Book Review: Seeking God's Face

When I was a kid, I was introduced to two kinds of personal interactions with God, aka "daily devotion" or "quiet time". The first was a short lesson based on a short verse. You read it and move on. The second was Search the Scriptures which involved reading a longer passage and then answering questions about it, in other words, the Bible as homework.

To this day to my mind, the "gold" standard for personal time with God is a study about a book or topic that goes deep into the Bible. But what I find I want and am able to sustain is regular touches with God of scripture and the thoughts of other believers.

Last Christmas, N got me this book, Seeking God's Face, and it fit really well into my life this past year. There's been a lot to like about the book. In no particular order:

• The book feels good in the hand with a soft/fake leather cover and nice pages with a book mark ribbon.
• It's organized around the church calendar noting Advent, Lent, Easter, Ordinary time and so forth. It hits that at the right amount of detail for me; the major time divisions without every feast day.
• Each day is 2 pages of text. Just about right for a moment with my cup of coffee after the kids have finished breakfast and before we get going for the day. 
• Through a week, the opening verse and the closing blessing with be the same. This has allowed me to "hum" along with a theme for the week.
• There are several reminders to slow down, be quiet, and reflect on the passages just read.
• Each day there's a new bit from Psalms and one from somewhere else in the Bible. Some times the "somewhere else" bit will follow a story for a few days in a row. 
• Because of the church calendar thing, each entry is specifically dated for the years 2011-2026? So if I miss a few days, I know exactly how many days it's been since my bookmark moved.
• At the end, there are a few bullet points for prayer items. The ones I've been struck by this year is praying for different geographical areas, leaders in different spheres of influence like government and business, and care for the environment. I tend to bristle if I feel like people have an "agenda" about how I should feel about things as a believer. These prayer items have reminded me that no matter how I think things should be, I should submit them to God's care first. 
• I've really been challenged by the short written prayer at the end of each reading. The prayers are based on a classic creed or confession but they are so fresh and pertinent to how my heart can be now.  

All this to say that this book has kept me at the "spring of living water" this year. It's less intense than a deep dive into the Bible, but very tangible and consistent. Or maybe a way to say it is that it's helped me get back into the habit of hearing God through the Bible. 

As advent approaches in a few short days, I'm not sure what to do. Like the church year, Advent is the beginning of this book, so I'm in the last few pages of it at the moment. I have liked the Nouwen book I have for Advent readings, so I may head back there for the season. We'll see. Anyways, outside of Advent and Lent for which I have other materials, Seeking God's Face is an excellent way to spend a bit of time with God daily. 

Language teaching experiment

I'm currently in a real stretching place in my teaching experience and wanted to reflect on it a little bit.

PAST
My previous experience with language teaching has mostly fallen under "language for specific purposes." My students want to accomplish something, I help them do it. So I've done some business English and then quite a bit of academic English. I've mostly taught intermediate to advanced students and mostly classes of 8-16. Usually, at least 4 contact hours a week.

CURRENT
I am currently taking one woman from ground zero in Russian as she and her family prepare to move to Central Asia. Here are some features of what we're doing:

• Time is limited: We have 1 contact hour per week assuming our kids are healthy. Her life is quite full, so time for independent practice is hard to find. 
• Basic functionality: Navigating a new town with kids in tow is tricky, doing it in another language is trickier. We're trying to get her some basic language skills to help navigate the basics of taking care of a family. 
• Ling 101: Their end goal is to learn both Russian and their local Turkic language (LTL). Having studied both Kazakh and Azeri in addition to Russian, I'm trying to introduce linguistic concepts that will help with acquiring both target languages even though, I'm not actually competent to teach a Turkic language (and only barely competent to teach Russian, haha). 

THOUGHTS

This has so far been a fun challenge. It helps that my student comes from a technical background so when I dump an IPA chart on her, I don't feel that guilty. She can handle it, and it'll be useful to know the basics of phonetics. We've been able to do basic contrastive analysis of North American English consonants and vowels versus Russian and their LTL. My hope is that she'll be able to take this information plus her general analytical abilities to be a better listener. 

Starting from ground zero with someone has really made me think about success and motivation. I'm trying to tune each lesson for demonstrated success and an obvious connection with her goals. So after two lessons, we've gone through the numbers 1-4 and reviewed all the sounds in Russian phonology, but we haven't spent a lot of time doing lots of other things one might do in the early lessons. 

One surprise is the difference between lesson one and two. In the first lesson, we were very done after an hour. Lots of new sounds and new ideas. We'd done some simple listening comprehension with total physical response and an intro to Russian consonants. In the second lesson, we wrapped up after 70 minutes, but it felt like we could have kept going. We'd reviewed some, practiced a new phrase, gone over Russian vowels and the concept of palatalization, and then added about 20 food words. 

Going forward, I think we'll obviously work on more vocabulary for day-to-day objects and more phrases that are useful for getting things done. What's not obvious to me is what grammatical concepts to introduce. To my mind, the goal of introducing grammar at this point is not to move toward mastery but to ensure that she's exposed to the very idea that a language can be organized in such a way. If she had any experience with a language like Latin or Greek, I'd be less concerned, but that's not the case here. 

Well those are my thoughts right now. I think my next step will be to read my Kazakh grammar book to remind myself of the grammatical concepts that overlap with Russian. The two languages aren't in the same family at all, but in some places they are closer to one another than they are to English. 

Weightlifting retrospective

So I've been to the gym lifting weights every week this year since I signed up in January except a few weeks around my shoulder surgery. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts about the experience.

I took weighlifting a couple times in college. That was always machine work and nothing much ever came of it. This was very different. I followed the barbell exercises as described in Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and the routine laid out in the back of the book, called "programming".

• Shortly after starting barbell training, carrying my toddler became much less onerous and painful and thus more willing to carry him. That was a plus. 
• Eating is part of the program. As a woman with all the cultural stuff about food and appearance, eating is the hardest part of the program. It's both difficult to eat enough calories and enough protein within those calories. I aim for 2000cal and 200 g of protein a day. Left to my own devices, I eat about 1600-1700 calories of mostly carbs and fat with 70-90 g of protein.
• Progressing in weights is extremely motivating. In the six weeks since I got out of the sling, I started my deadlift at 35lbs and today lifted 195lbs 5 times. Before surgery, I went from a 25lb overhead press to 80lbs. A 45lb squat to 175. 
• This summer before surgery, I had to do a bunch of outdoor work, turning over the garden, fixing a deck. I had a lot more stamina and ability to do that kind of work and very little soreness afterwards. I liked that a lot.
• Body image is very tricky. I weigh more than I ever have while not pregnant. My adult weight has been a steady 140. This year I've been about 155. My jeans are the same size, but I did recently get a different cut that is a bit fuller in the thighs. I have a more hourglass figure now, but I can't say I really know what to do with it.
• Recovery after shoulder surgery was supposed to be quicker for having spent so much time in the gym before hand. Today is 3 months post-op and the shoulder is just about unnoticeable. So I certainly think the training before and after have sped up a process I expected would take much longer. I'm sleeping through the night. I have the flexibility to back squat. I am pressing over 45 lbs which was my 6 month goal. 
• I don't like that my gym is far enough away to add 20-30 min to my "gym time". But it is inexpensive and that includes childcare. That is one reason why I don't think I'll keep this up long term. I just don't want to devote this much time in these blocks of time to "exercise". Workouts are usually 50-70 min long. So another 20-30 minutes of travel really becomes a significant chunk.
• Cardio endurance is rarely necessary in my ordinary life. I have trained for a 5 and 10K in the past couple years. And that's nice. It was a social thing. But there was no carry over to regular life. Strength training has improved my quality of life: better toddler holding, more able to schlepp other stuff around safely, better posture etc. 
• Being able to move around weights greater than my own body weight feels GREAT! and totally assuages any issues I have about my weight being higher than "normal".

All in all, I'm super happy about finding Starting Strength and being able to do it. My mom made exercise my Christmas present by sending me money for it. And I think this year will impact the choices I make in the years to come. 

Unfailing

I came across this saying in Proverbs as if for the first time:

What a person desires is unfailing love (Proverbs, chpt 19)

As our neighborhood shepherds one of our own through spousal abandonment, this notion of unfailing love has clanged around in my heart and head for the past several weeks.

I think about the life-shattering pain of having a friend and partner of 25+ years walk out, and I think about the contrast with unfailing love. I think about my relationship with my parents and my kids. While my parents have loved me well, I'm coming to terms with the fact that they are in the last leg of their race, nearing their finish line. Death with bring their love to an end (in many ways, but not all perhaps.) When I look at my kids, I wonder if they know that I want to love them despite what they do because Jesus loves me despite what I do? I'm not very good at it, mine is a very much failing love.

Upon reflection, so many things in life remind me of this thirst for unfailing love, an insatiable thirst. Except in Jesus. Now that I've been meditating on unfailing love, I'm finding that the Bible refers to the unfailing love of God all the time. The Jesus Storybook Bible calls it something like God's "never failing, never giving up, always and forever love".

Anyways, I'll keep writing on this periodically, I think. It's been a very fruitful couple weeks thinking about this.

Early Reader Books, Part 2

Well, I should get on with Part 2 of my Early Reader series.

Our reader renewed her interest in reading about April and April through June was working through pre-reader and "Level 1" books. Although, as I mentioned before Level 1 was actually a pretty hit or miss "Level". So the rest of the summer to now, she's been comfortably cruising "Level 2" books and some "Level 3" books as the mood strikes her. For most of this time, I've been checking out stacks of books and giving her 2-4 books a day. I try to throw in some non-fiction, but she hasn't been interested. My approach is like my approach to vegetables, I set them in front of her and hope she'll eventually try some.

Anyways, here are our favorite series from this summer.

Cynthia Rylant has created many series of early readers, of which we really liked three: Henry and Mudge; Annie and Snowball, and Mr. Putter and Tabby. I liked them because the language seemed well within reach for our reader. She liked them because she liked the characters and that there were more books about those same characters. My only quirk about them is that all the characters from top to bottom are Caucasian when ethnicity is incidental to the stories. Would have been nice for a few of the characters to be illustrated as something else.

Another series we liked involved the antics of Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa. Yes, another human-animal relationship but at this point, anything that maintains reader interest and isn't otherwise awful is quite nice.

 Longer than the previous series mentioned, Cork and Fuzz by Chaconas are two animal friends who get along like the Odd Couple. Initially, the greater length made our reader sigh, but now she takes them on with aplomb.

Honestly, by the end of the summer we had exhausted the library branch near us. So lately, I've been over to another branch not too much further away and have been happy to have a new set of books available. As always, I would love more recommendations for good early reader books. 

Lowly things

A week or so ago, I was reading the Naaman story in 2nd Kings. Naaman is this "very important person", but he gets the very common and fatal disease leprosy. A Jewish servant girl of his suggests that a prophet in her country can heal him. So he and his entourage travel a long way and when they finally get to this prophet, the prophet a) won't come out to see him and b) through a messenger tells him to take a bath in the local river (vs. 10).

Naaman was really mad having had his expectations of lofty magic dashed to pieces (vs. 11). He kind of has a petulant metropolitan fit exclaiming

Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage (vs. 12).

So that's the back story to this line that caught my attention for a week

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’! (vs. 13)”

 As I look over what I thought about my life from ages 10-20, I was oriented toward "great things". I pursued excellence and recognition. When I thought about what I wanted to do in life, I wanted to do things with awesome humanitarian merit. So being a missionary in a far off country was good. But solving for world peace was also ok.

But as any of the dozen people who read this blog know, that's not what I'm doing now at all. I'm a suburban mom who drives a minivan on nicely paved streets, in a friendly neighborhood, with good schools and convenient shopping. Like Naaman, this has felt like a downshift, a turn in the wrong direction. But instead I have been learning to live in a completely different dimension than I thought possible.

It used to be a black and white distinction between awesome or awful, advancing or retreating. We live in a culture of "dream big". I'm learning to dream deeper. When a girl has a baby and can't buy diapers, the need is obvious. But on my street, the needs are rarely that obvious but just as compelling.

We're into our third year at this address, and the sidewalk interactions are building a foundation of friendship that's allowing us unusual access into our neighbors lives. Our dreams are not about our neighborhood but our neighbors, the ones on our street. And I'm not thinking about how to solve world peace or start a movement, but how to bring living water to the dry places in the lives of my "common, suburban" friends.

I would be willing to move my family to the ends of the earth or some other "great thing" if God had asked that of us. But our ordinary, not glamorous, street is turning to be ok too, more than ok.

Picture books for young readers, a think out loud

Working for Zoobean and having two kids under 4, I have a lot of time to encounter and think about picture books for children.

Here are a couple points that I've been trying to sort through:

1. The reality on the ground in our home is that we have a 4 year old reading material for kids several years older.
2. Reports from other parents and the New York Times suggest that "real chapter books" are the goal, picture books are for babies and non-readers. 
3. We've heard rumors that publishers are responding to a market for young readers and are supporting books that are age appropriate in content but complex enough for children reading above grade level.

The "early reader" books aimed at children in school learning to read are really hit and miss in content for our daughter. This is true even within the subset of "early reader" books that don't just patently suck in content and illustration, particularly the movie spin offs. So within the subset that are generally good, the animal stories are better than that school oriented stories. Given that most kids learn to read after they go to school, I understand why there are school oriented stories, but in our situation, because she's reading before school there are references she totally doesn't understand, sometimes to the point where most of the story is inaccessible. 

Another young reader who's 6 months older than our daughter has been headed toward Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, that kind of stuff. I think whenever we get there, we'll have a better chance to see if there really are new books that are written for young, advanced readers. Thus far, those rumors are just rumors. At this point, just because our child might be able to read Harry Potter books, I don't think we're going to rush there. Just the other night, we had a tearful discussion about death, heaven, and such. At her age, she's just very literal and concrete. 

With that literalness and concreteness, my current strategy is to send her back into the regular population of picture books. This ends up addressing several issues. First, sometimes, she's just so enthralled with sounding out words, I'm not sure she's working through what's happening in the story. The pictures provide an anchor point for the content. 

Second, she recently announced that she only wants to read "Level 1" readers because they are for Pre-K and she's in Pre-K. The levels vary widely by publisher, but she's comfortably reading most Level 2 books and Level 3 books are simply taxing on her stamina, not her ability to read. So getting out of the "Level #" books will remove this issue. Also within picture books, there is a wide variation in the complexity of content and vocabulary, so there are certainly books that will work for her reading abilities and emotional development.

Third, some of the regular picture books are beautifully illustrated where this is rarely true for early reader books. Our daughter is very sensitive to beauty and I want to foster that particularly for her. But I think that even if she weren't, there's a missed opportunity for keeping our kids engaged in multiple dimensions of beauty if we rush her to picture-less books. She'll be there soon enough and for decades to come. 

Anyways, that's our current approach. With such limited data and experience, I don't want to prescribe this for every family, but I'd love to see more families graduate their new readers of any age from the controlled "early reader" books BACK to regular picture books rather than making a beeline for picture-less chapter books.