remembering what it’s like to wake up with blurred eyes from lack of sleep, while also treasuring every newborn day there is. I am now at the point of adding various commitments and life back into our schedule and learning to balance it all.

There have been peaceful aspects of our summer too: the kids sleeping in and catching up on much needed rest, our newborn surrounded by his sisters as he smiles and they smile back at him, time for them to read and play games, and bake. I’ve just started baking sourdough again.

One of the most peaceful, and to me, meaningful parts of our summer has been our bacon book club. Most Saturdays, my husband makes a big plate of bacon and we gather around to enjoy its greasy goodness while talking through a book we are reading together as a family book club. (We also have a family read-aloud book, but this is our first time trying to format it as a book club together, with us all reading the book on our own time.)

There is nothing fancy about our bacon book club. I don’t have big agendas or plans for it except to talk about a book we are all enjoying, drawing out various opinions, and thinking about how our reaction to the book reflects our own experiences or thoughts.

It’s been a great touchpoint for our family. Yes, even with everyone having to share books to get the reading done, and various petty annoyances and distractions, it’s offered a bonding and insightful time for us to share as a family.

Our family book club has been a good reminder that making time for meaningful moments doesn’t have to be long, Instagram-beautiful, or perfect. It can be simple.

I think that’s true outside of family time, too. Our hospitality, our friendships, and our community involvement do not need to be fancy either. That’s good news for all of us who want rich relationships but are poor on time, energy, and sleep.

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“I can still plainly see the grass and the trees and the path winding ahead, flecked with sunshine and shadow and the beautiful golden hearted daisies scattered all along the way.” 1Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in a newspaper column. She recounted Almanzo’s habit of bringing her beautiful wildflower bouquets from the woods and fields. He knew how to speak to her love of beauty, and she carried a love of nature’s beauty her entire life.

In part one, I briefly discussed Laura’s younger years, years that were filled with deprivation, poverty, hard work, and disasters. Today we look at her adult years, which are also filled with hardship.

But hardships and suffering are not the only aspects of one’s life. I feel this strongly because of my life experience. When I have made a timeline of the various challenges and crises of my life, I have been surprised by how consistently hardship came into my life. I’m surprised because under the blank stare of that list, it could appear that my life was one just full of difficulties. As important as it is to acknowledge the pain and tragedies, it is just as important to acknowledge the beauty and joy of it too.

Wilder does that. How is it that she had enough resilience to get through so many difficulties? I believe one of them is her ability to see the beauty around her. Her love of the prairie is rooted in its beauty.

In her column, she wrote, “It is the simple things of life that make living worth while, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest and living close to nature. There are no hothouse blossoms that can compare in beauty and fragrance with my bouquet of wild flowers.”2

She knew that her life, up to that point, had not been one that lent itself to the beauty of hothouse flowers, but she was okay with it. She found beauty in the wildness of her wild flowers, and living close to nature. She found meaning in the love, duty, and work ethic by which she lived.

And she would need to find meaning because her adult life continued to have many difficulties.

Laura’s Adult Life

Laura and Almanzo married with a bright future in front of them in South Dakota. Almanzo came from a family that very successfully farmed in Minnesota. Using what he had learned from his father, he invested in his homestead (buying expensive machinery) and built them a beautiful home. Laura, finally, after a childhood of poverty, could have a stable future.

If only.

The next few years would bring disaster after disaster in perhaps an even more compressed timeline than the ones that befell her family growing up. In the end: they would lose their land, their house would burn down, they would be without resources, Laura and Almanzo would lose their one month old infant son suddenly, Almanzo and Laura would almost die from diphtheria, leaving the once strong and confident Almanzo with long-term disabilities, and they would have to make a desperate flight to Florida, hoping for a better life there, only to return to South Dakota, and then make their own covered wagon journey from South Dakota to Missouri.

The amount of suffering they faced within the first few years of their marriage is achingly obvious. Almanzo would later tell their daughter, “My life has been mostly disappointments.”3 Many of their young dreams would never come true.

The prairie girl would live out the rest of her life in Mansfield, Missouri4 (this accounted for the vast majority of her life). This was a sundown town (African Americans were not allowed in the city limits once the sun went down) and I’ve seen very little about Laura’s understanding of what that meant socially and morally.

It was here, through pure determination, frugality, and hard work, they were able to keep a claim of land and a cabin, although they faced years of financial uncertainty and also had to live in town for some time so that Almanzo could do jobs more suited for his disabilities while Laura worked to bring in income in various ways as well.

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A Better Life

Their life in Missouri, after years of hard work, was better, although still challenging. Eventually, Laura would become deeply involved in the community through various women’s clubs, and her leadership skills would emerge. They would build a better house on their land. She would take a position helping farmers get more favorable loans (government-funded), and would also write for the newspaper. Her in-laws would buy their city house for them, freeing them up financially.

Their daughter, Rose, would grow up and eventually leave to become a successful and even famous author and reporter. Much later in life, Laura would choose to write her now famous Little House series, prompted by their financial needs and her daughter, who saw the worth in the family stories.

The Move Away from the Prairie was the Right One

Years later, after her success as an author, she would return to South Dakota to visit her sisters. Her adult life had been difficult, and they nearly faced disaster when they first moved to Missouri, and their savings went missing. But she would find her sisters’ lives much worse than hers, and she would realize that they had made the right decision when they moved away. Charles Ingalls, Laura’s “Pa”, seeing only a life of continuing struggles in South Dakota, had also wanted to move on after hearing of opportunities in Oregon. But Caroline had finally put her foot down and said no to another move.

How it must be tempting to think that just one more move or trying one more thing could be the key. Ironically, Laura found that to be true and would live for many decades in Missouri until she passed away, relatively comfortable (then wealthy once her books were published). Life is a gamble. Maybe Oregon would have given the Ingalls family better resources. Or maybe, like many others, they would have never reached it, but perished on the long, hard trail there.

Her Legacy

The Ingalls family, and Laura herself, would become a symbol. They were a symbol of the pioneer spirit, hard work, independence, and the dream of wide-open land. Her daughter Rose was the one who infused Laura’s writing with its pioneer idealism to fit specific political goals. (Side note: Rose was quite the character, likely had a severe mental disorder, and held some iffy political beliefs.)

The truth is that her books were always written and published as “fiction” even though they are heavily based on her life. I believe Laura and Rose argued they were true stories, despite the series being a heavily edited version of Laura’s life with important details changed and invented dialogue, because the heart of the story was real. They didn’t view any changes as changing anything essential.

It’s important that we don’t use their complex story to elevate hard work as a cure-all because it wasn’t even true for the Ingalls, but we also can’t deny that they worked hard and endured much. Wilder’s books also softened the stigma of poverty. Her family faced poverty with dignity and love of family. Frazer writes, “She transformed poverty into pride, showing readers the heroism of endurance. With Shaker-like purity, she celebrated every day under shelter, every warm fire, and every mouthful of nourishment. Not by accident are her books about ‘little’ houses. They are also about making the best of little food and fewer choices.”5

As a nation facing depressions and wars and struggling families, America found in the Ingalls’ story some relief from the shame of that struggle. On the flip side, America, learning to love the Ingalls family through Laura’s edited version of events, also framed their story without the needed context of loss, violence, and war that Native Americans experienced during that time frame.

Her Legacy of Endurance

“It’s Hell”

Laura truly believed she had a wonderful childhood, as quoted in part one. But she was also well aware of the hardships they faced and the toll they took. It seemed difficult for her to always face the pain of the past. She would tell Rose about her issues with sleeping if she tried to write too late in the evening “ ‘I can’t work…in the evening,’ she told Rose, ‘because if I do, I can’t sleep, My brain goes right on remembering and it’s H–.’” 6

The strong language Wilder uses indicates that while she had the fondest memories of her childhood, she also found parts of their poverty-stricken life difficult to face. I don’t think it is a contradiction to see one’s life as one of beauty, but also great loss and trauma. Laura seemed to see both sides of her life.

So how did she get through all of these difficulties?

Love of Beauty

Wilder’s lifelong love of beauty, as mentioned above, gave her a different lens for her life. She didn’t just see the hunger or worry; she saw the wide-sweeping vistas and the prairie flowers. While I grew out of my pre-teen idealistic views of living the “simple” life of a pioneer, I can still relate to Wilder’s appreciation of the beauty of nature on a personal level. I have been buoyed by the snow on dark pine trees, encouraged by the glittering stars above my house, amazed at the way prairie grass looks like waves in a sea when the wind blows it, and I have been comforted by the sweet sound of birds outside our house.

My own tragedies made me lean into the goodness and beauty of life, including those found in nature. I understand her need to look for beauty every day.

Stoic Acceptance

Wilder emphasized to her daughter Rose as they worked on editing By the Shores of Silver Lake, “the stoicism of a family ‘inclined to be fatalistic, to just take things as they came. I know we all hated a fuss, as I still do.’”7

How do you face overwhelming odds and potential death by blizzard or starvation? Stoic acceptance of whatever may come. There were many harsh edges to their lives, and bringing stoic acceptance to it, I imagine, helped them face hardships without falling prey to the insanity that befell others around them.

Almanzo died when Laura was in her early 80s after a long life together but that does not mean she was ready to say goodbye. She held onto him, wrapping her arms around his body after she found him, not wanting to let go. She would say later that “at times I can hardly bear it, but one has to bear what comes.”8

One has to bear what comes. That is hard-earned wisdom.

But that does not mean that her life was emotionless or without joy. She would describe her father as “always jolly.”9 Her books capture the spirit of a child’s sense of adventure and cheerfulness. I think that combination of joy and stoic acceptance is part of what carried her through.

Love

Fraser comments that, “If the fiction was gauzier than the reality, that was because it was inspired by her devotion to her parents.” 10Wilder had a deep, abiding love for family, and as she said in her column, it’s the simple things, such as love, that make life worthwhile. She showed a lifelong appreciation for her parents: Wilder loved her father’s humor, and love of music and wild places. She wrote about her mother’s contentment and forbearance in the face of poverty and the way she made a home for them no matter where they landed. Most of all, she showed through her writing the love her family had for each other.

She and Almanzo would give that same love and support to their only daughter, Rose. Their relationship was much more complex, not merely because Rose would become integral to her mother’s writing career, but also because Rose was a chaotic person who was at best a troubled person, and at worse a bit of a psychopath. (Rose wrote to her mother about being puzzled growing up by people who had consciences and questioning why she didn’t have one. Some of her behavior seemed without conscience.) For all of Rose’s flaws, Laura and Almanzo showed love and support for her throughout a contentious, although interdependent relationship.

Love brightened a hard life and gave meaning to all the work they did for each other.

The Harder, but Brighter Story

While Caroline Fraser’s book, telling some of the more difficult and depressing aspects of the Ingalls’ life, has created a lot of waves and dismay, it also shows us something surprising. The Ingalls’ story was full of even more endurance than we knew. Wilder’s love for the prairie was rooted in a relatively brief span of her life, as she spent most of her life far away from it. Wilder’s life is not sweet or sanitized, but complex and, at times, deeply distressing. Nothing was perfect about her life.

Yet for all of that, her life was one of appreciation for the hard work of her parents, and then the work she and Almanzo put into building their lives. It was a life centered on love, duty, beauty, and family.

Fraser said it best: “If Wilder’s life was triumphant–and it was–it was a different kind of triumph than we are accustomed to recognizing…If we listen to her, we can hear what she was telling us. Life in frontier times was a perpetual hard winter. There was joy–riding ponies, singing hymns, eating Christmas candy–but it was fleeting. There was heroism, but it was the heroism of daily perseverance, the unprized tenacity of unending labor…Her voice speaks to us of those people and their feelings for the land. It speaks not about policy or politics but about her parents, her sisters, her husband, and her love for them. It speaks of her delight in nature, those glorious moments on untouched open prairies, watching the geese fly overhead.”11

Fraser’s book is eye-opening to troubling aspects of Wilder’s life, but I think we should also remember the little girl who ran on prairie grass, who gathered flowers, who loved and worked for those she loved from the age of nine into her old age, and who never forgot what it meant to live a life appreciating what she called the simple things. Those simple things — love, duty, work, rest, and living close to nature — can build a life worth living.

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There was a brief period in the 90s as a young girl when I was swept away by the Little House on the Prairie books, and envied them for their adventure. My life seemed tame by comparison.

An older Laura Ingalls Wilder would agree with my childhood perspective. After her first book was published, she said, she “began to think what a wonderful childhood I had had.” She points to how she was able to see the “whole frontier, the woods, and the Indian country of the great plains, the frontier towns, the building of railroads in wild, unsettled country, homesteading and farmers coming in to take possession.” (13)

Wilder lived through an important era of American history never to be replicated (albeit an era riddled with controversy). She understood that her childhood experience was not being replicated in the generations after her. “It seemed to me that my childhood had been much richer and more interesting than that of children today, even with all the modern inventions and improvements.” (13)

As a child, I experienced the wonder that she sought to instill in her readers.

What is surprising to me now is that a childhood where she faced death by starvation, years of deprivation, instability, terrible illnesses, loss after loss, unstable adults, waking to a man trying to molest her, and working from the age of nine to help support her family, was a “wonderful childhood.”

I’ll be honest. While my infatuation with “prairie life” was a short time in my life, I was still taken aback by how different the full story of the Ingalls was. It temporarily burst the bubble of fond memories I had for the books. But the real story, full of much more grit and complexity, is also one of love and endurance, and even much beauty. As a child I needed the children’s version of her story. But perhaps there is something just as valuable for adults to take from her real story. She had that “outrageous hope” I’m always trying to hold onto.

After the death of her mother (some years after the death of her father), Wilder would write, “Memories! We go thru life collecting them whether we will or not! Sometimes I wonder if they are our treasure in heaven or the consuming fires of torment when we carry them with us as we, too, pass on.”

While Wilder was talking about the power of memories here, I believe that the contrasting truths of a life full of both treasures and torments is a good way to understand Laura Ingalls Wilder's full life.

The version of her life that Wilder wrote for children was purposely stripped of the worst aspects of her family’s life, yet to the end of her days, she viewed this version of her life as “true.” I think I can understand why. More on that later.

There Was a Lot of Suffering

Wilder’s books tiptoe into the many tragedies and hardships they faced, especially in The Long Winter. But the truth was that they (Wilder, and her daughter, Rose, who acted as a writing coach and editor) knew they had to cut significant portions of the Ingall’s family experience out as it was too dark for a children’s series.

Caroline Fraser, in her detailed research in the book Prairie Fires, gives not only the fuller Ingalls story, known better now through the many papers Wilder and her daughter left behind, but also the context the Ingalls family lived through. All quotes shared are pulled from her book, and if you find this interesting, read it! It’s very well researched and well written. This piece is shaped by her work.

The Homestead Act Context

Fraser shares a context that includes the Homestead Act which displaced various Native tribes, a betrayal with grave consequences.1 The Homestead Act also gave equal opportunities to not only white men, but also to women and freed slaves2 for homesteading in a time period when there were few options for independence, setting up conflict between the new people who saw the land as a land of promise and the people who were being slowly forced off the land that was their rightful home and provision.

The encroaching settlers before and after the Homestead Act would spark uprising from Native tribes, who rightly viewed the actions of the American government as endangering them as they were facing starvation. The end result was not pretty. Skirmishes between settlers and Native tribes was as ugly as any war is. One famous uprising in 1862, led by Chief Little Crow, led to families being slaughtered on their homesteads in Minnesota, some as they begged for their lives, willing to give it all up to be spared. Fraser included wrenching scenes in her book, including bullets piercing through an infant held by a mother as they both died, of a father running away with a toddler in his arms, only to be slaughtered as they tried to escape. One family with the last name of Ingalls, though it is unknown if they are connected to Laura’s family, would later recount taking flight during this uprising, only to be overcome, watching their father be killed and scalped in front of them, and the children taken as hostages.

This led to the U.S.-Dakota War, which did little favors to either side. This uprising led to disastrous reprisals against all of the tribes, whether or not they were connected to any of the uprisings. There is little justice and goodness in any of this.3

The Ingalls Move to the Prairie

This is the context and very near history to when the Ingalls family set out for the prairie less than a decade later. The memory of violence was close and the fight for survival very real. The hatred between many white settlers and Native tribes was deep as they battled to either keep or take ownership over precious land. It is in this context that Pa (i.e. Charles) moves the family onto prairie Indian territory4 that was not available to settlers. This is the reality of the book Little House on the Prairie. He was a squatter on land that he had no legal right to. There is nothing romantic or beautiful about this decision, and it was only right that the Ingalls had to abandon their home eventually.

Charles’ decision to squat on land in the belief that it would eventually be given to settlers was just one of many decisions that was unwise (and in this case, immoral). Pa was beloved to Laura, and that shines through her books. She had no interest in writing a series that delves deeply into how badly her father’s decisions would impact them over and over again.

Charles was a man who worked very hard to support his family and faced repeated disasters, but he just kept on working. His humor and love for his family glimmer as clearly as Silver Lake in Laura’s remembrance. His music really did provide a soundtrack to their joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, all of her growing up years. Together with his wife, Caroline, they treasured not only storytelling, but passed on their love of books to Laura. By all accounts, mutual love was strong within their family culture. Laura would likely learn to value it even more when she was hosted by very unloving and dysfunctional couples while she was teaching. This was all true.

But whether it was Charles’ wanderlust or simply trying to get ahead of aching poverty, the many movements of the Ingalls family were not stable. A combination of terrible disasters they had no control over, and in retrospect, sometimes terrible decisions made by Charles, meant that the family faced deprivations and even starvation. For example, when the grasshoppers came and stripped their wheat “once again there was no money to buy food,” a frightening reality for parents of young children, and a pregnant mother. Soon after this disaster (as recounted in On the Banks of Plum Creek), they moved back with family, only for Laura’s young infant brother to pass away suddenly.

A Time Period Not Put in the Books

They buried the only son and brother of the family and moved on as they had jobs at a hotel waiting for them at a small town called Burr Oak. This was a town that Laura described as “dark and dirty,” unlike many of the other places they had lived. “There the children were exposed to public drunkenness, wife-beating, corporal punishment, measles and the strange behavior of a child termed an ‘idiot,’” The girls were “often frightened by rough characters coming and going from the saloon.”

This less-than-lovely time for their family was so dark that Laura left it out of her books completely. Here, not only Charles and Caroline, but also Mary and Laura worked at the hotel. Mary and Laura worked in the kitchen and waited on diners, while being bothered by the hotel owner’s son, who would pinch them and break their toys. They would be told to babysit by Charles’ business partners and were promised nice Christmas gifts if they did so, only to find nothing for them under the Christmas tree. They would catch the measles and in their miserable state still be tormented by the son. Charles would be cheated out of his share of the business. Eventually they would skip town in the middle of the night to avoid their debts (rent, grocery bills and the doctor who came to help when Grace was born). Having to flee because of their debts wasn’t exactly my idea of who the Ingalls family was, and how they operated. It doesn’t exactly project the values of self-sufficiency and independence that the Ingalls family held dear.

Following this, they had to survive on odd jobs and charity for some time, and Laura would again work at a hotel during school breaks. It was here, at the age of eleven, when sleeping at the hotel after being hired to help a mother and infant, she would awaken to a man looming over her, “apparently intent on molesting her. She threatened to scream, and he backed off.” They soon after had to stop going to school because they lacked warm clothes.

Laura’s memoir, an early work before her children’s book, “vividly exposes small-town life as a disordered spectacle of adults behaving badly, but it also conveys a sense of her family’s indigence and lack of direction.”

This Was Just the Beginning

Mary would become sick again and then lose her sight. A tragedy with large consequences for their family as Mary was supposed to help bring in income as well. They would face various hopeful circumstances, only to have them dashed over and over again. They would nearly starve to death, along with the entire town on the shores of Silver Lake during a prolonged blizzard, but for the heroic actions of Almanzo (Laura’s future husband) and his friend, who traveled far to get the town wheat. Months of deep deprivation were only aggravated and made worse by a young couple (their presence cut from the books) who lived off of their generosity during this blizzard. They were not only unwilling to help in their desperate state, but the husband gobbled up their precious food with greed. Almanzo’s heroic actions are highlighted in the book, but some of the people they were in contact with were so terrible that Laura did not even want to try to include them.

This type of rough way of living would continue, although happier times would find them still.

This was a world so difficult and isolating that many went insane. “Insanity was a common feature of life on the Great Plains, exacerbated by isolation and the dreary confines of tight spaces and bad weather. And these conditions were all too often accompanied by unbearable misfortunes…There was a word for it: “shackwacky.” At the time, it was said to happen ‘to an awful lot of women.’”

A Hope Never Realized

It’s been many years since I read Wilder’s books, but I do remember how well she captured not only the love for each other they had, but also the hope they lived on for one day living off their own land. It was a message that would inspire many in the United States and reach many other countries. It harkens back to a time period in early American history when 90% of families lived on farms.

But Charles was never able to realize that dream fully, eventually selling his home and land in South Dakota to live and work in the little town. Laura would go on to use her writing to publicly encourage living off of a farm, yet she and her husband were also never able to sustain themselves solely by farming.

How Do We Process the True Story?

In closing part one, here are some thoughts on how to process the darkness and reality of a long-beloved family. Some have felt deceived or disappointed in the true story behind her books. I understand because I also felt put back on my heels reading how differently their whole story appears. It made me consider whether or not her books were glamorizing life on the prairie, or whether her books were just propaganda for self-sufficiency – something they believed in with all their hearts, without drawing attention to the fact that their family’s survival was dependent not only on their hard work, but also charity.

To soften the blow, I think about an older relative who knew some of my other relatives a few generations back. I convinced her to tell me stories about them, stories that included the hardships and even terrible aspects of their lives.

“Your great grandma would be so mad I am telling you this,” she informed me. It wasn’t just that the family’s dirty laundry wasn’t to be aired in public, but some aspects of reality weren’t even meant to be passed on to the next generations. Laura likely took the same view: not everything was for public consumption.

And isn’t that how we now understand our lives online? Life became too fake online as everyone showed only the best parts of their lives, so then people started oversharing about their difficulties, and that had some major downfalls as well. Finally, we seem to have gotten to the place where we understand it is fine that we all choose what parts of our lives we want to share with the world. We don’t consider it deceptive to share bits and pieces online, and leave out what we need and want to keep private. (It’s only deceptive when we actually claim one thing, but live differently, which is very different from not choosing to share everything.)

Laura had the same right to monitor what she was willing to put first into the public hands, and secondly, what she thought was appropriate to share with children. The only fault with this I can find is that her books came with a message of self-sufficiency and independence that was not ultimately true to their experience, as they did need assistance for survival, and her sister only went to the college for the blind because most of the fees were covered by government aid, and they took it gladly.

Her Story is Not Only of Loss

These are the facts about the difficulties Laura faced. While it diverges at places from the stories she included in her children’s series, it diverges even more from the fond memories many people have of the TV series based on the books. I think everyone knows how inaccurate those are! I am very curious to see what the new series coming out soon will be like.

But the above difficult facts are not the only aspects that made Wilder’s life what it was. Part two will pick up at Wilder’s adult life, and examine how stoic acceptance helped her navigate a rough world, and how hope and beauty gave her life fullness, and how family love was something that made her life a good life.

In the end, I think we will see, for all of the suffering and losses, Laura Ingalls Wilder lived a good life, and so can we, even if we face suffering. Her perspective on her life, of having had a wonderful childhood, also confronts us with important questions about how to view a life of both goodness and pain.

More coming soon.

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Think about all that ails the world right now: the toil of making a living, the friendships that break up, the marriages that could have been great, but didn’t survive the daily struggles. Now think of the darkest of things: the untimely deaths of young ones, the pain of cancer, the terrible crimes, the governments that use power to oppress their people.

We have trouble in this world. You could say that we have a whole lot of trouble.

Yet.

People walk through the valley of death, grieve, experience crushing losses, suffer from the evil actions of others, and then go on living. Not that they are unmarked by death or suffering or loss. No, pain leaves a mark.

That is why it’s all the more remarkable that they press on in hope – that they learn again to laugh and find joy and to expect good things of their future, even if they know suffering will eventually find its way to them again.

All in all, that can be a little outrageous. I love the resilience so many show.

I was struck the other day with the phrase “outrageous hope.” It came to me as I was considering first the outrageousness of humanity (after following the news cycle a little too closely). Some humans do terrible, unspeakable things. Many people take power and authority and twist it into evil. People fan religious hope into fanaticism and control.

Then, consider this: We start aging from the moment of conception.1 My newborn child is already aging, even as he grows. I’m just a lot farther along in the aging spectrum than him. We are truly born to die, and that death starts in the earliest of early days of our living.

That’s just a fact.

But another fact is that we are born into a world that offers us so much beauty. As a person of faith, I see inherent goodness in that gift, even as I press against the darkness of this world. While I see the promise of a future hope beyond the grave, I remember that this world itself is still a glimpse of goodness. There is darkness in the world, no doubt about that, and great pain and suffering. I’ve gone through my fair share already.

But there is good here, too.

When you stack up all that is going wrong in this world, it’s a tall pile. Perhaps, like me, you have already lived through much loss and suffering. That personal stack of suffering can weigh heavy. If you just look at what’s wrong in this world, there is a lifetime of evil to sort through.

But what about all that is right? And I would argue, what is right in this world is a reflection of the original purpose we were created for — a world that blossoms with beauty and purpose instead of evil and corruption. There is a whole lot of goodness I can stack up too: a type of goodness that can stand up to the darkness of this world.

It’s the type of goodness that you can find even in the great losses. I found goodness in my story as a mother when our firstborn died while waiting for a heart transplant. I don’t have words for the depth of pain I felt as I stood by her graveside. But I remember as Joel and I got into the car to drive away that we talked about how we were honored to have been her parents. Her short life demonstrated the evil this world has to offer: suffering, loss, and pain. Her short life also demonstrated the goodness of life: the love she had for us, and us for her, the great fight nurses and doctors and surgeons fought on her behalf, the love of community who supported us through her life and death.

There was agony, and there was love, and so hope still glimmered even in the aftermath of great loss. I think that glimmer of hope is what gave me the strength to live a life of outrageous hope, even when life felt very frail.

It gave me the strength to have more children, even when I knew intimately the terror of a world where children die.

It gave me the courage to fight for another day when I was at my sickest with chronic and hard-to-treat illnesses.

It gave me the fortitude for my everyday life, even when sometimes life brings too much for my stamina to bear.

It gave me the space to hear of the most difficult and terrible church-related evils and still fight for and love the church.

When you’ve had losses and pains and disillusionments that destroyed the rose colored glasses of your youth, and unmasked the terrors this world can bring, but you live a life of hope anyway, there is a strength at work in you.

A strength that leans on an outrageous hope.

I’ve had some pain issues slip in again, and with them a fear of things getting worse. I’ve had to face my own fears during my recent pregnancy, facing a world where nothing is certain. I’ve had to sort through important life decisions where no decision seems exactly “right” in a world where nothing is perfect.

Sometimes in the face of it all, I feel fragile and weak, and there is a truth to that. But I’m also remembering the strength that hope, alongside love and joy, gives to my bones for another day ahead.

That’s an outrageous hope that has served me well.

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I recently listened to the audiobook of a book that has gotten a whole lot of attention recently: Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi. While I folded laundry, bounced a fussy baby, and got through some long hours at home, this book was a soft companion to my day. I went in knowing the strong opinions about this book – the people who loved it, the people who hated it 1– and their opinions distracted me at first, but by the end I decided I really enjoyed the book.

I also adore the story-behind-the-story of this book. Allen Levi wrote this, his first book, at the age of 70, as a personal challenge to himself, and friends convinced him that he needed to do more with it after they read it and realized what a gem it was. So, he self-published it with their support. The large success of this book (which has been significant during an era when publishers are struggling) was largely built on people recommending his book to others.

The story is not plot-based. It won’t draw you in with explosions or a murder or a fast hook. It’s very interior and thematic, and perhaps the critics are right, sentimental too. (But, let’s just admit, real life can be gritty and sentimental at the same time.) It’s a tender story of an 86-year-old man, Theo, who shows up in a small southern town and starts buying portraits from a local coffee shop and giving them to the locals drawn in said portrait. It’s a little bit found family, a lot of vignettes exploring parent and child relationships, a bit of a mystery as to the identity of Theo, and has a surprising amount of scriptural references for a book that has found a secular audience. I won’t say more as I don’t want to give any spoilers.

But what I do want to point out is that this slow-paced, tender book found an audience because people liked it so well that they passed it around to their friends. There was no interested publisher who had sunk a lot of money into the book and thus needed to heavily promote it. This was a book that people loved and shared because they loved it. All the writers out there know what a dream scenario that is.

The success of Theo of Golden says a lot about what people need and want right now.

Books are a conversation with readers, and readers are in a conversation with authors, and the success of Theo of Golden says something about the kind of conversation some readers are drawn to.

____________

When I was younger, I breathed in an atmosphere of largely anti-fiction sentiment. Along with the very good desire to read only the best, there was a bad impulse of curtailing people’s reading choices to a very narrow set. I pared down my reading habits until I largely read only history, biographies, and classic books (Charles Dickens being a favorite). That meant that the books I was reading, while excellent books worthy of my time, were few.

Another way to look at this is to say that I had a limited conversation.

Books have two conversations going on: they are entering into a conversation with other books, and authors and readers are conversing through books. At a high level, the idea of books conversing with other books was promoted by Encyclopaedia Britannica’s series, Great Books of the Western World. They included books they considered part of the Great Conversation about the Great Ideas (the editor had a long list of the “great ideas” developed in Western books in the index.) It’s a more highbrow view of books.

While the Great Books of the Western World explored books that shaped the Western World, there is another type of conversation we talk about, too. There is a conversation happening between every author and every reader. The classic, How to Read a Book, by Mortimer J. Adler, uses this concept to encourage readers to really dig deep into their books and converse with them.

But I think it’s broader than that. I think the books we pick up, love, and recommend to others are also part of the conversation, even if those books aren’t going to end up on the great books of the Western world list someday. They are telling us something about what we are looking for, and even need from our storytellers.

I was thinking about this as I finished Theo of Golden and considered its surprising success.

_____________

In my early 30s, I finally moved beyond my more narrow reading habits. While my older sister had started reading books written by authors such as Margaret Atwood earlier in life, it took time for me to be willing to read books that were often so dark and gritty.

Atwood’s books, and many others, found me in a time when I really wanted to sink my teeth into books that explored the hard realities of real life and the terrible impulses of humanity, yet also contained the flames of hope, friendship, and love in the darkest of times.

In my conversation with my reading life, I found myself conversing with books that were often Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, the setting just about as dark as you can possibly make it, but with characters whose love and endurance shine in the darkness. Books such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel come to mind as worthy examples.

There was a time when softer stories did not resonate with me. I wanted stories that dug into the darkest side of humanity and still showed the beauty of love and life. Theo of Golden could have seemed even trite to me then. It wasn’t just that it would have been the wrong time for me, but I was having a different conversation then, and Theo of Golden was not part of that conversation.

___________

That time period was relatively brief (there are only so many dark and gritty books you can read in a row and stay mentally healthy!). I went on to read a wide range of books: classics, modern, sweet, dark, genre-driven, literary, nonfiction, etc. That sort of wide reading life is one I’ve largely maintained.

If you look at the big hits last year, you will see a wide range of books, from self-help to literary to romantasy and dark fantasy, and more. Not every part of the bookish conversations are ones I want to be in, and I don’t want to read every popular book out there. While I now read a wider range of books, I still find that I want to have different conversations at different times in my life with my books.

Since having a baby, I knew that I was going to need gentler books. I haven’t been reaching much for books that deal with the darkest of dark realities (although I still like my genre-driven murder mysteries). I have especially loved books that write meaningfully about human character in a softer way. I share some of the books I’ve read recently here. I had to take a break from reading all of the nonfiction books I have on my to-be-read list about Nazis and Christianity.

The conversations I am having with books right now are softer on the soul, but still carry the weight of humanity on their shoulders. I felt that Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell fit that nicely, showing the pain and sweetness of humanity in everyday living. Her characters were believable, and you feel with them, despite all of the cultural differences. I read her novel, The Moorland Cottage, directly after, and found it rather terrible and absolutely not part of the same conversation. It was overly sentimental, dramatized instead of illuminating humanity, and was unrealistic about people’s relationships. The people who love Theo of Golden view it as I view Cranford. The people who hate it view it as I view The Moorland Cottage.

This introduces the conversation readers have with other readers when we pick up the same book and have dramatically different opinions about what the book is saying and whether it’s worthy of our time.

Fellow readers could probably have more grace for each other if we recognize that perhaps friends are just conversing with their books differently right now. We all aren’t part of the same conversation at the same time.

__________

I know why Theo of Golden fits into my current conversation with books. What interests me is that this book fits into the conversation that so many are hungry for right now.

In a world that feels particularly uncertain and where people are becoming more and more divided, and people are losing family members and communities because of terrible divisions in opinions, politics, and lifestyle, a book about the difference one old man can make when he shows up in love is striking the right nerve for plenty of readers.

A book that has sold this well will have also gained plenty of disinterest and hate along the way, too, but a higher majority of readers said yes to this book and recommended it to others.

That impulse tells me that there is a growing number of people who want stories that show that love can make a way, of stories where sad and bad things happen, but people grow and love and find friendships anyway.

There is still plenty of room on the shelves for books that take a harder look at those same topics, or are genre, plot-driven books. But there appears to be an opening for more books taking a gentler approach, and it’s hitting at the right moment for me.

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I remember her well and see her 
In the face of my last baby 
The firstborn of my youth 
Linked to my last born 
Of my middle age by the way 
They look into my face and smile 
And talk. And something about the eyes
And the way they can shine. And the
Way they both pause to listen to music

Her little brother takes after her 
We say, tho we’ve said this with 
Each child born after her

For all we have to remember 
Her by is her newborn stage 
Two months of holding and loving 
Her before we buried her, longing 
And love for her clouding our 
Vision of the future 

Now I hold my breath for each 
Baby until they pass the benchmark 
Of two months left by their sister 

Now I find myself with tears in my eyes 
When her brother turns to me in his car seat 
Crying, and looking at me, hoping for relief 
Because it’s the same look his sister gave me 
In the NICU, when facing scarier things than 
Car seats. Linked, sister and brother, 
Somehow in the trust that I could relieve them 
Of their discomfort, even when I can’t 

What is a mother's love but the wish to 
Hold on to her children in love and 
Keep them safe and sound, to soothe 
Their fears and pains and illnesses 
And be with them, even when she can’t 

So I hold her little brother and feel his small
Legs wrap around my waist like hers used to 
When I rocked her in the NICU, her heart and his 
Heart to my chest, our hearts beating together

I know that soon he will outgrow my last glimpse 
Of his eldest sister, and I will be glad on that day 
And remembrance will make me bereft 

Today, I rock him and remember her 
Knowing that while her siblings never got to meet her
My love links them together forever. 

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Every baby I’ve had has been surrounded by books, as I’ve always turned to books during the early postpartum days. Even our firstborn, only briefly here on earth for two months, had parents who brought books with them into the NICU. With each child after, I would find myself balancing books while nursing or when snuggling in bed, holding them close to me. When our middle child was born, I would spend long days reading to her older sister while rocking my newborn to sleep. She may have only been four, but she was able to sit and listen to a story for long hours at a time. With our youngest girl (now 11!), I had an iPhone with a library app on it, and I found it much easier to read on it while holding a baby, and so read many a book there.

My husband and I also have always enjoyed watching shows together while I recovered postpartum. Whether watching shows together while I pumped for my firstborn in the NICU, or watching shows and movies together now as a family, we enjoy the storytelling and rest it gives us in a time when life feels particularly busy.

The early weeks after postpartum are such a tender time for me. I find that I want to be especially gentle with myself, even as I am gentle with my newborn. And that certainly reflects on the choices I make in my reading and watching life.1 I wanted to share some of what I have been enjoying because even if you aren’t postpartum, maybe you also are looking for more gentle or fun reads for yourself.

And I’m always looking for an excuse to talk about books!

(As I look over the choices below, it does beg the question whether I am an anglophile! I have always loved British literature!)

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

I’ve mentioned before that my go-to is Jane Austen. She is my favorite author, and for a couple of years, I even read all of her books each year! I have some beautiful copies of her books, and I am trying to read my beloved author from physical books, instead of reading them on the app on my phone, so I’ve been slow about finishing. (I do a lot of my reading right now in the evening hours with low lights, and reading on my phone is much more conducive to that.) I’ve started with Pride and Prejudice, and it is as sparkly and witty as always.

Because I’ve been reading Jane Austen in my hard copies, I wanted to find some books with somewhat similar vibes that I could borrow from the library to read on my Libby app. I picked one new read and one re-read.

An Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim

While I had watched the 1991 movie based on this book some time ago, I never read the book, and I’m so glad that I did. What happens when four British women all decide to stay at a small castle in Italy together for the month of April? Magic happens. While this book was published in 1922, I was surprised by the modern tone it had (especially at the beginning) as it delves into the difficulties of the marriages two of the characters had. While the ending was not very modern in sensibility, the magic of the book is that it feels like a very pleasant fever dream and you accept it all. You also absolutely want to go stay at a castle in Italy in April.

Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell

How are these characters not real? They feel so very human that it is hard to believe that they aren’t based on real people. Gaskell is a master storyteller in this book showing the pathos of small, ordinary happenings. Set in the early 1840s, this book follows the main character, Mary Smith, as she visits a small town where many women (single or widowed) live alone and conduct their lower-middle-class lives in Britain. This story is humorous and sad and beautiful and thoughtful all at the same time.

My newborn is just 7 weeks old, and we had a few weeks of being awake for half the night. I found it helpful to turn to my mainstays, murder mysteries, to keep me engaged during those long hours. Ironically, both of the series I read a few books from each, are about World War I nurses set in Britain. I continued the Maisie Dobbs Mystery Series, by Jacqueline Winspear, and also read the first two books in the Bess Crawford Mystery series, by Charles Todd. These series are both enjoyable and helped me survive a few weeks of terrible sleep, too. Winspear’s series is set after World War I in Britain, and gives a fascinating peek into the world between the World Wars, while Todd’s series is set during World War I.

Tales from the Cafe, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I have just started this book, which is a follow-up to Before the Coffee Gets Cold. This translated Japanese series is quirky and sweet, and full of human kindness. They are short and easy to get through, and just may make you tear up a bit.

Agent Sonya, by Ben Macintyre

This fascinating biography reads like fiction and kept me engaged as it follows one of the most successful communist female spies during World War II. Sonya was the code name for Ursula Kuczynski, a Jewish German woman who showed much courage, even while she made some suspect choices in her life. This book helped me understand why a Jewish woman would have been drawn to the communist ideals, even while I was horrified to see the role she played in helping vital secrets be stolen from the British government that helped reshape our world.

Our family, by popular vote, decided to re-read the book, The Candymakers, by Wendy Mass, together. This is a middle-grade book set in a candy factory holding a candy-making contest with four contestants. It is charming and fun, with a bit of a mystery wrapped up in it, too. Our older two girls have a special fondness for this book, but our youngest daughter hasn’t read it before, so it’s been fun to share with her.

Shows:

Young Sherlock

This is just a fun, frothy show with enough action to keep tired parents engaged, and it has a fun take on some beloved characters. My husband and I watched this in our first few weeks with a newborn in the house (usually while I was nursing or when we were bouncing our baby to sleep).

Lark Rise to Candleford

We are rewatching this with our kids for the first time, and loving it so far as a family. I had also read the book series this show is based on (very different from the show, but delightful in its own way). The storytelling of each episode is very interesting as it threads together different characters’ stories using a similar theme or dilemma. It’s a great family show!

I’d love to hear what you’ve been enjoying lately!

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When we lived in South Dakota, we would drive back to Oregon at least once a year, spending long hours driving across several states. It gave us the opportunity to see how breathtakingly beautiful our country is. We also drove by many once prosperous towns and homesteads, now abandoned. We would see old farmhouses that were half fallen down, and ranches no longer in use, with fences in bad repair, rusted and forgotten. We would drive by small towns that had diminished in numbers until less than 50 people lived there now. I was particularly haunted by a large barn that had a large sign emblazoned with the family name, announcing that it was run by “Johnson and Sons.” While the size of the barn showed a once profitable and large operation, the bright paint on the sign was faded and weathered, and the wood on the barn was splintered and clearly no longer usable. The weeds grew tall and lonely in the farm yards. It made me sad. Once a father saw this as his legacy that he likely thought would be passed down to his sons, and then his son’s sons, and ever forward. I hoped that he was able to go to his final rest secure in that vision.

What does this decrepit barn teach us about our complicated relationship with legacies? The ones we were born into, and the ones we leave behind?

We know that traumas can be passed on generationally.1 And that physical health and stressors (including parasites) can alter the health of the next generation.2 We understand that the family we were born into has an impact on where we end up financially in life.3 We are born into and pass on both genetic and environmental factors that impact mental health.4

All of these are part of our legacies. But I think when we talk about leaving a legacy, we often are thinking about a more spiritual, and hard to pin down, aspect of legacies.

That man with his farm likely wasn’t merely trying to financially set up future generations, but wanted to leave a legacy of land and lifestyle, of values and position in this world. When he envisioned his grandchildren running the farm one day, it wasn’t merely about them providing for themselves, but also about continuing the legacy of their forefathers. Legacy here has so much more in view than just the work of farming, but also a way of being, and believing, and seeing the world.

While there were long periods in human history where generation after generation lived similar lives with similar values, the modern world, beginning, but not ending, with the industrial revolution, has shifted and changed so much that the value gaps between not only grandparents and grandchildren, but parents and children are a growing conflict point in our country.

Our legacies have always been complicated. But the last few generations have perhaps made that even more complex.

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I do hope that our children, with all of the independence I know they will continue to grow into, still find that many of our values and beliefs are worthy of retaining. That they maintain some level of the legacy that we have tried to give them as parents, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I want them to build on the strength of the many in their family lines who fought to seek the good in this world.

As I look into my newborn’s face, I think about the legacy that he was born into. First, in his nuclear family. For example, we are a family that loves reading and storytelling, of creating and writing. If you look into both sides of our family, you will see that thread continue outward. Maybe he will also lean into the creative arts. Or maybe his life will follow a different thread of our family culture. But I have no doubt that in some way and somehow he will be impacted by the family he was born into. As his most immediate family, we by far will influence his life the most. The sense of love and safety we can give him is the first of many embodied lessons we hope to leave him with. That said, we aren’t his only legacy, and Joel and I are just one part of the family line.

One of the pitfalls that I’ve seen in the Christian world when talking about legacies is imagining yourself as the origin story of family legacy. These are often first-generation Christians, or, more often, a generation of Christians who decide they are the first ones to get things “right” in their family line. When they talk about building a legacy, they view themselves as starting at ground zero, and their children and grandchildren building on the foundation they built.

There is nothing wrong with understanding that what you build will impact your children and grandchildren and beyond. There is everything right about trying to leave the negative parts of your family legacy behind. In fact, that is the only wise pathway. But it is unwise to not see yourself as part of a legacy already, whether you like that legacy or not. You are impacted by the traumas, by the bad or good habits, by the financial and educational status, and the health of the generations before you. That’s not even talking about the learned habits and mannerisms and loves and hates that are passed on by family culture. You are not the “Adam” or “Eve” of your family line. Likely, even how you are going about setting up your family life and your personal legacy has been deeply impacted by the generations before you in ways you don’t understand.

One of the logical problems I’ve seen with this mental framework is parents who view themselves as the patriarch and matriarch of their families, and demand a high level of respect and adherence to their values from their adult children, yet do not recognize their own living parents (or grandparents) as worthy of the same deference. There is an inherent pride when we think of ourselves as the origin story of a family, as the beginning point of goodness.

Here is where there is a high level of irony: For many first-generation homeschooling parents, they had to step away from what their parents did in what felt like a revolutionary way. They often felt (with good reason) like pioneers in their culture. Many of their parents showed strong disapproval of their educational choices and lifestyle, so they had to forge their own path despite that disapproval. Many first-generation homeschooling parents did feel like they were beginning a new legacy, from the ground up. I grew up listening to homeschool leaders and thinkers share about this legacy, and they painted a rosy, beautiful picture. They envisioned a world where generation after generation lived the same lifestyle as the one that this first generation of homeschooling parents lived.

It’s true that I, and others, continued that legacy of homeschooling (though my younger two girls are in a private school now), but many did not. Coming from a large homeschooling community, some of my former peers now ardently speak out against homeschooling. They are just as passionate in their concern about homeschooling as their parents were about public school. Their parents are some variation of devastated, hurt, or angry over this departure. To them, it could seem that their legacy is ruined.

But here’s the thing: In many ways, my peers who reject the “conventional wisdom” of their parents and forge what seems like a revolutionary path within their family culture, are mimicking, almost exactly, the pathway of their parents. Their parents, against all family and parental advice, chose a new lifestyle and schooling choices for their children. Now these once homeschooled kids are doing the same, against all parental advice. It’s the same pattern, even if the choices look different on the outside. Both generations chose to push back against the way they were raised and to do life differently. You could say it was a family pattern.

The point is: We have very limited ideas of what our “legacy” is. Sometimes it displays itself in surprising ways. We don’t get to choose the legacies we were born into, and we don’t get to choose how our children respond to the legacy we leave them.

From my family line, I leave my children a varied and colorful legacy. I have an actual stagecoach robber in my family history. We are a family line full of immigrants from various time periods of the United States, some of them very early in our history. (Those immigrant ancestors likely gave us our family culture of being willing to pick up roots to move.) One of my great-great-grandmothers was, I am told, an extremely mean woman. But then she met Jesus, and softened. Her grandchildren don’t remember the mean version of her, but the softened one that would be so moved by the Holy Spirit and so joyful that she would run around her very NON-charismatic church waving a handkerchief and yelling for joy. We have ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War. My great-grandmother was raised by nuns. There is poverty and suffering, violence and atonement, success and hard work, written all over our family line. Children, do with this what you will.

Here’s a historical example of legacy: Jonathan Edwards was a popular and highly influential pastor and theologian who was an important leader in the First Great Awakening in America. His spiritual influence and legacy were large. His grandson was Aaron Burr, who is best known for being the man who shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and later was a part of an alleged conspiracy to split the newly founded United States. While this was not all that he did in his long career, it is a large part of his legacy. I’m sure that Edwards wouldn’t have approved and would have been disappointed in this portion of his legacy. But the story doesn’t end there. Now, some of Hamilton’s and Burr’s descendants have mended bridges and become friends.5 Our family legacies take many twists and turns.

We all have ancestors who would make us feel disappointed, and likely others who would make us feel proud. Our legacies are full of goodness and pain, evil and redemption. Those are the sorts of legacies our children are born into, just as we were.

Closer to home, our own legacy that we leave behind will be full of mistakes and goodness, too. I hope that it builds on the good of our family lines and softens the negative tendencies. That’s the best that each generation can hope for: to leave the best footprint we can on our family line.

When I consider the family farm we passed, now in disrepair, and the once beautiful dream it represented for a family, I find myself hopeful for their family. I hope that while their family legacy took a different turn than continuing to work the land, that their legacy of hard work and a desire to build something good was passed on. That, I imagine, is the real heart of the legacy. You don’t have to farm to bring that legacy with you.

I don’t know the twists and turns of my own life in the future, let alone those of my children and their children. But I have no doubt that our traditions, love of storytelling, love of laughter, our pains and the ways we walked through that pain, our loves and hates, and our desire to do good while struggling with the ways that good was hard to accomplish, will all shape our children in surprising ways. May they appreciate what is good in that legacy and soften what was not.

We may grieve the broken-down barn we leave behind. But I hope our children carry on the strength that it took to build the barn in the first place.

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I hope this isn’t too much of an indulgence, but I wanted to keep track of this first year of life of my newborn, and thought I would share some of my thoughts on parenting and newborns throughout the year. (Here is my one-week newborn diaries). I am also sharing two of the poems that I wrote this last month. While the experience of taking care of a newborn is unique, I think the lessons it teaches me expand out to the rest of life, too.

All is Well 

I feel stuck
My bottom half 
Sore as I rock 
This little bundle of wailing 
And flailing limbs 
Oh I’m tired 
But then he sleeps and his little 
Hand rests over my heart 
And all is well 

One month. I teared up a little to see how he’s grown. The next moment I catch myself thinking fondly of how fun it will be when he’s a little older. These early days run like water through my hands. I can’t hold onto them, but I can enjoy them as they run by me so quickly.

There is nothing like the newborn sweetness. The soft hair. The little body scrunch they make when you pick them up. There is also nothing like the lack of sleep and worry and hectic moments of newborn crying either. They go hand in hand.

I find myself taking this partial verse with me every night from Psalm 139, “When I awake, you are still with me.” It helps soften the isolation one can feel when awake at night with a fussy baby (my husband and I take turns, as needed, taking care of him when he wakes up at night.) This entire psalm is one that I have found comforting when all of my children have been newborns.

I’m reminded of the connection I feel to my newborns, when even ten minutes away from their side feels like a wrench. Sometimes I’m so relieved to find I can finally put down a sleeping baby, only to find myself missing him within minutes after I walk away.

My recovery has kept up, just barely, with the next demands. I dreaded my husband going back to work, but we’ve managed okay so far. Managed, as in, I haven’t brushed my hair today and I feel dehydrated, and my meals have been hurried affairs hastily downed while holding a baby. But still, managed.

When I fall exhausted into bed, I feel like I’m just “livin’ on a prayer.” But somehow, after inadequate sleep, I awake to find I can face another day after all. And morning is the happiest part of the day for our newborn. So I get to wake up to that bright part of the day. I like to cover his small face with kisses every morning, and love to see him become more and more responsive to me and the family.

There hasn’t been a moment where I haven’t felt incredibly blessed by this little one being in our lives. Tired, yes. Overwhelmed? Sometimes. But overwhelmingly feeling so lucky too.

The dual nature of the newborn days being filled with both pure exhaustion and also pure love makes me wonder what good is even in this life that doesn’t necessitate hard work and sacrifice?

Our newest addition has decided to follow the footsteps of his sisters by hating his car seat (and therefore his stroller too). While some infants fuss, our babies have a nuclear freak out of epic proportions. His sisters would cry so hard that they would violently throw up, and then choke, scaring the rest of the car’s occupants. How I wish he was one of those babies who blissfully fell asleep in the car.

He is not our hardest baby, but he is not our easiest newborn either. “Why are newborns so sad?” One of his sisters asked. It can be hard to be born into this wild world.

But despite experts saying babies don’t responsively smile until six weeks, it’s clear that this little one does. Those smiles are worth a lot. As are the little sounds he has figured out how to make. One of his first was a sort of back-of-the-throat raspy sound that made us melt and laugh at the same time.

I keep landing on the question of what truly worthwhile accomplishment or goal or blessing comes in this world without hard work? Parenting is all of the hard work, newborns can bring a 24/7 on the clock schedule. But it’s not just babies. Other work we need to do or are called to takes hard work and sacrifice too. I think of C.S. Lewis’s portrayal of being on task or quest in The Magician’s Nephew. Jill and Eustace allowed the harsh climate and lack of comfort in a difficult journey to discourage them from pressing forward. Instead they turned toward the comforts of the giant’s castle only to find that their fine clothes were to make them presentable to the giants, and the fine food was for fattening them up to be devoured by the giants. Comfort, when sought for at the wrong time and in the wrong manner, can put us at risk to be devoured. It can woo us from the important tasks before us. Like Jill and Eustace, I’m finding that the good path does not necessarily mean the most comfortable one.

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The great benefit to being an older parent is knowing that these times are fleeting. Soon they will be a sweet memory. So I try to lean into them for the day, for the moment.

Last night, our son decided to do another two plus hour wake cycle in the middle of the night. I was weary and taking the second shift after my husband had tried to get him to sleep first. I was trying to recall Scripture to myself and Psalm 23 came to mind. “He will make me lie down in green pastures.” For a half second I thought I would view this ironically. I was certainly not lying down right now! I was up and awake. But then I looked down at the face of my infant and realized, no, this is my green pasture, and God really has brought me to a good place.

_______

On Newborn Sons and Threats of War 

My little newborn son blinks
The world new to him 
They say it’s not real yet
He’s only two weeks old 
But when he wakes 
Sometimes he looks me in the eye 
And smiles 

I don’t think it’s gas. 

This week our president 
Made threats that a 
Civilization will die
Big, violent words that 
A listening world heard 

I wish it was just gas. 

I wrap my arms around my son 
Praying for peace 
For safety 
That my son won’t grow 
To become fodder for 
Rich men’s wars 

Today, I swaddle him with love 
Safe for now from the love of war 
Found in hearts all around us — 
Linking me to mothers worldwide 
Praying the same over their children 

Smile, my son. I don’t know what 
Tomorrow brings. But today, may 
You feel only love 

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Sam Bateman is an unlikely cult leader. He’s not particularly attractive or intelligent. Yet, for a little while, he was able to extract as much money as he could spend from his followers, a small group from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community (FLDS). He convinced grown men to give both their wives and daughters over to him in marriage. He was able to get away with vile crimes against children using his authority over the group. He convinced his followers to join him in his crimes.

How did this mediocre man gain control over his small following? He knew how to gain coercive control, and while he may not have been good at much else in life, he was good enough at this to gain a following.

His downfall came when he invited a couple to come and document his life for their documentary, and they started secretly funneling information first to the police and then to the FBI. The recently released Netflix documentary, Trust Me: The False Prophet, tells their story of taking him down.

But it took a long time. Meanwhile, footage shows him with more than twenty young wives fawning over him, “loving” him, hoping for his good graces.

What does such a below-average man gaining so much power tell us? Abusive authority comes in many shapes and forms.

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I was completely absorbed in the documentary. If it were just about the criminal actions of a terrible man, I would have had a hard time finishing it. But the heroic actions of a few of the people trying to rescue minors “married” to this prophet kept me both inspired and riveted to the screen.

It’s a difficult watch still, but worthwhile for many reasons. One is that it demonstrates first how very hard it can be to convict someone of crimes against children, even when you have 1) the perpetrator confessing to it on a recording and 2) another man willing to testify to the crimes. I’m still mind-blown that this wasn’t adequate evidence. Never believe that there is a large crowd of people in jail under false accusations for sex crimes. This documentary gives a compelling example of why it’s so hard to convict even when everyone knows crimes are being committed.

Another reason it’s valuable to watch is because it shows how coercive control can happen. In the words of one of his former wives, “No one is exempt. It can happen to anyone.” Most of us aren’t going to marry a cult leader, but it’s very possible for anyone to fall under the sway of an abusive leader or group.

While most of us aren’t in a cult, I think that we can learn from how cults work. High control leaders and communities can use some of these same techniques without being a full-blown cult. Cult-like behavior and mindsets can creep into surprising arenas, such as political movements, alternative health groups, churches, and even groups like the free birthing phenomenon.

This isn’t just about being able to recognize cult leaders, as valuable as that is, but more about how to recognize the mind control and misuse of authority and leadership that can happen anywhere.

It’s also a good way to sort through how to do the opposite. For example, if cult leaders misuse authority, how can we practice healthy leadership?

One side note: I kept thinking of the book, The Running Grave, by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling’s pen name for her murder mystery series). This book sets the mystery in a cult, and Rowling, whatever you may think of her as an author/person, does a brilliant job showing the same dynamics of cults. As I watched the documentary, I kept noticing parallels to her book and noting how well she nailed how cults work.

The following observations are just a few of many we could make. I would love for you to share your observations of this documentary or other sources for understanding cults and cult-like behavior, too!

Coercive leaders claim to represent ultimate wisdom on a topic (or to speak for God)

In many self-help arenas, you are told that to lead well, you need to present yourself as an expert. Or the mentor. Or, in a spiritual setting, the expert pastor/counselor/mentor/elder. The argument is that most people want leaders who have more expertise than the average person. Fair enough, if one really has the expertise they claim.

Cults push it a step further, and leaders represent themselves as the ultimate authority. In spiritual communities, this can look like, as in the case with the FLDS “prophet”, claiming to speak for God. If God is your authority, who can question you? In Trust Me, you see how far people can be pushed into terrible situations when they truly believe a leader speaks for God.

This is obvious when someone claims to be the sole spokesman for God. But what is more subtle and harder to notice is when leaders or communities simply claim to be superior to others. I don’t know of a single unhealthy evangelical church community that didn’t have embedded into the DNA of the church that they were better than other churches. While they may not claim to be the only ones with spiritual knowledge, they do believe that they have a better way of thinking, acting, or practicing Christianity than others.

This can certainly be true of large churches or church networks that believe their success demonstrates their superiority. But small churches can fall into it as well.

A good friend came from a small church plant where this attitude of superiority was voiced by the leader from early days. Masked behind concern for “the gospel,” this pastor bred suspicion in the hearts of his congregation against other local churches (isolating them), while also gaining more and more control of their lives as an abusive pastor. This duo of control inside the church and suspicion toward outsiders is a deadly combination.

In other groups it can look like: we are the only or best authority on health or how to eat well or classical education or homeschooling or birthing practices or scientific conclusions. The point is to make yourself or your group the one and only true source of wisdom, or at least the most correct source.

Coercive leaders isolate followers

Controlling leaders will always seek to isolate followers from other influences, much like how an abusive spouse tries to cut their victim off from other relationships. If you are led to believe there is only one leader or group that you can turn to for wisdom and help, then you have fallen into this trap. It’s a big red flag when you believe that there is nowhere else to get help for yourself, including when you feel confused about the dynamics with that leader, relationship, community, or group. This is a mark of a controlling relationship.

Controlling leaders don’t allow anyone to question their authority or wisdom

An important step to gaining control is not just claiming special authority on a topic but also ensuring that no one can question their authority.

The FLDS prophet ensured that no one questioned him by teaching that to question him was to question God and damn themselves. He convinced people to do truly awful and criminal things by convincing them that to do otherwise was outside God’s will.

The high-control pastor during conflict equates the questioning of congregants to a lack of trust in not only the leader, but in God himself. “Don’t you trust me?” is a common refrain.

The unhealthy leader of a movement ensures that followers know that to question any part of their vision is to put themselves outside the movement. They may use language of disloyalty to shame those who question them. They may divert questions by turning around and saying, “How can you ask that when we’ve done so much for you and sacrificed so much for you?” Both overtly and subtly, followers learn that to question anything puts you in disgrace and that you may lose your relationship not only to the leader or leaders but to fellow followers, too, if you continue to question. Followers learn that there is a high cost to any questions or concerns they bring up.

This isn’t to say that everyone complaining about any leadership or leadership decision is right. Leadership decisions will always bring complainers out of the woodwork. However, leaders show their health when they can navigate complaints and concerns without falling into coercive control, shaming behavior, or an overly defensive stance. Those complaining have to work through their own journey of being able to criticize without being overly controlling on their end, too! I’ve seen so many people try to control from the ground up, not just the top down.

Pastors who believe that they have been sovereignly placed over a congregation can mistakenly take that thought too far and think that they have an almost divine, revelatory wisdom to offer every situation that arises in their congregation’s lives. This can lead to pastors who give strong advice on the most minute parts of people’s lives and expect them to follow it. Most pastors learn humility quickly. But some maintain their sense of superior wisdom and insight and squash anyone who rebels against their advice and wisdom. These are pastors who grow into more and more unsafe leaders instead of wiser and humbler leaders.

In the end, high control leaders have to squash those who question their leadership decisions or viewpoints because questioning followers loosens the control they have over people. Questioning can lead the controlled followers to find freedom for themselves.

In Trust Me, one of the victims/wives finally allows herself to question the prophet when she comes face to face with the fact that he had lied to her over something relatively small. That one moment allowed her to question whether he lied to her about other things, and eventually it led to her breaking away from him. Other wives who haven’t allowed themselves to entertain questions of the prophet’s purity and nobility remain loyal.

Questions can lead to freedom and are the bane of toxic leaders.

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Controlling leaders lead their followers on one step at a time

You don’t ask your cult followers to commit a crime the first day they show up. You don’t ask a new congregant to give over control of their lives the first day they become a member. You don’t (usually) ask your political followers to wage war against their friends and family when they first join your side.

Instead, little by little, coercive leaders convince followers of the rightness of their authority, the wrongness of others, and step-by-step ask them to cross boundaries. They push them beyond their comfort zone just a little at a time until they find themselves in a place they never imagined when they began.

One of the mothers in the documentary described it as beginning with a single snowflake that then continued to grow and grow until it became an avalanche. It starts with something that seems so innocent and then grows into something deadly that can suffocate them all. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain gaining momentum and girth, something that seems innocent and harmless can eventually become something deadly.

Coercive leaders make followers complicit

In Trust Me, the cult leader was not the only one eventually jailed for criminal acts. Some of his male followers and some of his wives also went to jail because he had convinced them to do criminal acts as well. While they were victims in their own right as spiritual abuse victims, as adults, they had made their choice, and it was not a good one. (Rowling has a similar plot point in her book, which I found fascinating.)

If you think about it, it’s a calculated and devious choice. If his followers ever grow wary of his actions or start to question the goodness of what he is doing, then they can’t go to the police or others for help without facing the consequences for their involvement.

In lesser forms, when a leader convinces anyone to follow them into unhealthy patterns or into accepting abusive dynamics, they also make followers complicit because they now help make up the tapestry of the environment.

There are many ways that toxic leaders keep followers trapped, and this is one part of the equation.

While I generally avoid using this phrase because I’ve seen it misused so often, this dynamic also shows how you can have individuals who are both truly victims while also being perpetrators of abuse.

While Trust Me demonstrates the worst in people, it also has a redemptive arc because of the people who sacrificed so much to save the victims caught up in the cult. Another redemptive aspect that can come out of it is those who watch becoming wiser to the patterns of abusive leaders. And for all of us to consider how we can lead with integrity.

If any one of us could be vulnerable to falling sway to an abusive leader, then any one of us could be, like the couple in this documentary, part of fighting back against abusive leaders. Finally, all of us have some level of influence or authority. Trust Me is an extreme situation of authority used wrongly. But all of us need reminders to use our influence for the good of others.

One of the heroes in the documentary is one of the mothers whose husband was a follower of Bateman. Her husband gave four of their daughters, including minor children, to Bateman to become his wives. Although she had been taught since birth to obey male authority, eventually she was able to break free and was an important part of exposing the crimes happening under their roof. This came at great risk and cost to herself. May we learn from her courage.

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Greetings from the land of newborn cuteness and lack of sleep! We are doing well, though still working toward getting adequate sleep. This is a follow-up article to, How Do We Know the Character of a Man? See How He Responds to Vulnerable Women, which I’ve been working on since before our son was born.

We are blessed with many friends who have very normal, healthy marriages, coming from a wide variety of theological understandings of marriage, so this doesn’t come up often for us. We are thankful for the exemplary relationships around us that we have admired, and we have learned from their example. So perhaps that’s why it surprises us when occasionally our marriage makes other men bristle. This pattern always seems linked to one aspect of our marriage: when Joel is perceived as treating me better than some sort of ingrained bro-code dictates he should. It unmasks, even briefly, a male entitlement viewpoint. A viewpoint that doesn’t like to see Joel treat me better than they treat their own wife.

Two examples in very different contexts:

In a small group setting, we had a man become reactive when others in the group were encouraging me in my endeavors, and Joel was being attentive to me in those moments. This friend, much to our puzzlement, felt that people praising my work, or my hopes and ambitions, was diminishing Joel. And that Joel being attentive to what others were saying, and the emotions they were bringing to me, was an extraordinary sign of devotion for a husband.

We feel equally devoted to each other. But no one has ever felt that my devotion to Joel diminished me, and I think that is an important observation. The fact that our marriage is so equally supportive causes discomfort for some, whereas if it only came from me to him, it would be unlikely to cause offense. This came from a man very much outside the complementarian/patriarchal worldview, by the way. Yet, there was something that made him react to the supportive stance Joel gave me. It was uncomfortable for him to watch.

While his verbalized discomfort was framed as support for Joel, both of us walked away feeling that he simply didn’t like Joel’s quiet support of me. It got under his skin, and he wanted to challenge it.

Another example from further back in our past:

In our earliest years of marriage, prompted by the belief in male authority as a cure-all for the family, some friends who were far more patriarchal in practice occasionally pushed back on my husband. For example: we had a very colicky baby who gave us very little sleep. At least two other husbands confronted Joel about him “allowing” the baby to be so fussy, or “allowing” me to decide nursing and sleeping schedules or not letting her cry it out at night. These men claimed that if Joel just took charge more and forced me to do a cry-it-out routine at night, our colicky baby would have fewer issues and our sleepless nights would disappear.

There is a lot to unpack here, but really, I just want to say how ludicrous this was. Their faith in male authority made it almost a mystical cure-all. Our only regret from that time is not realizing that our daughter could have potentially been helped by more medical help for reflux, or adjusting my diet as a nursing mother, but we don’t regret that we chose to comfort her nighttime woes. Similarly, one of these men claimed that our colicky baby was just “wrapping us around her little finger” and that her hours of screaming every day were her trying to manipulate us. Curable if we would only take dominion over the situation. Which is also utter nonsense in so many ways. Those who have had a truly colicky baby understand why.1

These men were taken aback that Joel didn’t act on their advice. (It was this sort of context that caused us to be very cautious about who we got advice from and mostly keep our parenting practices to ourselves.)

These reactions, while coming from very different contexts and even worldviews, carry the same thread of male entitlement in different forms. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s overt. The above scenarios are just a few of the ones we’ve encountered.

Both stories illustrate a well-worn belief that men are entitled to specific things that women simply aren’t. Such as that men deserve more power in parenting decisions or deserve a type of support from their wives that they don’t have to reciprocate. There is an underlying assumption that women and men should get different things from each other. More specifically, that men should get things that their wives don’t get.

And when a husband openly defies that often unspoken rule, other husbands react and try to enforce the “rules” on other husbands. My husband learned that in certain groups he couldn’t share about our more partnership-oriented marriage. He was, in fact, shamed for it by other men who felt uncomfortable with it. They didn’t treat their wives that way, after all. Why should Joel?

At our baby shower for our newest one, Joel was asked what has changed for him as a father now, compared to when we first became parents. He answered that he was more relaxed and less stressed about the small things.

In later conversations, as we discussed how we’ve changed, some of our early experiences of parenting in community came to mind. When Joel got pushback about co-parenting with me, it was in the context of a strict gender ideology. He left some of the above conversations feeling discomforted, yet also knew he was unwilling to either override my instincts as a mother or to override his own instincts as a parent himself to accept their advice. He didn’t change his behavior (thank goodness!) to become more controlling because of the advice given. But he can see now that sometimes, without another framework to view our relationship through, he wasn’t able to effectively argue back against their opinions or was worried that he was falling short in his young fatherhood by not “making a stand.”

We are not so easily ruffled now as parents by such reactions.

Now we are curious about these reactions and the assumptions men were making in them. Assumptions such as male authority can cure difficult newborn dilemmas, that fathers are called to make decisions that override a mothers wishes or instincts or desires, that likewise mothers are not equally part of the parenting equation, but rather a sort of glorified servant supporting the father’s parenting agenda and her submission in marriage means that if the dad wants to let the baby scream without comfort during the night, the mother must do so (several influential books argue this sort of unequal parenting).2

These men subscribed to such ideas, and my husband’s noncompliance with them caused discomfort. They needed Joel to get in line, otherwise it called into question their own actions as husbands. They needed to reinforce him leading a family like they did, because merely living his life differently was causing offense. It was undermining the ideas they subscribed to.

Male entitlement dressed as “biblical patriarchy” is still entitlement, however. These men believed that the Bible granted them privileges over their wives that allowed them to make unilateral decisions about the family. They had also been taught that God works through authority, and so had great trust that their judgment, over against their wife’s, was God’s will. They assumed a lot about their own wisdom and the inherent foolishness of the women they married.

In practice, this looked nothing like the call to lay down his life for his wife that Ephesians 5 calls men to by following Jesus’ example. Nothing ever good comes from men who read Ephesians and think it gives them unchecked power instead of a call to follow Jesus and die to self. Their take on marriage looked a lot more like the men of the world whom Jesus warned about, who lorded over those they led, and who his disciples were not to be like. (Matthew 20).

For some in our communities, complementarian doctrine was too weak, with its higher emphasis on “servant leadership.” (An ongoing argument I still see today from those who claim to be offended by the mere term. No feet washing happening with these men!) They claimed patriarchy, with a higher emphasis on power and authority and less on servanthood, to be the true “biblical” model for men. The main difference was that they felt more empowered to make all the decisions and enforce their vision and authority on the family.

Men who embraced these ideas, in my experience, followed through and did not take their wives’ opinions as equally important, and did not serve their wives as well. How we teach about marriage matters.

But I do have two other softer stories to share, that point to how sometimes those who noticed our (very) imperfect attempts to put each other first in a mutual way in our marriage did not cause a negative reaction.

A friend who came from a different church community with a heavy emphasis on male authority in a very damaging way was going through a season of unwinding the harm it had caused their marriage. She shared a few jarring examples from their marriage, and I was really heartbroken to hear how male authority was translated into male entitlement in ways that were incredibly unkind and even abusive. I don’t think her husband set out to be a terrible person, but in the context of terrible marriage advice, some of his actions were terrible but unrecognized because of how they were taught marriage should work.

Joel and I had gone through the same books in our premarital counseling as this couple (books Joel and I would never recommend now). But when I was commiserating with her, and saying how sorry I was for the ways these ideas had misshaped their marriage, she ended up telling me that she hadn’t seen Joel treat me in a similar fashion. We have had to untangle harmful ideas that did damage, for sure. We both regret how some ideas lingered far too long in our marriage. Our marriage is far from perfect today or yesterday, as this friend knows, and we’ve had to work through some difficult things as a couple. But she had noticed a more equally supportive stance between us despite all of the baggage we carried.

Joel’s example of being a different sort of husband had been quietly noticed by some in our friend group. Perhaps, in its own small way, it gave more weight to her desire to be treated better to see Joel do so with me.

A few years after the “you can cure babies with male authority” conversation, we went to the Oregon Zoo with one of the men who was part of that conversation, along with his family.

I had two kids in a stroller, his wife had a baby in a carrier on her chest and a few more in a stroller. I enjoy pushing our kids in strollers, so was happily doing so while chatting with her.

Joel and her husband were talking while walking beside us. If you know anything about the Oregon Zoo, you will know about its steep pathways that wind up and down hills. When we got to one hill, without breaking his stride, Joel stepped in to push the stroller for me to protect my problematic back.

Our friend observed this maneuver quietly. And seeing his wife start pushing two or three kids up a steep hill while carrying a young baby on her chest, offered to push the stroller.

“Oh, sure. Thank you!”

I winced at the surprise in her voice. But this time, I was glad that my husband’s example inspired better treatment for her instead of mere posturing of male authority and entitlement in reaction to Joel’s example.

Sometimes people don’t say anything, but merely living your life in a halfway healthy way can cause a ripple effect that bears some fruit.

And that’s hope for us all.

Matthew 20: 25-27

Jesus called them over and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life - a ransom for many.”

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With our newborn now two weeks old, I’ve been thinking about what helps get us through postpartum. When our second daughter was born, I got terribly sick for months with ongoing cases of mastitis. That horror story of an experience left its mark on me and also taught me, among other things, the importance of having support and rest after a baby is born.

I have since been introduced to traditions from other cultures that approach this tender time differently than most Americans. Many other cultures take care of newborns and recovering mothers in a way that surprises most of us. Some of the traditional practices in other cultures aren’t ones that I particularly want to recreate (for example, some cultures limit the mother from bathing for weeks). But the heart of it: recovery for the mother through rest, community help, and nourishing foods, I can absolutely get behind. Many cultures have a tradition of 40 days of intensive help and special foods. One way to understand the postpartum purification laws in the Old Testament was that they gave enforced rest to postpartum mothers. Understood this way, it gave mothers 40 days of rest after the birth of a son, and 80 after the birth of a daughter. While being bodily “impure” sounds offensive to our modern ears, this specific purity law likely had vital implications for giving Israelite women significant rest and recovery time after birth.1 What sticks out to me is how long mothers were traditionally given help, support, and recovery time in so many cultures.

My midwives’ advice for past births mimics some of those traditional practices of rest, nourishment, and help. I was told, “The better you rest after birth, the better your long-term recovery will be.” As much as I wish I were one of those moms who recover quickly, I’ve recognized the wisdom in this advice, even though it’s difficult to actually make happen.

When I was at the height of my illness after my second daughter was born, two moms were helping me (thank goodness for their help!), and they were taken aback by how sick I was. How helpless I was still, as the antibiotics for the infections weren’t helping. I was so very happy to have my little baby girl. But I was also physically miserable.

“What would have happened to you if you were having babies on the Oregon Trail?” one of them wondered. (I suppose this idea came to mind as we lived close to the end of the Oregon Trail.)

They peered at me lying in bed, obviously ill, even with modern medicine. “I think she wouldn’t have survived,” was the grim conclusion.

Indeed, many women did die after labor from infections.

I don’t think there is anything more American for some than comparing ourselves to the pioneers. If they survived treacherous journeys as mothers, or our ancestors survived birth on remote farms without much help, aren’t we just all a little soft nowadays?

But of course, so many of them did not survive. I loved playing the Oregon Trail computer game back in the day, and you learn quickly how easy it is to die on the Oregon Trail (and, if you read historic accounts, a reality of history, too!).

This sort of mythology we carry as Americans, of our independence and ability to fend for ourselves, bleeds into how we view the newborn stage. And how much we want postpartum mothers to bounce back after birth. How much we think they should.

For some beyond their childbearing years, the fact that they survived without much help or support means the next generation should as well.

I do feel like the culture is changing. Even my discharge instructions from the hospital felt more centered on rest for the mother.2 ( And as all postpartum moms know, it seems impossible to find! It does take grit to get through the newborn stage, although community support makes it easier.)

Do I wish I had easier recoveries? Yes, but I’m so thankful that I’ve made it through my past recoveries and for the many who have supported me through them (in particular by bringing food!). Since I started having kids, societal changes have been apparent to me, including more parents hiring postpartum doulas and night nannies now than when I had my first baby. While many of us don’t have the resources for that sort of support, I can see the difference that kind of hands-on support can make, and am glad that there are more options available.

To turn to my current recovery, I’m thankful to be currently sitting out in our backyard in the shade listening to the birds while holding a little slumbering infant (who has decided that night is the ideal time to eat the most, not the day, much to my dismay).

Yes, I do wonder when I will get those mythical three hours of straight sleep again, and the lack of sleep is starting to take its toll. But there are some things that have helped me in our first two weeks.

In the spirit of the “five things saving my life right now” posts, here are the five things that have helped me this time around.

Practical Help with Essentials

My parents are in town, and my dad helped with the plethora of driving and picking up kids, in particular, for the first two weeks after I gave birth. My mom helped cook us some dinners in those early days, and our community sent other meals our way via our meal train.

I was thankful for their presence and help, as well as our meal train. As it turns out, having the essentials covered is still the best gift.

And that’s not just for me either. It’s caring for my husband, too, who has been busy helping take care of the baby and me, and who is also sleep-deprived.

Thank goodness I’ve had my husband around these first few weeks. It’s been very much needed, and it would have been difficult if he were gone half the time dropping off or picking up kids. I am a real believer in paternity leave for so many reasons, one being that it gives him bonding time. Another being that husbands can often help in ways that others can’t. I’m already dreading when he goes back to work.

Jane Austen Music and Books/Music

Our newest little one is often soothed in his cranky moments by music. I have a playlist from Jane Austen movies that I am playing often. He likes it, and it’s my “comfort” music, which is also helpful for me during fussy baby moments. This makes sense because Jane Austen books and movies are my comfort reads and movies!

I have often re-read all of Jane Austen’s novels postpartum. I enjoy the fact that they are witty and funny, have happy endings, yet engage in social commentary and aren’t fluffy or meaningless. This is a hard combination to find. (Do you have any suggestions for books that hit the same tone? I would love some recommendations!)

I have already watched Persuasion with the family (the 1996 version, of course!) and plan on watching more too.

I go all in on Austen after having a baby.

Writing

Despite the brain fog and sleep deprivation, I’m still writing. This time, like this piece, I’m writing it on my phone instead of my computer as I hold a slumbering baby.

I had a few pieces I was working on at the end of my pregnancy that I’m finishing up to publish here soon. (Taking my time on them because they are on heavy or tender topics.)

Why would I say that writing is important for me postpartum? I think it’s that unique pull for me as someone who feels called to write. Writing allows me to remain connected to who I am as a person, even while still being in the all-encompassing zone of the newborn days. For other moms, it might be other habits, interests, or work that keep them remembering themselves as people who are also mothers. Writing is mine.

Other interests always fall quickly to the wayside for me during the newborn stage, as they aren’t as essential to me as a person.

My reclining rocking chair

For my girls, I had inherited my mom’s oversized La-Z-Boy that she had bought when my youngest sister was born. The color was out of date by the time we got it, but it was well broken in and got us through many sleepless nights. We finally got rid of it some years ago.

My parents sent me some birthday money, and I invested it straight away into a new rocking reclining chair that I was able to snag for a good deal. It’s been a lifesaver both in my pregnancy and postpartum.

Specific support

Besides the essentials, I did a better job prepping for extra support for myself this time around in small ways. I got a few supplements ordered before birth to help hopefully prevent clogged ducts and mastitis, and a whole slew of breastfeeding support supplies for the early weeks, and I got a decent number of freezer meals pre-made. I don’t think this really counts, but I’m also thankful for coffee! This is the first time I’ve been drinking any caffeine as a nursing mother, and honestly, I’m so thankful for it, though I do keep it very limited.

After our experience with a colicky baby, I also went strictly gluten and dairy-free before birth, as I didn’t want to make the switch after birth and then have to wait weeks to see if it helped with colic, if we ended up with another colicky baby. I made sure that our freezer meals fit that criteria as well.

Joel and I have some shows that we watch late at night when we are rocking or bouncing our infant to sleep, which helps us keep a little fun in our routine. And I’ve tried to keep my Libby app stocked with books for myself to read during the long hours of the night or day.

All in all, we are getting through these early weeks, and I’m healing, and our newborn is eating and growing well, and I’m thankful. So very thankful. And also hoping for just a smidge more sleep soon.

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When they placed my newborn son on me seconds after birth, and I saw him, it was the moment I had been waiting, praying, hoping for. There was some chaos in the initial minutes after birth, and I kept asking for reassurance that he was okay. Not because I thought anything was wrong with him, but because I had been holding my breath until I could meet him and see for myself that he was indeed fine.

“I just need to see him,” I told my husband repeatedly in the week before his birth. And finally he was here.

Pure joy.

——///

After eleven years, I had forgotten how much my husband bounced and cared for our newborns so that I could rest more in the early days. As I watch him now, holding another baby of ours, gently soothing him to sleep, in between bringing me food and water and pain meds, I am thankful.

He never got paternity leave with the other babies. This time we are thankful he can be home more. I need him and our son does too.

——///

After my mother-in-law gave birth at home to my now husband, she was hungry. So she got up and made herself soup. Another mom I knew played soccer with her competitive team two weeks after birth. A nonfiction book I am reading about a spy mentioned that eight hours after giving birth, she was back home sending out transmissions again, apologizing for the delay caused by her giving birth. These are the types of recoveries from childbirth I wish for.

I was amazed that a few hours after I gave birth this time, I was able to take a warm shower. My body still shaking from the strain and adrenaline, but soothed by the water. After one of my births, they wouldn’t let me get out of bed for over 24 hours after I passed out trying to go to the restroom. Taking a quick shower was slightly miraculous for me.

My birth went well. And it also had some challenges. My recovery so far is the same. I’m pretty sure somewhere in there a truck ran me over and then reversed and ran over me again.

But the sweetest little bundle laying in my arms tells me a sweeter story of redemption. Even if it doesn’t take away the pain, it gives the pain meaning.

——///

I was fascinated by the free birthing movement a few months ago (I referenced it in my Substack: The Worth of a Woman’s Word.) I truly am happy for the women who have had good experiences.

But as a counterweight to the moms wondering if they should follow that path, can I say a few words?

In the afterglow and the aftershock of giving birth with an experienced and holistic midwife in a hospital setting, I want to say this:

Please don’t free birth. I only say this because I care.

I know all of the reasons it appeals. I really do. Tiny little secret here: I detest hospitals as much as I appreciate their lifesaving abilities. I’ve seen the same content as you online, I’ve read the success stories. And the ones that ended in death too.

And I know that there are some significant lies being spread in the movement about birth and safety and pain and sometimes it uses theological arguments to bolster its claims. The good stories don’t remove the bad stories. Just because some people have done it alone, doesn’t mean it’s ideal (we have a long history of having midwife supported births for generations, after all).

Here’s the thing:

It’s just not a gamble I would make. I want to be a girls’ girl and support people making choices that make sense for them. I am all the way in for needed reforms in hospital settings for better and safer care for birthing moms (and my last two births have shown how good hospital births can be, so it is very possible!). I love the UK model of home birth providers, and am very thankful for the one birth I had at a birthing center and the good care I received there. Free birthing is not something I would choose, despite considering and choosing a wide variety of other options.

At some points in this pregnancy, dreading going to the hospital, I wondered if I should have just had a planned home birth with an experienced midwife. With quick labors in the past, I talked myself through how it would be okay if I accidentally gave birth alone. Or in the car. I wouldn’t plan a free birth, but things happen.

But it ended up being very good that I was in the hospital for several reasons. Nothing too extreme, but having a bigger team available to step in and help and some of the only-at-the-hospital interventions after birth being available made my experience better, not worse. I remember the transport stories of free birthers in similar situations and was thankful I was already there to receive care.

We would have gotten through birth at home safely with a good and well equipped midwife, but it would have been more stressful for everyone involved. Ironically for someone who does really hate being at the hospital, I recognize I had a more peaceful experience with quick resolutions to post-birth issues because I was there. I’m very thankful for the compassionate and experienced care I got.

So before my birth memories start fading into the newborn haze, let me gently encourage the free birthing curious to reconsider.

It’s not just that I wouldn’t take the risk (and I really wouldn’t), but sometimes getting appropriate care in the hospital can make your experience better instead of worse.

Just something to think about.

——///

Last night he woke up for about 45 minutes. He seems to have his days and nights in the right order and we are trying to encourage him to keep it that way. But I couldn’t help talking to him and covering him with kisses. His sweet little face taking in this world, curious already.

What goodness and joy found in his snuggles and bright-eyed looks.

——///

My parents came to help out. We are thankful. My dad reflected on when he was a teenager and his brother was born. As was the custom in those days, his newborn brother was placed in a room (right next to my dads) for the night, and while his parents slept down the hallway peacefully, my dad was driven into a sleepless craze by his brother crying all night.

To his teenager brain, babies were annoying to sleeping brothers. But in retrospect, what a terrible thought to think of his baby brother crying without even the comfort of a presence in the room for half of his living hours.

It made me think about all the ways some generations were given parenting advice that we now know is even dangerous. But what it did do is give parents a sense of control. They could sleep because they didn’t need to comfort a crying baby in the night. They could schedule a baby’s feeding around their own needs instead of the baby’s. As newborns turned into children, they could continue to control outcomes with parental pressure and disciplinary actions and expectations. It was a neat and tidy way to go about parenting that was parent-centered rather than child-centered. And when children weren’t thriving under this care, the child was “at fault,” not the parents or the experts giving the advice.

Five days in, as we’ve navigated the usual newborn challenges, I’ve seen the desire arise in myself to be able to control, as we’ve managed our way through latching issues and newborn tears and inconsistency in these early days. But the wonderful thing about newborns is that their needs aren’t cut and dried and easy to schedule. Loving a newborn teaches us a lot about our desire for control.

Certainly, Joel and I have human needs too. We need sleep and food and showers and support. But our little son is a reminder of what it takes to care for the most vulnerable. When suddenly, the smallest thing (example: seeing if he’s getting enough sustenance through breastfeeding) is the biggest topic of the day and most pressing world issue to a postpartum mom.

Some generations were given parenting advice that acted like a “get out of jail free” card to the parenting work that Joel and I try to undertake now. Sleepless nights, nursing to the newborn’s needs. Our generation has its own version of poor parenting advice floating around, its own hopeful advice that ignores the basic needs and biology of giving birth and raising babies and children. I wonder what hidden minefields I’m unaware of.

——///

Six days old now, the newborn days are rushing by already. I give myself hope in knowing that my body is healing and repairing, and I won’t always feel like this. But I also tear up at the thought of these days going by so quickly. I want to soak up the goodness of them, even with the discomforts and fatigue they bring.

There is nothing like raising children to teach me to number my days. They are so fleeting. But oh, can they be sweet.

I was twenty-one, hopeful and excited in my first pregnancy, but because of an insurance issue with paperwork, I found myself unexpectedly uninsured and facing the daunting costs of a hospital birth.

As I contemplated the option of a home birth as a much more affordable option, I was unsure it was the best pathway for a first-time mom. A church friend who had many happy homebirth experiences told me, as a way to combat my safety concerns, “It will be okay. God loves to give us good gifts.”

What she meant was that she felt assurance that God would give me and my unborn daughter a safe home birth because of his grace toward us. At that moment, I felt a check in my heart. That her application of God’s goodness was not one to lean into, and I believe that was from the Lord.

My daughter was some weeks later diagnosed with a severe heart defect, and she would die right before she was two months old. Home birth was not in the cards for us.

God does love to give us good gifts. But that doesn’t mean we will never face tragedy or that our birthing plans and desires will go as planned.

While all of life gives us the opportunity to figure out how theological stances intersect with real life, there is something especially tender about pregnancy and birth and theological positions.

I’ve been struck again during my current pregnancy by the various ways we use theology to support our decisions during pregnancy, in an attempt to combat fears and even gain a sense of being able to predict the future.

Thanks to social media, I’ve regularly seen how this plays out from various viewpoints, along with my “real life” conversations as we all sort out complicated decision-making for ourselves.

What do I mean by this?

For some, this looks like trusting fully in God’s creation, including birth, being part of his good work and something not to fear. I listened to a scripture meditation for pregnant women that connected God as the creator to feeling peace about the birth process and trust that all would be well. The theological position here is clear: if God created our bodies and is the creator of the birth process, we can fully trust that it will work well. “You were created for this” is a sort of mantra I’ve read and heard from this viewpoint. The many free birthing stories (the positive ones) online from Christian influencers lean into this theological stance.

Others see human invention and intervention as part of God’s common grace toward mankind. The fact that many (many!) women and infants died during childbirth in the past lines up with the theological position that our sinful and broken world still has to grapple with the last enemy — death. But human discoveries and better health care have thankfully reduced pain and suffering and prevented many deaths now. Leaning into this theological position, all interventions are generally viewed positively, including gratitude for pain relief during labor.

If I bought fully into one side, I would be resisting any medical intervention, most fully seen in the free birthing movement, where even midwifery is suspect. Any intervention, including even the most minor of ones, can be seen as a disruption to God’s plan, rather than a potential win for preventing complications.

If I fully bought into the other side, I would be more prone to not consider the pros and cons of various interventions. To never question whether every single hospital policy had me or my baby’s individual needs at heart, or whether it is sometimes also influenced by protecting themselves from liability. Or, in the case of a few of my births at a teaching hospital, whether I was getting the expert care I needed, or the needs of a learning new doctor was prioritized instead of mine.

One aspect that has concerned me about how we tend to talk about birth is the extreme sides we can take that don’t integrate the fullness of a robust theology. It’s much simpler to take one or two truths to build our theology of birth, than to allow the full complexity the Bible gives us. It’s a complexity that doesn’t always give us simple answers for what to do and why when facing birthing decisions.

My friend back twenty years ago didn’t want to accept that the Lord being the Creator of life and birth and pregnancy would allow me to face anything but a smooth and safe birth at home. This is a theology I imagine she leaned into herself to combat any fears she might have for her own birthing experiences. And in the wonderful way that birth often works, she did have very good experiences. Part of the reason we tend to so strongly embrace full belief in one side or another, being a “true believer” in homebirths or hospital births, medical interventions or the natural way, is because once we’ve landed on what we think is the right decision, the safest decision, we can feel at peace. We are also often ready to defend our side.

I was struck with how often safety was the lead topic in these arguments. “I picked homebirth because I wanted a safe birth,” is a prime example of the type of rhetoric I see online. Or, “If I hadn’t been in the hospital, I would be dead,” reels would float before me when I signed in to Facebook.

Women tend to judge each other over their laboring decisions, but I think the reason it brings up such emotional tension is because there is hidden fear behind the decision-making. No one wants to unnecessarily risk their baby’s health.

As a side note, also consider those who want to lean fully into trusting in modern science. Some even take offense at those who praise God for safe hospital experiences. “Why give God credit for the work of human hands?” Of course, look up the rates of deaths caused by medical mistakes, and even the most ardent atheist may be tempted to pray before a complicated surgery.

Back when I was twenty-one and had to first confront the theological idea that a kind and good God would give me a good homebirth, I clearly needed a bigger and more robust theology to deal with the life and tragedy ahead of me.

My point is this: Everyone wants something simple to hold onto as they go into the daunting position of making choices for themselves and a precious new one. It feels good to us to have a black and white worldview (whichever side we end up taking) that simplifies our decision-making.

Is a simplified decision-making framework easier to process? Yes. If you think there should almost never be any interventions, then your decisions are generally made before you even face any specific decision. If you generally think you should go with every recommendation from your doctor and hospital policy handbook, again, your decisions are generally made before you face a specific decision.

The wonderful thing about the generation we are in now is that we can generally expect things to go well for us in birth, regardless of which side we are on. However, that does not mean that our theological positions are well-rounded or truly biblically based. Or that our decisions are always wise. Or that the ways in which we seek to connect truth from the Bible to our very specific birth preferences are always a theologically robust stance. When things do go wrong, this can add pain to already painful situations.

These are the things that I’ve been thinking about as we have been waiting for the birth of our newest little one. I have so often wished that I had a simplistic conviction about either “trusting my body to do the right thing without intervention” or “trusting the medical system to always be right.” I don’t have full faith in either. I think the body is amazing, and tend to lean toward low-interventions. I’ve been thankful for the births I’ve had that have been largely intervention-free, but I have been thankful for the safety net of the medical system and the interventions I needed and received, too (not that long ago, they saved my life).

I wish I could predict the future end to any future path I may choose for certain specific scenarios (including when to race me to the hospital!), but I am just a human looking at statistics, considering my past history of labor and delivery, talking to my health care providers, and praying to God for wisdom.

I so see the appeal of simplifying this process by embracing frameworks that lean me strongly one way or another. But, perhaps the wisdom (and disadvantage?) of being an “older mother” is having seen too much of this world to easily fall prey to believing I can have the end result I want if I just choose the right pathway. I would love to believe that. But I can’t.

So I let the theological tensions I see in various truths of the Bible sit with me – that God is the creator of life, and he numbers our days, that he has called us to be wise in our decisions, that birth is a wonder and testimony to his creation, and that we are to partner with him in stewardship over this earth, including in all of our childbearing and raising decisions, and that this world isn’t perfect or tragedy-free, but that suffering has often found us in even our most tender of moments. All of these things are true.

So we pray. We wait. And we consider when we may need to intervene. And we learn to trust God even as we realize more and more how little we know.

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This morning, my husband got up early, as he has for the entirety of my pregnancy, to run downstairs to make me breakfast before he got the kids out the door for school.

Every morning as I eat eggs and gluten-free sourdough, I have a tangible reminder of my husband’s care for me during a vulnerable time. A tangible way he has fulfilled a promise to me early in this pregnancy that he would help support me through a pregnancy that was filled with various physical hardships and stressors. As I expressed to him early in this pregnancy, I was really going to need his help to get through it. He makes me breakfast most mornings, because I would have thrown up trying to make it for myself. He saw my vulnerability and has met it with grace.

I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by men in my life who, while imperfect, have genuinely shown care and respect to me, often in my most vulnerable moments (Not all men. I have too many stories of the opposite, too. But many of those closest to me have been good examples, and I am thankful to them.)

As a woman who has at various points been vulnerable for a variety of reasons, I began to notice how different men respond to that vulnerability in a woman. Or to the vulnerability of my female friends. It says a lot about the true nature and character of a man to see how he responds to women when they are at their weakest moments.

I began to understand through others’ stories and research, how some men use their generally superior strength, and often better social and economic connections, to hurt women when they are at their most vulnerable. Or to simply walk away when a woman’s presence in their life is no longer convenient.

In a church context where men are often in leadership roles, they also have superior power and authority. How they use it toward vulnerable women and congregants is important. I’ve seen both the healing and destruction that can happen when that power is wielded.

What is true is that some men, in various contexts, see vulnerable women, and they move into protection and help mode. I once had a pastor who, along with my husband, made real steps toward protection for me when a man at church appeared to be targeting me with undue attention. As a woman in that situation, I felt very vulnerable, and was. But because my husband and his fellow pastor made it clear they would do whatever was needed to ensure my safety, a pretty rotten situation turned out to be a beautiful example of men leveraging their physical advantage and, in this case, leadership advantage to become my advantage. This creepy man had made no physical moves toward me yet, and other men may have dismissed my concerns about him. But they took me at my word, believed me, and stepped up to protect me. It was a particularly healing moment for me after I had experienced the opposite in church contexts.

I’ve seen the good that men do. But other men appear to have the opposite impulse, both in petty and in more extreme ways. It seems that the more vulnerable a woman is, the more likely they are to treat her ill.

Here’s an example: I didn’t know until recent years that pregnant women are more likely to become victims of domestic violence. As a pregnant woman experiencing all the ways that I am physically more vulnerable right now, the thought of being on the receiving end of violence during pregnancy from the one you love is a terrible thought. Those rates are even higher post-partum. Horrifying. As their significant other became more vulnerable, these men chose to respond with violence instead of love. Because that’s not been my experience, it baffles me.

And yet.

When I think of some situations I know of, I have to acknowledge that I have seen marriages where, while not verging into violence, the husband did not treat his wife better during post-partum months as she recovered, but in fact, worse. When the attention and work she usually did for the family or for him was suddenly absent or lessened, he didn’t see this as a time when he needed to offer help, but instead became grouchy, demanding, and overbearing. His wife was now less useful to him, and he lashed out.

Can we all be thankful he was not physically abusive? Absolutely. Yet, the same heart attitude is on display as a physically abusive husband when a husband treats a wife worse instead of better when she is in a vulnerable season.

There are husbands who respond to a wife’s diminished ability to meet his expectations and hopes because of illness, cancer, pregnancy, or post-partum recovery with disdain and frustration, or even simply a lack of care and a general indifference. All of which are damaging and show the true character of that man.

I used to read as much as I could on the debate between egalitarian and complementarian views. I, as we all do, of course, have my opinions on the merits of those positions. But what I became more interested in was the practical outworking of those theological stances. I saw distortions of both views that would often put vulnerable women in even more vulnerable positions. I’ve been mansplained by egalitarian men about why they value helping support their wife’s career, and encouraging (that is, enforcing) her having her own income and continuous work schedule. I support women having their own income. But what I’ve also seen is some men misusing egalitarian positions or, outside the church, secular assumptions of female equality, to hide behind the fact that they did have advantages that women didn’t. They used theological or secular positions of equality to erase any need for them to offer anything special or particular to the women around them, such as longer maternity leave for a mother, or extra support when she was a breastfeeding mother.

There has been more than once when I’ve sat with a couple where the man (it was always the man) was proud to talk about his egalitarian views on his marriage and how it impacted their choices as a couple. As someone who is somewhere on the scale of a more traditional marriage model, I’ve winced at his description of what that meant for them because my marriage felt so much more equal because my husband recognized the inequities between us. He knew he had to use his superior strength, or social advantage for my advantage. Ironically, that gave us more equality instead of less. As it turns out, women can indeed be more vulnerable than men in various situations, and a man who ignores that reality with the label of “egalitarian” is unsafe in his own way. Splitting things down the middle can, at times, overlook inherent differences between men and women and how they move through the world (especially if childbearing is involved). I would rather have my husband acknowledge the differences of our experiences, and the time periods when I’m especially vulnerable because of being a woman, and seek to protect or help me during those times.

I think that it’s been an easier pathway for people to understand how complementarian viewpoints are misused or distorted to the great disadvantage of women. I am talking especially about intimate relationships, not simply the leadership decisions impacted by those views. I’ve seen how complementarian doctrines have been used to keep women more disadvantaged instead of served. I’ve seen scripture used to silence the hurting instead of helping the vulnerable. I’ve seen many, many ways in which topics such as headship or leadership have been used in incredibly harmful ways to actually oppress women in marriages instead of building a real partnership in love.

What I’ve grown to understand is that the misuse of power and the male advantage are always present, no matter what framework you are in, because selfishness, apathy, and misogyny exist in hearts (while also admitting that some frameworks do make the misuse of power easier to accomplish).

There have been many times when I’ve read some new bits of research, or read or been told another’s story, and it prompted me to tell my husband how much I have appreciated him not being like that. “That’s a pretty low bar,” he pointed out, unconvinced that this was high praise. I agree with his assessment. It is a low bar, but it’s one that more men fail to reach than we’d like to acknowledge. I don’t take for granted finding a good man.

Last week, I noticed an intense online discussion about “Alpine divorces.” Apparently, this phrase comes from a story, “An Alpine Divorce” from 1893, where a man planned on murdering his wife while hiking the Swiss Alps.

This new discussion online was sparked after a man got a very light sentence after a conviction of gross negligent manslaughter after his girlfriend died on their planned hiking trip together. Online, many women feel that this death was hardly accidental, pointing to the testimony of a former girlfriend who had also been left behind by him, crying, vulnerable, and frightened on a difficult hike.

This led to many women sharing their stories of being abandoned in dangerous situations after being talked into going on hikes, camping trips, or other risky situations that they were inexperienced in, by their significant other or a new boyfriend. The stories shared ranged from criminal intent to gross inattention to strange power moves by men purposely making their vulnerable girlfriend feel more vulnerable and unsafe, to just downright petty. On the petty side, we had boyfriends bored with the slower pace of their girlfriends abandoning them on long, isolated hikes, despite their girlfriend’s inexperience and potential to get lost, or the man who drank his own water, and half his girlfriends on a grueling hike, and got angry when she complained that she had needed her water for herself. On the more extreme side, women shared how they were put in truly dangerous situations and wondered in retrospect how much of it was a real “Alpine divorce” murder attempt.

The point is this: some men don’t just respond poorly to women who are in a vulnerable situation. They purposely make women more vulnerable for whatever twisted reason.

It reminded me of a mother who had (at the time I thought unnecessarily) flipped out when a new boyfriend brought her daughter out stargazing in the wilderness outside town late at night. It turned out to be just a romantic night of looking at the beautiful stars. But this mother had likely had her own experiences that taught her to scream danger when alone with a man in an isolated place. It’s unfortunate that women have to guess the character of men to understand whether they really have romantic intentions or worse ones in mind.

I’m not just sharing this topic to be depressing, though. I think it’s important to understand for a variety of reasons. We should teach our daughters to observe how a man responds when they, or other women, are vulnerable, to discern their true character. A man isn’t simply “stressed” or immature when he lashes out at vulnerable women around him. He is revealing what he values in a woman and whether he is a safe person. Men who abandon sick wives, for example, show that they only got married for the perceived benefit to themselves, not because they were committing to a person in love, for better or worse.

Likewise, we should be teaching our sons how to become and grow into a safe person that isn’t just willing to “fight for his woman” John Wayne style, but who responds with care and love to the women around him who are vulnerable in every day situations, whether they are his sisters, mother, wife, or friend.

Our children need to understand that how they respond to vulnerable people around them is an important way to understand their own hearts and minds. Women misuse power too. All of us need to understand that the way we use our influence and power toward vulnerable people matters and says a lot about who we are as people.

I grew up with a very protective dad. I thought of him when I read a bit of research about how men tend to look at a specific point ahead when they walk, while women are more likely to scan the area as they walk. The implication being that women feel they need to be more wary, more careful, because of their increased vulnerability to violence.

I thought of my dad because I grew up with him constantly scanning the area when he was out with us (his three daughters and wife) in public. He knew this world could be a dangerous place, especially for women, so he didn’t simply walk like most men did in public, but instead did the scanning for us.

This is part of what it means to use your advantage to the advantage of others. I appreciate his example – this one being just one of many.

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