Parenting

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

~ Kate Friederichs ~ Leave a comment

Ivan I bought this to read to my five-year-old. She is creative and loves story. She is, herself, a storyteller. She has the ability to be moved without losing it. Because of this, I’m able to read to her things that I would otherwise wait on until she’s a bit older, things I still haven’t read to my seven-year-old because she’s so sensitive she wouldn’t handle it well.

Again, there are no chapters. This one is written like snapshots in the daily life of Ivan. Some are a few sentences. Some go on for a few pages. He is a gorilla, after all. It took me some time to get Ivan’s voice right (since I was reading it aloud). I probably should have read further ahead of time to get a better feel for Ivan, who seems at first, rather aloof. But as the story progresses, the many pieces of Ivan begin to come together, and it is beautiful and touching. I will warn you though, that there are many sad parts, like when Ivan’s family is killed by humans, or when his best friend dies. It does, however, have a happy (but not too-happy) ending. Judge the appropriateness of these subjects for your children- you will know best. Penny Mae loved it, as did I.

The Silent Years

~ Kate Friederichs ~ 3 Comments

I have always needed and loved to write. The process of a tiny thought ruminating, growing, and then hungering for expression. Taking up space in me until the floodgate opens and words gush like water. And then I had a baby. Some of the thoughts changed but they still underwent the process. And then I had another….and another. Over the course of five years, I stopped writing despite my best efforts. Whether the thoughts stopped or I no longer had the ability to process them, or I lacked the time to express them- likely some combination of the three- I’m not sure why it happened. But those years, my time of silence, was a season. And just as I had stopped writing despite my effort to keep at it, I also started writing again despite an effort to suppress.

We knew Eloise would be our last baby. She turned two, and I reflected that if our schedule had continued, I would be preparing to bring home another one- but I wasn’t. I was done. I had three beautiful girls. My oldest had just entered Kindergarten and my youngest was growing in independence- two going on 20. Third children…they grow up so much faster. My life began to ease, and I found myself with some time. Enough anyway to read- something, anything!- other than children’s books on repeat.

You readers, you know. You begin to read, your mind is being filled and yet there is always more space for response. And the better you read, the better the thoughts are that fill the space created. Once that happened, the thoughts did what they do: they grew, they hungered, they demanded to be released. Against every effort, against my defiance, they persisted. In December I succumbed. The need to write overpowered the need to rest, in fact it became a kind of rest. I created this blog, needing to break away in format and content from my old one. I needed it to be a place where I was a person- a whole person- and not just a mom. Where thought could exist outside my home.

Why did I resist? That thought is still soaking. It’s not ready to be wrung out. No doubt fear lurks in the water. Some thoughts you don’t want to grow; you are afraid to express. Some day, when I’m braver, when I understand it more myself, those thoughts can find their way out. Because after all, thoughts are just thoughts. They are not truth. But when you let them out into the light of day, you can see them for what they are. The truth or the lies they contain become discernible to you- and to everyone else.

In that, I’m learning to let go of needing to be right all the time. There is a journey in discovering what is true. We never start there. We are bent, all of us, to believe lies. And once discovered, Truth is no shallow pool. We wade in, slowly, pushing under, until we’re fathoms below, if we ever get that far. Maria Popova, on my favorite blog wrote this about Amiri Baraka, and it brought me so much freedom to speak- to speak even what I doubt, even what I fear, even what I struggle with:

Any human being who is fully alive and awake to the world has a duty to be continually changing her or his opinions, always evolving, like the universe itself, toward greater complexity. To judge who a person “Is” on the basis of their views at a particular point in time is to deny them the dignity of continual being, for at any given moment we are only ever seeing a static slice of the person’s dynamic becoming, which stretches across the evolving context of an entire lifetime.

While I probably don’t believe this in the same way Maria does, I do believe we are all moving in a direction. We are never stagnant; we are never still. We live in a current. For me to be able to write something not as Truth, but as Thought or Battle or Attempt, gives me the freedom to be wrong, and the courage to be humble.

The Vanishing American Adult

~ Kate Friederichs ~ Leave a comment

51etAA6pA1L._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_My husband and I listened to this at the urging of a good friend as we drove to Colorado this summer. I was really interested in the topic: the cultural development of unending adolescence. I was nervous it would be too political- I don’t have the patience for that. What I was not expecting was the history and philosophy that would be entwined throughout the book. Had I been reading it and not listening to the audiobook, had I not been listening to Ben’s own voice, I could have forgotten he was a senator. He wrote as a historian, as a Christian parent, as a former university president. Those were the perspectives he wrote from, and I found so much of what he had to say as valid and absolutely necessary. As we drove, this book was fuel for a lot of engaging- and sometimes robust- dialogue between me and Hubs in the car.

It’s greatest downfall (besides the hypothetical commencement speech by Theodore Roosevelt) was the practical application of his points. I loved hearing the stories of how his family was instilling work ethic and raising their kids to be full functioning citizens benefitting the world around them. But his situation is different from most, and a lot of what he said wasn’t transferable from his life to mine. My kids aren’t homeschooled. I can’t pull them from school for a few months to send them to a cattle ranch. My husband has a Monday – Friday job he has to be at. We don’t live it multiple locations nor do we have the opportunity to do most of the things his family has the opportunity to do.

So it was one of those books that sets you ablaze, winding you up so that you can spring into action, but once you close the back cover and start thinking about how you are going to shake things up…a bit of frustration and disappointment sets in. Ben, we are working on it. Already, we are doing things differently and our kids are responding, and we are thrilled. And we will keep working on it- you gave us the holistic picture we needed, both of the grim result if we don’t, and the thriving end if we do.

Give Them Grace

~ Kate Friederichs ~ 1 Comment

This book was on my list for a while. I naturally gravitate toward fiction. And when I do get revved up for a non-fiction, it is usually one that still involves story: biographies, memoirs, etc. Reading instructive non-fiction takes intentionality and grit. But this book was a breath of fresh air for a mama needing some help and not any more dos and don’ts. I wish I had read it about 4 years ago….

There’s nothing new and earth-shattering here. But in a time when our basic beliefs about parenting have been indoctrinated by the present cultural climate of fear, and even within the church, the resounding war drum is that of control, the truth that we as parents have no power to save freed me of the impossible task of changing the hearts of my children. And as I kept reading, I began to wonder When did I start believing I ever could? 

Because I used to know that. And I used to trust it every day. I carried that truth around with me like a diamond ring. And then my little baby, whose heart was always sinful in a quiet way, became noisy in her sin. And I became noisy in return, giving birth to the struggle for power, both of us fighting for control of one another. It was little things at first: you will keep your shoes on, you will eat this dinner. But one thing led to another and before long, I was fighting for control of bigger things: you will say you’re sorry, you will love your sister, you will be kind to mama. And you will do it because you should. Because it’s good and right. Now do it.

At some point I forgot that she couldn’t. Should and could…..what a dark chasm that exists between those two! Should and could…those are my problems too. And I know as well as everyone else, more rules don’t make me want to do what I should. But grace does….

We read the promises of life for obedience and think that means that we can do it. The promises of life for obedience are not meant to build our self-confidence. They’re meant to make us long for obedience and then, when we fail again, they’re meant to crush us and drive us to Christ….The law won’t make [your children] good. It will make them despair of ever being good enough, and in that way it will make them open to the love, sacrifice, and welcome of their Savior, Jesus Christ.
pg. 35-36

Maybe you’re stuck in the tug-of-war with your own kids. Maybe somewhere along the line, you’ve forgotten some things too. Or maybe, after start over following start over following start over, you need some grace yourself.

Read it. Let that impossible task go, both the impossible task you ask of your kids- perfect obedience- and the impossible task you demand of yourself: perfect parenting.

The law says, “do this,” and it is never done. Grace says, “believe in this,” and everything is already done.
Martin Luther

 

Need into Want

~ Kate Friederichs ~ 1 Comment

I had the privilege of hearing from Jill Briscoe at the IF:Gathering this past weekend. As she made her way across the stage, my ears perked up. The only true veteran among the group, this white haired 82 year old woman had my attention before she even opened her mouth. And then the moment she did, I was riveted. Poetic, humble, and wise, she spoke winsomely and with authority. I waited for God to tell me, through her, what I had come to hear. I forget though, he tells me what I need, with no guarantee it will be what I want.

I had been primed with the theme of the weekend, calling us to the small daily acts of faith, rather than the grand large-scale endeavor. Called to the invisible. Can I just confess that that feels like a let down? Don’t we all hunger for the magnificent? And (is this a safe place?) don’t we all crave being seen? I’m not talking about the spotlight.Not everyone craves that. But don’t you long to be recognized in some way for what you do or who you are?

But what Jill had to say to me was an affront to those wants. Speaking about her own conversion in a hospital bed at Cambridge, she said:

From now on, the orbit of your life, the place between your own two feet at any time, is your mission field….And what we’ve got to do is go where we’re sent, stay where we’re put. Unpack; as if you’re never going to leave. And give what you’ve got. And he might move you on and you say it again. Maybe circumstances will move you on. But until you’re moved on to whatever, you give everything you have, between your own two feet….What is the Calling? Matthew 28, Go into all the world and make disciples and teach them to make disciples and teach them to make disciples. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. Between our own two feet. Now. Don’t worry about Judea and Samaria, guys. Where are you now?

And if that wasn’t hint enough, I got in small group with discussion questions crying out the theme, like the beating of a drum:

What holds you back from believing God wants to use you right where you are?
How might God be wanting to use you right where you are?
What is the risk in letting God use you right where you are?

Yes, God. I hear you. Right where I am. Be right where I am. Stay right where I am. Unpack.

Of course, I wasn’t physically going anywhere. But in my mind, I have voyaged elsewhere….taking with me all my desire. Can I confess that as a stay-at-home-mom I have struggled with the joy in it? That as a person who loves mental stimulation, art/beauty, and adventure, that reading board books on repeat, playing “I Spy” on repeat, finger painting on repeat, “adventuring” to the grocery store on repeat have left me feeling deficient? When I still have so many things I want to do and the opportunity seems gone already?

But as I work this out with God, as Jill put it, “sitting on the steps of my soul in the deep place where nobody goes” I have come to see that what I want is not to NOT be a stay at home mom. I want to not be a disciple-maker. I want my time, my gifts, my adventures to end on me. To serve my purposes. My life. Me. My. Mine. Because I can’t agree there isn’t glorious purpose in it. Just a purpose, God help me, I have a hard time desiring. One of being invisibly poured out.

And Jill keeps going:

It’s not a glamour trip. Well you know that because he said, “Take your cross with you.” You’re going to need it. You’re going to have to die to yourself, you’re going to have to die to your choices, whether I get married or I don’t. You’re going to have to die to your prejudiced little mind. You’re going to have to die to what you’d like to do.

I heard myself saying in discussion, “It’s so hard to say, ‘I’ll do that later. It can wait.’ But the truth is that I can do that later. The opportunities before me now have an expiration date. They won’t ever be mine again.”

I am reading through Ecclesiastes. Solomon is explaining the futility of toil for everything under the sun:

All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.

But let’s rise up above the sun. Enter the upside down Kingdom of God and the opposite is true. You pour yourself out and stay filled. You lose your life to keep it.

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.

And there is God on the steps of my soul again. You need to make disciples. Not that you can. But it’s what you really need. It’s the adventure and beauty your soul thirsts for. The reason you feel deficient and unsatisfied is that you haven’t been making disciples. You’ve been reduced to a stay-at-home-mom under the sun. That’s not what I’ve called you to. Rise up.