Guardians of the Home

Sharing my Keynote Presentation at the Rocky Mountain Home Educator's Conference

Earlier this summer, I was asked to deliver a keynote presentation at the Rocky Mountain Home Educator’s Conference. The talk is titled “Guardians of the Home: Discerning the Voice of Truth and Forming Peace-Filled Homes.”

Today, I am sharing the transcript with you—bad jokes and all.

For those who prefer to listen, the live audio recording timed with the Powerpoint presentation is available on YouTube:

Guardians of the Home

I just want to first take the opportunity to praise God for all of the people who made this possible, for the place that is hosting us, and for this opportunity to be together and to pray through this vocation that is, I think, as much a gift as it is a challenge and an opportunity to grow in holiness.

I love the theme of the conference this year: Whatever is lovely. Today, we are going to be speaking about how to hear and see what is lovely, to recognize the voice of truth in the midst of temptation, and so much that competes for our attention in this world of unprecedented noise.

One project that I was blessed to share with the world this year is a book that deals with the temptations that we encounter in Christian motherhood. It’s called The Bellbind Letters. It is inspired by a book by C.S. Lewis. Anybody familiar with The Screwtape Letters? Yes? Awesome. For those who are not, it’s a series of fictional letters from a senior demon to a junior demon, and he’s advising him on how to tempt his patient, so-called, a newly converted Christian man.

And I sort of thought, “Well, there’s a little bit more to be said about how to tempt women—specifically mothers and the feminine heart.”

(If you have high schoolers, I would definitely put The Screwtape Letters on your list, and I would even say if you just read one book with your high schoolers this year, make it The Screwtape Letters. And if you’re an audiobook family, I really recommend John Cleese’s narration. It’s fabulous.)

When Allison invited me to give this talk and talk about discerning the truth from the lies that we hear, I kept hearing all of them circling in my brain. And I started to think, “What do these lies look like for homeschooling moms specifically?” So I have written a letter just for this conference and this group of women (And men! Sorry, dads. Men, too. Just replace the pronouns in your brain.)

I would like to begin today by reading you that letter, and then we will dive into Scripture and talk about what it means to discern the voice of truth according to Truth Itself and become guardians of our home.

My Dear Bellbind,

So your patient has decided to homeschool. I wouldn’t be overly troubled by this development. It is not as though one option were more conducive to our aims. Patients can be led astray whether they hoard their fleshlings or shake free of the little rodents by dispatching them elsewhere. You have only to select the right tactics. The location matters little. What matters is where the mother’s attention rests.

Although to your point, this may prove somewhat rockier ground for the children’s tempters should our efforts towards sabotage prove unsuccessful. Ripple effects must always be considered, particularly where mothers are concerned. The key is to turn this to our advantage, to ensure that the ripples transmit merry mayhem and blessed disruption. Our aim is simple: sow chaos and discord, foment overwhelm and despair, and snuff out all discourse with the Enemy.

Pay no mind to any delight she feels in the planning stage, rancid as their enjoyment is to our tastes. It’s a mere honeymoon—short-lived, if you play your cards right. Fix her mind upon all the pretty pictures she sees on the screen. Make her feel the weight of her inadequacy. Fuel to the flames of the false infatuation with the pitiful sentiments being peddled. Let her form her lofty ideals, so long as they remain ideals and do not incite action.

The goal is not to disenchant her with the myriad forms of the dribbling twaddle they call education, but to drown her in them. Let every appealing method appear indispensable. Let every good idea become a necessity. Soon she will be carrying so many ideals that the weight of them renders her stagnant.

Never permit her to consider the Enemy’s true aims for the formation of his so-called lambs. (Even His metaphors are pathetic. Our Father Below did well in selecting the serpent as his symbol.) Keep her mind on the papier-mâché, on dioramas, and color-coded bookshelves—the less attainable, the better. Whisper to her about rigor and intellectual vibrance. Spin her around with dizzying force, pivoting her gaze from Shakespeare to nature walks to destination schooling.

There is no need to tempt her with overt or grave sins. Indeed, such tactics show our hand and may alert her to our role. Rather, keep her running on the hamster wheel. Our aim is busyness and motion for motion’s sake. Elicit exhaustion through any means possible. Frazzled is our goal. Teach her to take pride in it. “No rest for the weary!” is our rallying cry. In such a state, you can draw out righteous indignation, the mother martyr, or at the very least, a state of utter depletion, so that her children learn little more from her than that mothering them is exhausting.

If, on the other hand, your patient is not the sort to take on more than she can carry, you need only tease out the opposite tendency. Whisper to her that children are always learning. Our propaganda is swallowed best with a spoonful of the Enemy’s so-called truth. Send her down the slow slither of sloth until nothing of any import is accomplished. Idle hands and all that. Let her think only of her own comfort, teaching her to interpret any sort of friction as a sign to abandon those dangerous pursuits that might lead to apprehension of the enemy or drab reality.

Speaking of abandonment, can you convince her that the slightest struggle or hurdle is not merely the day’s task to overcome, but the surest sign of failure? Best if she begins to see herself as a failure, but we can start her down that road if she is quick to blame the curriculum. Our colleague, Ignoratio, has proven this tack quite effective in keeping his patient safe from perseverance, emptying her pocketbook in the process. Needless spending is always to be encouraged. The problem is the curriculum! Buy more, consume more— chant it on repeat. Never let her consider whether a change of tone or even a snack might have been in order, or that the day’s difficulties are not due to deficiencies in material, but simply the matters the Enemy has tasked her with.

Point her gaze at anyone and everyone other than the Enemy. Dress delectable envy with a side of hopelessness, and we will consume her. Let her look anywhere but towards the enemy for direction and approbation. Above all, keep her fixated on her plans and how she continually fails to accomplish them. Such a lark. It was never her plans that she was tasked with in the first place. Her failure follows quite naturally.

There is really very little we need do, save keeping her from contact with the Enemy. He distributes those infernal graces so readily, so undeservingly. Our Father Below was right to stamp out such pitiful mercy. Fix her eyes on her own plans, never His, and misery will follow. If she should accomplish every item on her list while neglecting the work he has actually set before her, it is all gain and no loss to us. It is, after all, in following any will but His that she becomes ours.

In love and venom,

Boomslang

The gift of fiction like The Screwtape Letters is that it provides us with a disarming mirror. We can see ourselves more clearly and the struggle itself more clearly when we empathize with the patient in the story. It’s somehow easier to see the truth through fiction sometimes.

What It Means to Make a Home

So today, as we talk about the voice of truth and creating peace-filled homes, I want to start by talking about what it means to make a home. (And, gentlemen, do not worry, this talk is still applicable to you, especially as we get in the latter half of the content. So just be patient, please. Thanks. Take notes for your wife, I guess. Uh, but maybe don’t tell her that. Just pray. Just pray.)

So homemaking is all the rage online, but it is not without its controversies, right? The, the hottest new book is a scathing portrayal of tradwife culture. Has anyone read Yesteryear? Okay, a few people. Some, and some people who don’t want to admit it. That’s fine. It is the tale of a tradwife influencer who wakes up in 1855 and has to live out the life that she’s been pretending to live and glorifying online. It’s a great premise. It’s already being made into a movie starring Anne Hathaway.

It is clear from the online discourse that people have a real love-hate relationship with homemaking. The book is very dark. Some people read it as a revenge fantasy against tradwives. That’s not my reading. I will admit I have read it and I will also admit I actually did like it. I like dark fiction. I mean, clearly, Screwtape here. I also don’t think there are actually any tradwives in the book to speak of. But regardless, to the point of this talk, what I have found disturbing is that there clearly are people who are enjoying and even reveling in the idea of this tradwife getting her comeuppance.

And I would venture to think that many of us who find ourselves here think of ourselves as homemakers. I certainly do, even though I, I clearly do things outside of what I think of as my primary role as wife and homeschooling mother. But I think many of us would say that whatever else we do, home and family is central.

So on the one hand, we find ourselves in this culture where we feel deeply rooted in this spiritual call that might sometimes feel a little out of touch when we are digging our way out from piles of laundry. But nonetheless, we believe, even if we don’t always feel, the dignity and beauty of our calling. On the other hand, we live amongst those who scoff at our values and a calling that denigrates us, so much so that they’re reveling in this fictional book that they see as punishing and even torturing this woman for having the audacity to elevate traditional womanhood. (And again, I think that’s a fundamental misreading of the book, but the fact and the point is that people are reading it that way and celebrating it.)

So I think part of the reason for this is that from the outside, it looks like homemaking is this performance of traditional feminine values, and I don’t think it helps that for some of these influencers, that actually is what they’re doing, right? They are performing. Not all of them, but some of them are performing, curating, pretending. And so in some sense, I think perhaps if we’re reading it charitably, some of the backlash is more akin to when a priest is found to be violating his calling: it’s worse because he’s supposed to be this image of holiness. And so maybe some of the backlash against this performative womanhood is that deep down, even sort of spiteful, stereotypically girl boss type of women sense that creating videos that purport to promote the feminine virtues, but in actuality are there to sell you throw pillows and non-toxic cookware feels like an analogous violation.

So that’s the charitable reading, right? But on the other hand, there are a good many who really do hate the traditional feminine virtues and traditional family values. So in a culture whose values are so utterly upside down, and in the midst of what can be a chaotic and trying way of life, however glorious it is in heaven’s eyes, how do we discern the truth from the lies, especially and most importantly, lies that rise from within us?

We need a biblical perspective. We need to understand our call as women to write it on our hearts so the false narratives do not stand a chance at penetrating. Hebrews tells us, “The word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart,” (4:12).

Scripture as the Key

So scripture is our key to discerning the voice of truth and forming peace-filled homes. Let’s dive in.

First, I just want to say that I love when Scripture uses feminine imagery to divine- to describe God. It doesn’t happen very often, but I think when it does, it gives us this really special insight into how we as women uniquely act in the image of God. One of the most well-known examples of this is when God is compared to a nursing mother. “Can a mother forget her infant or be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you,” (Isaiah 49:15-16). I love that this is one of the ways, as women, that we uniquely image God.

As I wrote in my, my first book, Reclaiming Motherhood, Julian of Norwich and other medieval women felt especially and profoundly connected to God, and specifically to Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, through this capacity to offer one’s body as food. And I think that nursing can be a painful topic for some women, right? It doesn’t always go as we expect. But looking at these medieval women, they were celibate women who were finding this connection to Jesus. They, they would never nurse babies, right? But they found profound connection to Jesus through the way their bodies had been created with this capacity. I think that can be a solace for those of us who struggle with that.

Another clue about our feminine call is tucked away much earlier than that, actually in the very first story in the Bible. Genesis 1:2 describes the Spirit as “hovering over the waters,” and we’ll get into a little word study to see how is this particularly feminine. But of course, we know that Genesis is the story of the creation of the world and of God setting order to chaos. So let’s look a little bit more closely at the activity of the Spirit here.

The Hebrew word hover, rashaf, is also used in Deuteronomy. Moses describes the activity of the Lord like this: The Lord’s presence with Israel in the wilderness, was like “an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters,”—rashaf—“over its young,” (32:11). In both places, the Spirit’s activity is described as this hovering, nesting presence in the tohu, which is sometimes translated as void, wasteland, or chaos. Do our homeschools sometimes feel like void, wasteland, or chaos? From the very beginning, we see that God is hovering like a mother bird, bringing order to chaos and creating our home, our common home. God is nesting.

Guardians of the Home

If we go further into scripture, we encounter St. Paul’s description of homemaking and our feminine role in the letter to Titus. He writes, “But as for you, teach what is consistent with sound doctrine. Tell the older women to be reverent in behavior. They are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited,” (2:1-5).

It is sometimes helpful to get a good handle on a biblical text and even just to pray through the biblical text to look at the different translations. Some of the different translations will just hit us in a different way. That quotation was from the NRSV Catholic edition.

The New American Bible Revised Edition, the version that we read at Mass, translates this, “Good managers of the home,” as homemakers. The NIV says, “Be busy at home.” I’ve got that one covered. Anybody else? The KJV says, “Keepers at home.” That strikes my prayerful sentiments a little bit better.

Let’s look at the Greek. So the Greek there is oikos, which is home, and ourous, which is guardian. It says, “Be guardians of the home.” So this definition of homemaking takes on a whole new level of meaning.

Another way to more fully understand the biblical meaning of a word is to look at the other places in Scripture where the same word appears. We already did that with Genesis and Deuteronomy. If we look to 1 Peter 5, this ourous is translated as, “Who through faith are shielded by God’s power,” but it’s also translated as, “Who are kept by the power of God,” in another translation, “Who are guarded.”

If we view our role of homemaking in this way, to keep, to guard, to shield and protect, how does that transform our perspective? This is a spiritual responsibility that goes way beyond throw pillows and scented candles.

Practical Guardianship

So naturally, if our call as Christian families is to be guardians of the home, then our question is how, how do we do this? So first, let’s think about very practical ways to become guardians of our homes.

Number one, at the most basic level, how do we guard our homes in body? How do we provide safety, basic nutrition, comfort? Um, last night, uh, after the workshop, we were talking and swapping stories about how some of us, through fostering a more non-toxic environment in our homes, have seen real healing. And you know, that can be really overwhelming. I know that it can be really overwhelming. But one step at a time, right? It doesn’t have to happen overnight, and every step that you take towards that is a positive one.

These levels will build on each other. Body is most basic, but bodily health is critical for the next area, which is how do we provide protection and guardianship in mind? And the first thing that comes to mind for me for that is digital protection. Remember, they build on each other, so body care is mind care. Things like sunlight, movement, uh, how we are fueling our bodies and our kids’ bodies, these are foundational to the mind care level.

But then also, what kind of exposure are our kids having to the web? And I don’t just mean the toxic web, I also mean the constellation of effects that digital life, and particularly dopamine, have on the body and the mind. And so I don’t think we need to go into all the ways that screen time is damaging to children because I think we hear that a lot. I think we know, and I think we know if we want more information about that, I think we know where to get it. The last thing I want to say on that is it’s not just the poisons that are coming into the mind, it’s also about the opportunity cost of what good doesn’t have room to enter because it is crowded out by time and attention that is allocated to digital life.

I think I’m preaching to the choir here, so I will move on to the area that I think occupies us most as homeschooling families, and that is soul. How are we training habits in our children? How are we exposing them to this banquet of goodness and truth and beauty so that they develop a taste for it? Thank you, Olivia, for creating your beautiful curriculum to just give us exactly that. How are we making prayer and the Lord central to our lives and to our homes and to our family?

So pretty easy, right? All of this only gets us so far on our own, and it can feel like a heavy load to bear. This is a lot of shoulds. We’ll talk about shoulds a little bit later. It can be hard, especially if you, like me, also do care about the throw pillows. But there’s one thing that is absolutely key, and if we lack it, we are missing the point entirely. But if we have this one thing, all of, all of the above heavy load becomes, goes from being overwhelming to being an easy yoke.

And the secret is found in, in our Conference Scripture: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things,” (Philippians 4:8). And I think the key to reading this passage is reading the passage immediately preceding it.

Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord. I will say it again, rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 4:4-7).

So Paul’s instruction to us is rejoice, be gentle, don’t worry. Notice I said it would be simple, not easy. (Can I just also add, if we keep reading, we find that, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Philippians 4:13. What Paul is explaining he can now do that is so impressive is that he has found the key to being content in all things. So he isn’t moving mountains or performing crazy miracles. The “all things” that Paul can now do that is so hard? It’s being content in all circumstances. So I think we can take real solace in that, right? Contentment is not easy, but through Christ, it becomes simple.)

Allowing God to Guard Us

So again, how do we allow God to guard our hearts and minds? If we want to become guardians of our homes, we have to first allow God to guard us. And actually, I’m gonna go back to this slide because I forgot to mention the “guard” word used here is a little bit different. Phroureu is related to ourous. They kind of sound similar. But phroureu connotes a more proactive type of guardianship here that God does. It’s more of a military guardianship that God is to take of us. Our ourous is more like a watchman. And so I think that’s, that’s kind of beautiful, right? We are the watchmen. We present what we see to God, and it is He who takes that job of fighting for us.

So the secret, what is the secret? How does God guard us? How do we invite God to be guardian of us so that we can be guardians of the home?

“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus tells us in the Book of John. Shepherds are amazing, especially in Jesus’ time. They would guard their flocks day and night. They did not have the electric fencing that we have, so they were the protection. They would battle wolves to save their sheep. I think when we picture sheep, we picture like rolling hills and pastoral, peaceful settings. But what we are really talking about here is an intense kind of guardianship. Shepherds are very cool.

But sheep? Sheep are stupid. I don’t keep sheep, but I do live near sheep. They follow whatever the herd is doing. They get stuck in fences. They are really easily frightened. If one sheep takes off for whatever reason, all the sheep follow. They don’t know why the sheep is running, where the sheep is running, doesn’t matter, they follow the sheep.

The one thing that sheep are really good at is distinguishing voices. Research shows us that they have incredible auditory processing powers, which makes sense, right? When you’re prey, you generally should — you could hear a threat, you can run from the threat. When sheep hear a known voice, a familiar voice, they show distinct behavioral changes. They will approach the speaker. They will vocalize back. They will show reduced stress. Physiologically, their body will calm down at the sound of this known voice. When they hear strangers, they run, they panic. They follow the crazy sheep who runs away.

Jesus’s metaphor here is really an apt one. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” So that is it. That is the secret. The secret to allowing God to guard our hearts and minds, to becoming guardians of our homes, to creating a peace-filled home that foreshadows the joy and the rest of our eternal home? The secret is prayer. We have to come to know the shepherd’s voice.

And in this, friends, I think we might be stupider than the sheep. Or maybe it isn’t that we are stupid. We live in a culture of such noise. When C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters, which was almost a century ago now, some of the most brilliant passages in there are about the onslaught of noise keeping us from hearing God, keeping us from that voice of truth. And do you know what they had that C.S. Lewis was talking about? Newspapers, radio, maybe a phonograph. They had movies, but you had to leave your home to see them. They only could play so many at a time.

The absolute all-pervasive noise that we now carry in our pockets twenty-four seven. Good things, music, podcasts, television, YouTube, all perfectly algorithmically designed to monopolize our attention by mathematically quantifying our interests at an individual level. We are the attention economy. We are the product. Our minds are the product. If we do not consciously choose to free ourselves from this web, we will be permanently ensnared in the matrix—except we shackle ourselves willingly.

Prayer That Fits Your Life

So the key is prayer. The key is time, the key is scripture, and the key is silence. And you might be thinking, “I don’t have time for prayer on top of everything else.” If so, this is a come to Jesus—literally, come to Jesus—moment. Because saying, “I don’t have time for prayer,” is like saying, “I don’t have time to breathe.” To fail to pray is to surrender ourselves into a spiritual grave. And that feels really heavy to say, but stay with me because it actually is truly good news, I promise, because Jesus promised us his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Because while the secret and the key is prayer, prayer does not have to look just one way. There are different forms of prayer for different temperaments. The Church knows us like a good mother, and she differentiates according to our abilities and our needs. Prayer routines might even be different even for the same person in a different season. I know my prayer looks very differently when I had a commute, than when I was a teacher and I could go down to Adoration at the Catholic school. It looks very differently now that I am a mom. It looks differently now that I have kids who sleep in than when I had nursing babies, right?

So a working mom might pray on her commute or maybe the daily walk or at the gym. There are so many resources on audio these days. The audio Rosary is how I learned to pray the Rosary. I’m a convert, so I did not come into Catholicism knowing. So I actually was a Catholic teacher before I learned to fully memorize and pray the Rosary. I did that on my commute with Audio Rosary. Praise God for people who made that available. There’s a great Liturgy of the Hours app. There are probably more meditations on Hallow than any one person can pro- could listen to in a lifetime.

Praise God because they’re not, you know, they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. If you are more that up before the sun, cup of coffee in hand kind of mama, you might subscribe to Give Us This Day or the Magnificat, or just open Scripture, start with the Gospels, pray one chapter at a time. Just one each day. My friend Chris Kaczor wrote a great book called Praying Like St. Augustine with prompts to write back and forth letters between you and God.

Maybe you are in a tough season of chronic or other kind of illness, and you need that sleep. I have been there, and so maybe in those moments, it is just about sharing in Jesus’ suffering and letting him share yours and being present to him in the agony.

You might be in a season of nursing babies. You could pray a decade of the Rosary every time you rock the baby to sleep. If you’re a scheduler, you might make a date with Jesus in adoration while the kids are at RE, or set bells on your phone for the Angelus or the Divine Mercy. You could get your daily bread at Daily Mass.

Has anybody seen that movie Julie and Julia? You guys are so shy about raising your hands. It’s ‘cause you’re homeschoolers, right? Nobody raises hands in homeschooling. It’s a pretty cute movie. For those of you who haven’t seen it or just to refresh your memory, it is about a woman who is in the early days of vlogging, and she’s learning to cook, and she learns to cook by cooking her way through each of Julia Child’s recipes. So she starts at the beginning and goes through this book.

But why not do that with prayer? I mean, you don’t have to blog about it, unless you want to, unless the Holy Spirit’s calling you to. But why not learn Ignatian Contemplation one week, and then Lectio Divina the next, and Visio Divina? You could do it with your kids. Maybe pray the Examen every night. You could just sit in silence.

But here’s the basic rule: pray as you can, not as you can’t.

If you hate the Rosary, yes, I know some of, some of you are out there. If you hate it, pick something else. That was me at one time, but I love it now. It could be a good penance for Lent if you, if, if that’s you. I won’t tell anyone.

If you prefer to go off the cuff, have that chat with Jesus. Go for it. If your mind goes totally blank and you’re just absolutely petrified, like, “I don’t know what to say.” I grew up Protestant, so the off-the-cuff prayer is a little more familiar to me. I have a friend who’s, you know, cradle Catholic, and she’s like, “I c- I cannot.” She could. She’s like, “I cannot.” If your mind goes blank, then pray with memorized prayer or scripture. I think sometimes we get the in our head that we have to do this or that kind of prayer because it is better, and let me tell you, that’s scrupulosity talking. It’s prayer, people. We’re talking to Jesus. There’s not, uh, there’s not, like, a hierarchy (unless there is, and then you can email me about it later, and I will be happy to to learn in humility).

The point is to show up and be real.

Telling the Shepherd’s Voice from the Accuser’s

I do want to go over some practical tips for distinguishing the voice of truth from the voice of the enemy. How do we tell the shepherd’s voice from the accuser in our internal monologues, in those moments of prayer? What are some ways to distinguish?

First, write down a list of all the “shoulds” circling in your mind. That list can be long. My spiritual director used to call this “shoulding” all over ourselves. First you write down and externalize all the shoulds that you are subconsciously repeating to yourself all the time, then you ask the Holy Spirit to run through these shoulds with you. Remember that our first obedience is to reality. So for example, if you see on your list, “I should feed my children only organic goods baked from scratch using flour that I ground myself, that I grew in my backyard,”— that might be an unreasonable expectation. If, on the other hand, you see, “I should feed my children three square meals with enough protein daily,” — that is a much more reasonable expectation, and the Holy Spirit can help us sort through that with a spiritual director or a friend who can call you back to reality can help with that. But sometimes all it takes is just getting it down on paper to see ourselves and how hard we are on ourselves more clearly.

When you are overwhelmed, take some time for rest and joy. St. Ignatius tells us we should not make decisions when we are in a state of desolation. We’re a big camping family. Anybody else? (Yay, much better with the raising of hands, guys. Either that or you just really love camping.) So, when you walk through a pond, you stir up silt at the bottom, right? You know what I mean? Experienced this? And ripples go out, and you can’t see what’s in the pond clearly. If you stay still long enough, you can see clear through to the bottom because everything settles. You can see the mountain reflected perfectly on the surface and not distorted by the ripples in the stillness.

How do we make time for that kind of a thing amidst all the other responsibilities? Well, good news. Six minutes of daily reading has been shown to reduce stress. Six minutes. (This wasn’t in the study, but I, I think it probably does matter if you’re reading, like, Fox News on your phone versus reading, um, the, the journals of Emma Lyon or Jane Austen or something. That’s just my speculation.)

Mother Teresa had her sisters, the Sisters of Charity, take a tea break every day. So these ladies were doing really important work for God, carrying the dying off the streets of Calcutta. Not only did Mother Teresa have them pray, but she had them drink tea. Why? Why do we have this? Because rest is important. Rest is written into the commandments. I think sometimes we sort of think, “Oh, yeah, I follow that commandment because I went to Mass.” (I have had littles for a decade now. Mass is not my idea of rest, okay?) There’s other things we need, realistically, to get that reset that we need.

You might not be a tea person, and that’s fine. You might be more of an extrovert. Maybe your rest comes from talking to a friend. Maybe your rest comes from having a silly dance party with your kids. We like to put on “Old Time Rock and Roll” and just go for it, and they are hilarious, and it really clears the air. And how long is that song? Songs were shorter back then, right? It’s not that long. So it’s a really good way to reset.

Number three: when you hear the internal voices going to war and is that murky sort of situation, a good shorthand for distinguishing the source is this: is the voice accusing or is the voice saying “I,” or is it saying “you”? Because the enemy is called the accuser. So is this voice accusing? Is he saying, “You are the worst mother ever,” or, “I shouldn’t have yelled at the kids”?

And along those same lines, does the voice speak in generalities or specifics? “The house will never be clean because you are such a slob.” (Or worse, because your kids are always there.) Or “I should have done those dishes before we went to the park,” or “I should have been more patient with my kids.” That’s the difference there between guilt, right, which is important. I know people make a lot of fuss about Catholic guilt, but guilt is important. When they say that, what they really mean is shame.

As Brene Brown tells us, guilt says, “I did something bad.” We need guilt. We need that discomfort to point us back towards God, towards confession. But shame says, “I am bad.” And so that is one of the things that, even though it’s phrased in the “I,” is the voice of the accuser, right? We are not bad. God tells us He made us good. Guilt is useful, but shame? Shame is Screwtape talking. It’s keeping us away from God.

Feed My Lambs

Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” The most important thing that we can give our children is a life of prayer. And there’s an amazing little, tiny little booklet by John Paul II, and it’s called The Meaning of Vocation. Highly recommend for everybody who has a vocation (read: all of us). In it he asks, “Do you think there can be anything greater than to bring Jesus to people and people to Jesus?” We in our homes are doing the work that John Paul II says is greater than anything. At the end of our lives, if we have given them nothing else but we have led them to Jesus, that will have been enough.

When Jesus looks at Peter in John chapter 21, and he asks, “Do you love me?” Peter says, “Yes, Lord. You know that I love you.” Jesus tells him, “Feed my lambs.” He does this three times to make his point, and he’s asking us today, do we love him? Yes, Lord, we love you. His instruction to us, “Feed my lambs.” We are his sheep, and he asks us today to follow him, to spend time with him, and in doing so, we become the food for the lambs. Our lives are broken and given for them. They follow our example of listening. We are sheep listening to our shepherd. They learn that from us. That blueprint becomes their example to follow in life.

So this isn’t always easy. Tthere is a lot that can go sideways in the chaos of a homeschool day. Anybody else? When that happens, though, I like to pray this prayer: “Give us this day our daily crumbs.” Mess is, is the thing that most often throws me off. But phrasing it this way helps me remember that God is not calling me to a perfectly orchestrated day, as much as I would love to achieve that someday. He’s calling us to the crumbs of this day. When the lessons go awry, things don’t go as planned, we are not called to our imaginary vision of how we thought the day was supposed to go. Our first obedience is to reality. So when things go wrong, when the kids don’t understand the math lesson, we have not failed, and there’s so much peace in knowing that because the kid who doesn’t understand the math lesson is not our failure; he is our mission. He is our call for the day.

Things that go awry are simply our marching orders. Father Jacques Philippe says, “All reasons to lose our peace are bad reasons.” That might sound harsh, but I think it speaks to this deep surrender of our own will, of being able to set aside our own plans and desires, and instead follow where the voice of the shepherd is beckoning.

So friends, we are raising lambs in an age of noise. Our children do not merely need information, they need formation. They need to know the voice of the shepherd, and they learn that voice first by watching us. Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Peter, excuse me. Peter answers, at least you guys know the story, right? Peter answers, “Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus replies, “Feed my lambs.”

This is our call as mothers and homemakers and fathers and Christian families: to feed His lambs. We are His sheep before we are their shepherds. We must first follow the voice of Christ and allow Him to guard our hearts and minds, and that is how we become the guardians of homes that point to our true and eternal home.

AMDG,
Samantha

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