Light Duties

Our work in mothering is not going to achieve all that we imagine. Why bother when we don't know which way the ball will bounce? This episode is about the comfort we can count on.

How can these maternal duties be called "light" when they are so weighty in importance and difficulty? 

A listener has asked, "What good things can I fill my time and the kids' time with before starting formal schooling?". This response was recorded while I was out and about (so it sounds a bit raw). It's a start in thinking about why we have trouble filling time with very young children (I propose that it is an oddity of our economic/social/historical context). I meander through some of the key elements to making time at home with preschoolers nourishing for them and you. Plenty more can be said, but one needs to stop recording somewhere!

I mentioned J.R.R. Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories" and George Macdonald's essay on the imagination from "A Dish of Orts". As usual, I reference Charlotte Mason (not nearly enough, since most of what I say is very much an application of her principles).

Perhaps we find motherhood difficult because we haven’t given much thought to building a house? The thing is, we're all building from ruins, salvaging and restoring what we can. We have ideals, but none of us are working with ideal materials. Our splintered posts have meaning.

In this think-aloud chat, we consider how our most basic form of treasure is our attention. And where our treasure is, there our heart will follow. Some thoughts on how we might come to love things we really don't like doing.

Sometimes God's generosity exhausts us. When the good gifts generate more work, we often treat them like a curse. This episode is about recognising the abundance we've had put in our hands so we can get busy doing something with it. It's about how to do a faithful job of handling the abundance (the abundance we often complain about). It's also about what pleases the Lord in those times when all the abundance has gone. At the end of this think-aloud chat are some thought for how churches might open up some options for the mothers who are on their last copper coins.

I mention Jeremiah Burrough's books, "The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment" and "How to Abound". 

Perhaps telling people about Jesus while we're caring for our children isn't as complicated as we make it? Some reflections from a couple of decades (while I clean and repair books).

The great terror of motherhood is that we’d ruin it. This dread causes some mothers to do less: the less we do, the less we can fail. The same dread causes others to grip tighter and work harder: the harder we try the more sure the outcome will be. The painful truth is that both—minimal doing and overdoing—are ruinous to the thing we are trying to preserve.

I could NOT let Christmas come without saying something. But such is the sweltering pace of things around here that I am talking on the run, complete with the creaking of doors, thrum of traffic and stretching of sticky tape. Minus editing and intro and outro. It's a worked example of giving what you've got even though it's far less than your ideal. That's the kind of chat this is. May you and your kids and everyone within orbit of you better know the comforts of King Jesus.

https://mycanonplus.com/tabs/discover/video-series/1167

We don't have to trick kids into obedience. And we mustn't neglect climbing trees.

A life of obedience isn’t a legalistic life. Obedience training is not a constant drill of facts and instruction. It isn’t micromanagement, explicitly teaching every virtue and moral lesson by rote. It’s not that we make obedience fun, like a cheap gimmick to bribe our children into doing what they ought. Obedience is not a bitter pill crushed in a spoonful of honey, or a zucchini blended into a chocolate cake. When we’re pursuing obedience on God’s terms, things are more fun and more interesting, because obedience makes people and things more truly themselves. It gives true freedom and deep pleasure.

What if our children grow up to squander the good gifts we have tried to give them? If it doesn’t end up achieving all we hope for, would faithful Christian motherhood be a waste of time? This is a think-aloud delve into how to stay motivated for a fraught work. I pray it is a comfort, and fortifying.

This is the first episode answering a few questions lately received. Ranging from preparing for the teen years; parenting books I wish I had read at the start of my time as a mum; suggestions for Bible study guides to support Christ centred mothering. Along with some comments about Christian cancel culture.

If there was a way to sober me up in the euphoria of anticipating new motherhood, this verse was it. A hint that there was a weighty trust and great danger. I wasn’t merely welcoming a baby, but a person who would grow into an adult who would either fear the Lord or despise him. "his sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them.” (1 Samuel 3:13). 

In this think-aloud chat, Cathy talks aloud through a few things she's noted watching kids grow from complete dependence to almost the opposite (in a shockingly short space of time). A few things she's learning to focus on with the escalating pressure to fast track our kids into independence. It starts with trying to figure out what independence is.

Note the audio was recorded while Cathy was building and cleaning book shelves. The audio reflects the real-time multitasking situation. If you want to know what the library project is, you'll find it at https://www.livingbookhouse.com/

In this think aloud chat, I continue thinking through my experience of handling motherhood and unwieldy moods. This is about some practical considerations that have helped. And books. See website for links.

In this think-aloud-chat, Cathy talks through some of her experience of learning to cope. This is a look at one mum's experience over a long time, and the things that made a difference when dealing with long term depression and anxiety. 

My experience as a mum started before it was normal to have a smart device on hand constantly, but I soon had to come to terms with the opportunities and follies of screens. These are some thoughts (complete with the soundtrack of my domestic life) about some principles that have come to shape what happens between kids and screens in our family.

Note also  https://www.motherbiblelife.com/articles/whymotherhoodisboring

a rather connected episode https://www.motherbiblelife.com/articles/boredom-think-aloud-chat

To view my conference workshop about Boredom, see https://youtu.be/q3pP874Y-ro

Obedience doesn’t bring about belonging, the belonging comes first. When we belong, we express our connectedness through obedience. 

Obedience isn’t about keeping ten thousand rules. In our own obedience as mums, and in helping our children learn to obey, rules cover only a fraction of the surface area. Rules aren’t the entirety of obedience, they only define the edges. Rules are fences and gates; obedience is the space between. Good rules protect and direct and give definition to obedience, but they are signposts, not the substance. Rules are a step in describing the features of godliness, what it looks like to actively belong.

For their season of dependent childhood, belonging to a family, and learning to obey within that family, is the most common, enduring, complex, deepest form of evangelism and discipleship. It is a temporary season though, a season of higher dependence to prepare them to live for Jesus away from us.

This is a think-aloud chat especially for my unexpected audience: the women who are still young enough to be dependent on parents; the women who are looking at a future full of unknowns--the not-yet-mums, the younger women who still have many choices waiting to be made.

When we find ourselves married and with children, we realise we're riding on the back of choices we made ten, 15 or 20 years earlier--long before we were thinking about what's involved in being married and raising kids. This think-aloud chat is about some of the things worth having in mind as you start looking at the good possibilities yet to come.

Links to books referred to are listed on the Light Duties webpage.

Once we’re persuaded that it is good for us to train our children in obedience, a new set of potholes form in the road, some deeper than others.

There are many ways we get things wrong. Our sin mangles and makes further obedience more complicated. But the complications don’t nullify the command. The exceptions don’t change what God has made plain for all of us. The fact that there are potholes don’t mean we should give up on the road. It just means being alert, swerving, repairing, and occasionally dealing with the erosion that is undermining the road.