Take care of all the things?

I've been sketching out ideas for blog posts, and I've even got a some pictures to share. Tonight though, I'm tired. I'm really, really tired. Allen and I had a long talk about how we can get back on track, but the jist of it is that over Christmas I mentally pushed aside a lot of the things that are bothering me now because, hey, it's more important for Christmas to be awesome than for the laundry room to be organized. But now, even though Christmas is down and mostly in boxes, those boxes don't really have a home. Because the stuff that should be in the laundry room is in the closet, and the stuff that should be in the closet is in a room full of stuff that should be in my closet. And why isn't it in my closet? Because that's where I stashed all my candles and vases and brick-a-brac back when my clothes where all in another closet entirely. And that's not even touching on all the painting and patching I still need to do before I can start hanging pictures and shelves and whatnot. So basically we're in the remodeling/moving in/holy cow this house is huge stage in which everything is endless and overwhelming and not as much fun as we (I) thought it would be about twelve months ago. I thought I'd be planning my garden now and not trying to mentally calculate whether it would be a fair exchange of money for sanity to just hire someone to paint about three rooms and at least one closet and possible a few doors (the ones where the paint starts peeling when you prep-sand them so that you end up an hour later thinking about just buying new doors) so that I don't have to deal with it anymore and can move on to sewing kitchen curtains.

And on top of everything I've got a little side project at church. It's nice to talk about having time to serve your community, but my problem is that I'm long on time and short on energy. It's a good cause and fits my skill set, which is why I volunteered in the first place, but I'm about ready to move on to the "friends over coffee" part and spend less time on the driving back and forth and having to copy five people on every e-mail part. I'm just praising God I didn't actually send that other e-mail volunteering for one more project. Poor Allen would never eat a home cooked meal again. He'd come into the den at dinner time to find me knitting away with my latest BBC crush and a bag of jalapeno cheese curls  =) Now I want some jalapeno cheese curls.

Anyway, regular life will hopefully be resuming....sometime? Just wanted to say that if you don't see me around her for a little while or if my cognitive abilities seem stunted you know why.

Families without roots

A while back I stumbled on a the adventures of a traveling family, and by traveling I mean a little more than two weeks in July. This is a family that lives year round on the road traveling all across Asia and who knows where. I have to admit, after years spent hitting the road, their lifestyle seemed attractive if a little impractical, but after some more consideration I've concluded that for Christians such a lifestyle is probably better avoided. While I don't believe my objections carry significant moral weight, I do believe my reasons are largely sound.

1. Who is your neighbor?

When you're traveling all over the world/country/continent it has to be hard finding church communities wherein you can grow and learn to serve your neighbor. Suppose you speak English and Spanish and are spending a month in Korea? Where is your fellowship? Too many Christians are already going to church with a shop around, consumer mentality for me to think lightly of people voluntarily entering a situation that will drastically limit their opportunities for corporate worship. If we're going to actively love and serve and encourage and challenge each other that requires an investment in time you won't get if you're constantly moving on. While I'm not at church every single Sunday, I am there most Sundays. I grew up church hopping - going to one church for a few weeks or a couple years and then one Sunday just not going. I've got a lot of memories and no friends from those years. Fast forward to shortly after Allen and I met. For ten years (on and off as we've moved away and come back) we've been part of one church and one denomination. I've got roots here. There are kids here that I met at babies (or even attended their baby showers). Even if I don't know everyone so well as I would like, there's a history here and a form of faithfulness that we all come together and put up with each other. I don't really see how you can get that when you're always moving from city to city.

2. Where is your family?

While there are a few people who may be doing this without leaving grandparents, aunts, and other extended family behind that's not the norm for more families. There are siblings and parents and cousins and others who should have a place in your life. So maybe your kids have splashed in the Tigris and the Nile. Maybe they speak a little Mandarin or a have a favorite German street food. Is that more important than having a grandfather who taught them to build a fire on their first camping trip? Is it more important than the great pillow fight of '09 between your kids and your sister's kids? What about the Christmas Uncle Joe let them light bottle rockets? Do grandmothers not color in picture books anymore? The Bible is pretty big on taking care of family, and that's hard to do when family is on a whole different continent. You might not see Argentina very well in two weeks, but at least you'll be teaching your kids that love of people and duty towards family comes before treating life like some egoistic pleasure cruise.

3. What about your stuff?

This is probably going to sound like the least Christian objection. After all, if we're going to Heaven then working to earn a bunch of stuff seems kind of pointless. Except that God says it's not. Throughout the Bible God praises the wise and the diligent - the who seeks to lay up and inheritance for his children and who gives generously to the poor. When you seek a lifestyle that allows little for charity but gives you lots of "freedom" and "options" the main recipient of your generosity is yourself. We have a God who loves to give us good things, and some of the things might weight down the carefully curated selection of personal items in your L.L. Bean backpacks. That's ok! Stop spending your life focused solely on what you want to get out of it.

With all that said I love the idea of people traveling together as families. I think it's a huge blessing and a wonderful way for families to enjoy each other. I just think there are ways to travel that don't involve neglecting our duties to our families and to God. My family used to see a lot in nine days of RV travel. Some people might be able to take a month. I'm all for it. I just don't think it's wise for Christians to emulate this sort of vagabond, world traveler lifestyle. To me it smacks of egocentricity and a willful avoidance of the sort of productive community life I believe God desires for us.

Caveat: I realize that some of my objections can apply to foreign missionaries, and I don't want to sound like I believe long term life away from one's family or in an environment the necessitates few possessions is always wrong. Missionaries in many ways pay a high price for their service. The drawbacks are real, but the commission is also real.

Created to Be His Help Meet: Part 1

Since CTBHHM is divided into so many chapters and parts I can't guarantee that I'll divide my reviews up quite as logically - particularly since this promises to become more a page by page commentary than a connected set of chapter summaries and reviews.

Part 1, chapter 1 starts off rather well. She opens by reminding the reader just how much work a good marriage takes. This isn't something that just happens, and even Mr. Darcy probably has a habit of humming under his breath while paying bills that makes dearest Lizzie contemplate the decorative swords above the mantel. Yet, despite our husband's shortcomings we are called to be cheerful, willing helpers. It's not that we wouldn't perhaps do a better job ourselves, Mrs. Pearl rightly points out that such contemplations are entirely beside the point, but that it's not our job. Women are to help meets eagerly searching for new ways to bless their husbands. Amen and pass the conviction. Much as I love Allen and I can't say that I'm nearly as eager for his welfare as I should be. If Debi kept to this line of thought I'd be writing an entirely different sort of review, but even here we find troubling hints of the arguments to come. For instance, in talking about the roles of wives Debi entirely skips over any idea that women may have a separate existence. I realize this is a book written to wives and not single women, but occasionally I wonder how she feels about lovely single ladies (we all know them) who, by the grace of God, remain single (pg 23)? Consider this excerpt -"You are, by nature, equipped in every way to be your man's helper. You are inferior to none as long as you function within your created nature...You were created to make him complete, not to seek personal fulfillment parallel to him (21)." Since I'm not even sure what she means by parallel personal fulfillment I'll leave that alone, but I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. It raises a few questions. Are single women inferior? Is it possible for women (single or widowed) to have purpose aside from men? We can charitably assume that Mrs. Pearl doesn't mean these things, but her prose makes it unclear. One could possible surmise that in her fervent defense of submissive, helper-wives Mrs. Pearl has lost sight of women's larger importance in the church. And here, "in the church," might be the crux of my issues with Mrs. Pearl - something that will become more clear when we discuss the next chapter.

Chapter two starts off with the delightful premise that more women (particularly wives) should take care to wear some of that "joy of the Lord" on the outside where it can beautify their features and enchant their husbands. This isn't something I read so often in the marriage advice genre, and it's something my husband agrees should be said more often. Cheerful, playful wives are way more attractive than doleful, long-faced ones, and the wise wife will keep this in mind while applying her lip gloss. Unfortunately the rest of this chapter slides downhill rapidly from here. After laying out her laudable "cheerful wife" principle, Mrs. Pearl goes on to apply it to a situation concerning a wife whose husband is having an emotional affair. This section has been reviewed elsewhere on the internet, so I'll try to stick with what particularly struck Allen and me. First off this big blooper: "God has provided for your husband's complete sanctification and deliverance from temptation through you, his wife (29)." Allen's remark on this statement was that it's enough to condemn the book out of hand. While God might use temporal agents (a neighbor or a parent) to share His grace, sanctification and deliverance come solely through Jesus Christ and His righteousness. A wife might be an agent of grace, but these agents of grace cannot be considered meritorious in any effective way. The credit is completely God's. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. Debi Pearl goes on the paint a dreary picture of the indignant, condemning wife standing on her rights and vows and eventually driving her lonely husband back into his secretary's arms while she (the wife) is forced into poverty with her poor government schooled kids, having no prospects of love before except a soul crushing repetition of the same round with a man of another name. First, one can't read through this section without realizing that Debi is either projecting a whole lot or holding much of the previously quoted letter back. (For instance, nowhere does the wife's letter indicate that she's been scolding or that her husband has been lonely/excluded from sex.) Secondly, one can also clearly see just why this book is so poisonous. Mrs. Pearl says "You cannot be pitiful enough to force him to love you (30)." This is very true. If this woman wants to win her husband's love she's not going to do with mopes and accusations. However, Mrs. Pearl completely glosses over any sort of repentance of reconciliation. She goes so far as to say that waiting for repentance may lose this woman her husband completely - with all its dire implications of loneliness and poverty.

This is where we find most the poison. If Mrs. Pearl was saying "Once your husband has repented and shown a desire to be reconciled you have to give him something to he can desire. You're probably feeling very bruised right now, but even if you don't trust him (and I'm not saying you should right away) you need to be a person he can fall madly in love with again. This is going to be a whole lot harder if you wear your heart on your sleeve and look at him reproachfully over your morning eggs." Nope, Mrs. Pearl jumps right over repentance and tells the wife to dive into direct competition with the office hussy to win her husband back. There are so many problems with this. First off, Mrs. Pearl never suggests the wife get a pastor/higher authority involved. Second, the husband receives absolutely no accountability or an attempt to bring him back into right relationship with God. Third, the wife is demeaning herself (and her wedding vows) by acting as if a legitimate competition over his affections existed. Fourth, Mrs. Pearl is assuming that this husband won't take his wife's acquiescence as license to do whatever he wants since his wife is too desperate or dumb to care/notice. Fifth, the implication is husbands get smiles, sex, and blushes because they may go off the rails if they don't, but women get these things because they've worked hard to earn every single one. If this isn't the oddest conception of marriage I don't know what is. I'm pretty darn sure that I didn't earn all my husband's affection, and yet I'm also pretty sure that Allen has earned quite a bit of mine through his patient, tender care.

Hopefully you can see the problems. Taken alone many of Debi Pearl's statements have merit. Men aren't won by critical wives. They do love cheerful appreciation. Standing for your marriage vows might end with your husband packing his bags. The problem is when you put all together and end up with wives acting like their husband's are always in the sexual marketplace - not because a wise wife will see her husband's sexual needs met, but because he literally might be searching the sexual marketplace at any time. At that point what difference is there between Christian wives and Park Avenue trophy wives? Less alimony I suppose. I believe the whole point of this is found in this statement: "Recognize that you are at war for the preservation of God's most noble institution on earth -the family (30)." Unfortunately this simply isn't true. God's family (The Church) trumps all earthly families. It is to the Church that we owe our most basic loyalties. Don't believe me? Consider how Christ said that He came to bring not peace but a sword and went on to list how basic family structures would be torn apart as some answered and some resisted the call of Christ. Divorce is a bad thing, but breaking up a family isn't the worst thing. Even excommunication (roughly equivalent to divorce from the church) is supposed to be part of a larger call back to repentance and fellowship. Unfortunately Mrs. Pearl doesn't see this, and without the church there really is very little she can recommend a wife do besides order a new garter belt and try again.