ABC Post 12: Ask Aunt Dorcas--Moms and Product Pressure, Part 1

Dear Aunt Dorcas—

I have five small children, and I get really frustrated with the pressure on young moms to use certain cleaning and health products, usually from MLMs like Norwex or DoTerra.

I’m part of a few big chat groups with Mennonite moms, and most of the vocal women on such platforms tend to send the subtle implications that a good mother should be always looking for better health, better cleaners, and better hairspray. And I feel like a freak for just thinking a clean scalp is what’s most important. I’m doing good if I can pick up detergent or shampoo at Walmart. 

One day I decided to ask the group if I’m as unusual as I feel like I am. I thought maybe there’s other moms out there like me. But the admins deleted my question! So then I really felt like a freak. Do you have any advice for me?

--Kayla

 

Dear Kayla—

When I sat down to examine your question, I realized it had multiple layers. Soon I had wandered down numerous bunny trails and typed almost 4000 words. So, if you can indulge me, I’m going to spread this out over a couple of posts.

First: a bit of history and chemistry about cleaning, soap, and the marketing thereof. 

Later, we’ll look at the tendency and history of moms obsessing about specific topics, the troubling statistics about MLMs, making money as a stay at home mom, dealing with the pressure, and recipes for super-basic cleaners.

Aunt Dorcas does laundry in a very "sketch" laundry room 
in a motel, on a recent trip to Virginia

Women all over the world are passionate about keeping clean.

When we lived in a remote village in Canada, the First Nations women all had these very basic government-issue houses with paneling on the walls and white tile floors.

The houses were not cute or Instagrammy in any way, but they were clean. You could have eaten off those floors. The women hauled water from the lake, heated it on the stove, poured it in a bucket, and added a good glug of bleach and maybe dish soap. Then they took a string mop and scrubbed every bit of mud and food and dust, and probably the shiny finish as well, off those tiled floors.

Their lives might be full of helpless frustration and people around them making heartbreaking decisions, but they had the power to keep those floors clean, and they did.

Some years later, in 1998, I visited my sister in Yemen. One day Rebecca took me to visit her neighbor Fawzia. A sweet young mom with one child, Fawzia lived in a sparsely-furnished one-room apartment with a narrow outdoor cooking area between a cement wall and the house. Her husband had trouble finding work, and they were so poor that Fawzia hadn’t seen her mom in two years because they couldn’t afford the bus fare, which I think was $5. They lived on the verge of hunger, wanting to be independent but sometimes asking her husband’s parents for food.

What struck me about Fawzia’s home was that it was incredibly clean. The baby smelled nice, the floors were spotless, Fawzia’s clothes were clean, and the tiny kitchen/courtyard was swept and tidy.

You could tell that despite their extreme poverty, she took pride in herself and her home and her baby. I’m guessing she used plain water for a lot of cleaning, but not much of it at a time, because Yemen had a terrible water shortage. Judging by the state of her clothes and the baby’s blanket, she probably had one very raggedy rag to scrub everything.

It would have been ridiculous and cruel of me to tell Fawzia she’s doing it all wrong because she’s not using a fancy American cleaning product. You can see that, right?

The important thing is caring for yourself and your house and children, which includes cleanliness. This is true for us, for Middle Eastern women thousands of years ago, and for Kenyan women bathing their babies outside in plastic tubs and then setting the babies out to dry in the sunshine.

A common thread here is water and soap.

Jeremiah 2:22 says,
Although you wash yourself with soap
    and use an abundance of cleansing powder,
    the stain of your guilt is still before me,”
declares the Sovereign Lord.

[That verse is also a hint that some things are more important than cleanliness.]

Water is the universal solvent, and most dirt can be dissolved and washed with water alone. But water doesn’t mix with fats, so we have that fascinating chemical, soap. Every molecule of soap has a head that bonds with water and a tail that bonds with fats, so all those dish soap molecules latch onto tiny bits of chicken fat left on the plate, dissolve them in water, and swish them down the drain.

(Read more about soap here.)

Of course, we have other cleaners for other situations, such as ammonia, bleach, and alcohol. But the most basic cleaner is soap and water.

As the FlyLady often says, “Soap is soap.” Did you know you can use shampoo to clean the shower, if need be, and dish soap to wash your hands? It’s true. Nothing will implode.

Your great-grandma probably saved bacon fat and tallow, bought lye at the hardware store, and cooked a blurping white soup that turned into slabs of white soap with a thick, heavy scent of earth and determination. She grated this soap into the wringer washer to wash your great-grandpa’s overalls, and all the manure and grass stains cowered before the superior strength of that potion.

She may have bought a basic shampoo for her children’s hair. If she was like my mom, she saved rain water in a barrel for shampooing hair, and rinsed with vinegar.

If she didn’t use homemade soap for dishes, she bought a basic dish soap at the grocery store. If there was a drought and the well was running dry, the dishwater was also used to mop the floors and then dumped on the flower beds.

She probably used ammonia to clean the oven, first tying a bandana over her nose to keep out the scorching fumes. She cleaned the copper bottoms of her kettles with vinegar and salt, buffing them to a shine. Like my mom, she probably used copious amounts of elbow grease.

One way or another, she and all her household were clean. So how did we get from that to the highly specialized cleaners today?

It was after the Great Depression when big companies like Proctor and Gamble realized they could make money off of jazzing up cleaning products and convincing housewives to buy them. Tide detergent, invented in 1946, was the first of its kind.

Two things in particular became important: specializing and scents.

No longer was it ok to do all your cleaning with a bottle of vinegar, a jar of baking soda or borax, and a bar of homemade soap. By the 1970s, you needed detergent for laundry, a different shampoo for each member of the family, and a different cleaner for each part of the bathroom: sinks, counter, mirror, toilet, shower, and floor. You needed one soap for dishes, one for hands, and one for the car.

It was all supposed to smell good. I’m sure this sounded luxurious to someone whose laundry always smelled like tallow and lye. Tide detergent had a unique scent that you can probably smell right now if you close your eyes. Dish soap was supposed to send bubbly fumes in the air. Everyone was supposed to blast a flowery spray all over the bathroom after they flushed. When I was in high school, the teen magazines always had ads for a shampoo called Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific, with pictures of a guy in science class sniffing a girl’s hair and saying that line while they heated chemicals on Bunsen burners.

A decade or two later, an evil genius was hired at these big companies and invented plug-in air fresheners. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into someone’s house and began coughing and gasping for air. “Do you have a Glade air freshener?” I manage to ask.

“Oh yes!” they say, digging around behind the recliner and emerging with one of those horrible little devices. “I’m so sorry!” They hurry off and tuck it away under the bathroom sink, and I resume breathing.

Some of us have psoriasis, migraines, asthma, or simply a sensitive nose. We can’t handle all the scents and additives.

There was bound to be a backlash.

The housewife world didn’t return to cleaning like Grandma, though, with vinegar, borax, and homemade soap. Instead, we turned to an array of companies that sprouted up like mushrooms in the fall rains, promising cleanliness and good smells, but a “healthy” version of them. Many were multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) in which people—usually women—signed up to sell the products from home. Amway and Shaklee were two of the originals. Today there are many more.

It began to matter like never before not only that you kept your family clean, but which products you used to do so.

These producers emphasized “natural” ingredients and health benefits. Often, they also insist that “chemicals” are bad, and their products do not contain these nasty substances.

This has always confused me. Probably the people who came up with that idea were the same ones who were tossing their terrific-smelling hair at the guys in chemistry class instead of paying attention. A chemical, according to Merriam-Webster, is simply a substance “that is formed when two or more other substances act upon one another or that is used to produce a change in another substance.”

Vitamin C is a chemical, as are sugar, vinegar, oregano oil, and polyethylene glycol.

It’s a free country, and I don’t have any issue with someone deciding to make a new and better kind of shampoo. What troubles me is that many of these companies co-opted the health narrative and equated their products with optimizing your family’s health and well-being, and they made lots of money off of this.

In addition, instead of selling through stores, they chose to market through dealers, emphasizing not only their products but also recruiting others into the company.

The result is an unhealthy mixture of women gaining financially from putting guilt and pressure on other women, all in the name of being concerned for their wellbeing. It's one thing to feel pressure from an advertisement in a magazine, but quite another to feel it from family and friends.

But the saddest part is that, many times, the system is designed so that only those at the top actually make money, increasing the pressure on those at the bottom to recoup their investments and also to inundate me with helpful messages if I mention the cat pawprints on the patio doors or my constant cough.

Buying these products requires a pretty high level of privilege, and not everyone has these ingredients in their life:
1. Money. Melaleuca and Mrs. Meyers and Norwex are a lot more expensive than an old t-shirt and a bottle of dish soap from the grocery store. Many families can barely afford the dish soap.
2. Time. A woman who has lots of small children has a hard enough time just keeping everyone fed and safe. Moms who are caregivers for the elderly and moms with physical handicaps and limitations are almost always short on time. Such a mom doesn’t have time to research all the specialty products or go to Norwex parties or order from a dealer. She’s just relieved if her husband calls from town and she can tell him to pick up some laundry detergent—whatever he grabs is fine when all the little jeans are dirty and the baby is teething.
3. Access. Moms on the mission field in Mongolia or Mexico don’t have access to all the lovely natural “chemical-free” cleaners that a mom in Lancaster County has at her fingertips. Women in more isolated communities in the U.S. and Canada will have a harder time buying these products as well, especially if they don’t have internet access.

I’ve talked to young moms who feel like outcasts if they buy shampoo and detergent at the grocery store. Others feel so guilty for using Walmart cleaners that they start buying products they can’t afford. They feel like the conversation in the church nursery and the moms’ groups is all so pro-MLM product that their own conflicted opinions and questions can’t be spoken. They feel the shame of not fitting in.

That is not ok.

But whose problem is it? 

Next time, let’s look at the history of passionate moms, dealing with pressure, and how to sell ethically.

Meanwhile: Applause to you for loving your family and wanting the best for them. There's a lot of leeway on just how you do this. The important thing is to be kind to those who choose differently.

Aunt Dorcas learns from her mom, the Queen of elbow grease and homemade soap.

ABC Post 10--How To Be A Fantastic Mom Of Adults

In this crazy modern world, I don’t know much about anything--succulents, deconstruction, collagen, Kingdom Christians, or Instagram reels. If you're my age, you probably feel a bit lost too.

But! There is one subject on which I speak with authority born of vast experience: how to be a mom to a bunch of adult children in their 20s and 30s. I have six of them, you know, and one daughter-in-law.

So, listen up! Here are 21 easy steps to becoming an amazing and unforgettable mom of adults and making them your best friends for life.

1.       Learn the vocabulary of young people. Tell them a situation looked pretty “suss.” Or “sketchamundo.” Or “lit.” Find TikTok on your phone and learn a popular little song, maybe a “sea shanty.” Use these words and sing that song as often as possible…for the next twenty years, like you still quote lines and songs from Jungle Jam and Phineas & Ferb—“When will he calllll me? How long is soon??” Also, say the letters L-O-L when something is extra funny. It means so much to adult kids when you try to speak their heart language.

2.       In addition, keep using cute words your children used when they were toddlers. Say “gackers” for “crackers” and “pudda budda” for “peanut butter.” Your kids will feel so special, especially if you do this in front of their grad school friends. Bonus points if you say “putter” for, you know, “passing gas.”

3.       Take lots of pictures and videos of your children when they’re around—at the table, talking, singing, hiking, everything. Post them online or share them with your sisters without letting the kids see them first. Don’t worry, they won’t mind. Also, write updates about them and post them on Facebook, especially if they start dating or for sure if they lose their job—just sharing a prayer concern, you know.

4.       Pump your kids for information. You want to know because you love them. Get tears in your eyes. Why can’t they be like their cousin Hannah? Your sister-in-law Arlene says Hannah tells her everything, like they’re best friends. Call your kids’ friends for information, or even their boss.  You’re just concerned, that’s all. If your college son visits your sister over Thanksgiving, call her after he leaves. Did he say where he’s going to church? Did he mention any girls?

5.       Pick up pretty and useful things for your children at garage sales—citrus juicers and mauve sweaters and The Prayer of Jabez. They will protest, of course, and tell you that they have a small apartment, and they’re Minimalist now. Press The Prayer of Jabez into their hands. “See? You need to ask God to expand your territory and get you into a house. With a nice husband.”

6.       Take on projects that are way too big to do by yourself. Put a big quilt in frame, pile up the living room furniture and start painting the walls, invite your Sunday School class of Primaries over for Sunday dinner and games. When you’re overwhelmed, ask your adult children to help. If they protest that they had other plans, use your Mom voice. “Seriously, you say you’re all into missions and you can’t give up an hour to play kickball with little kids?” Sigh. “Oh thank you, I knew I could count on you!”

7.       Drop lots of hints about dating, getting married, and having babies. They might never get it done if you don’t remind them. Casually mention your friend Anne’s nice son and how well he takes care of his mom. Buy a cute little outfit for your niece’s baby and send a picture of it on the family chat. Remind your daughter sadly of all the guys she turned down. "That short guy from Indiana was so nice." Go online and stalk anyone your children mention in conversation who sounds like a Potential. “Like” their pictures from three years ago. Accidentally send them a friend request. Figure out if you know their mom.

8.       Complain to your children about their dad. Kids love to feel like they’re getting the “deets” [see #1] on your marriage. They want to know all about your husband’s snoring and how annoyed he gets when you move his bottle of Tums off the nightstand. Confide in them how he spends his money and how he hurt your feelings when he told everyone at prayer meeting that it was your fault you were late. Adult kids appreciate this deep connection with their parents.

9.       Keep up the family traditions at all costs. Always hold hands around the table to ask the blessing before dinner, especially if they bring home an awkward new boyfriend. Even more importantly, remind them of multi-generational obligations. “You can’t go hiking that weekend. You know very well we always go to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving dinner, and then we rake up all the leaves in her yard.” “You can’t go teach in Africa! This farm has been in the family for six generations, and you’re our only son!”

10.   Refuse to learn newfangled ways of communicating. My goodness, they can pick up the telephone and call you. In your day, you had to write letters and send them in the mail. Eventually, tell them that, ok, fine, you’re coming around. Call them twice a week for at least four weeks and ask them to show you how to use WhatsApp. Use all the wrong terms, frown a lot, and stab at your phone with one long determined forefinger. Accidentally log out of WhatsApp. Forget your password. Talk with them on your husband's phone, on speakerphone, while you try to figure out yours.

11.   Let them know that they are still your whole life. You don’t have any other friends. Do they have time to go shopping this week? No? Oh, but you’ve been so lonely, and you’d love to go shopping. Also, make them feel guilty for moving away from home. “I’m so exhausted. I had to trim the roses today. I guess that always used to be your job.” Sigh. “I’ll be fine, really, after I get a night’s sleep.”

12.   Impress your kids with your successes. Let them know how many "likes" your dahlia pictures got on Instagram and how many windows you washed in one day. Tell them who raved about your chocolate cake at the potluck and who asked you to sew their bridesmaid dresses. They’ll be so proud, they’ll tell all their friends about you. You are just that amazing.

13.   Act surprised when they complete adult tasks. “Oh wow, you baked bread? My baby girl!” Maybe they applied for a job or bought a plane ticket. “Awwww, look at you! I’m so proud of you!” If they’re living at home, take a picture to commemorate the occasion.

14.   Your kids are so busy with school and work, so do stuff to help them. Go in their bedrooms and gather all their laundry. “Oh, it’s no problem. I only had half a load of darks.” Fold everything neatly and lay it on their bed. Expect them to help you make dinner in return. Don’t say this in so many words, but hint meaningfully.

15.   Research all your children’s health issues and send them care packages with pills, oils, powders, infusions, tinctures, teas, and pages of instructions and recipes. Keep asking them if the potions are working. If not, send more. Call them up and urge them to crawl under their house with a flashlight and check for mold.

16.   Use the word “honor” a lot, especially if they make choices you don’t like--church, dating, career, clothes, money. “The Bible says to honor your parents, you know.” Sigh. Look sad. “I guess you don’t want to live very long then.”

17.   When you need the Crock Pot moved to a high shelf or the stepladder set up on the porch, always announce in a loud voice that you need a big strong guy to do a job. Your adult sons will be flattered and delighted to volunteer, just like when they were eight or ten years old.

18.   Make sure you fly into a complete panic if they hint any deviation from the religious and political beliefs they were raised with. Maybe they were raised in Eugene, and they complain about how much bother it is to recycle paper and tin cans in Texas. Maybe they were raised Mennonite, and you catch them admiring the jewelry display at Goodwill. Or you homeschooled them, and they tell you they're buying a house in a really good school district. Let them know that thinking about these things is just as bad as doing them. Eyebrows up, mouth in an O, loud gasp, and tears in your eyes. You’ve got this. They’ll thank you someday

19.   Keep all the stuff in your house for your children to sort and put to good use after you die, like your mom’s Amish bonnet, lots of sour cream containers, and the seashell from the trip to the beach in 1998 when their dad accidentally stole the pillows at the motel. Keep the hundreds of old letters, and all the books. They’ll want to touch and read it all someday, for sentiment’s sake. It’s going to mean the world to them, when you’re gone.

20.   Keep them up to date on all their high school classmates and cousins. Emphasize all the engagements, new babies, and new houses. Let them know how often their cousins come home to visit, and isn’t that thoughtful of them? Also, update them regularly on everything at church—the “sketch” [see #1] theology in last Sunday’s sermon, the mistakes in the bulletin, which woman didn’t say hello to you in the bathroom, Esther’s gallbladder surgery, and who didn’t show up for communion.  

21.   Worry about your kids. Call them late at night. “Oh, you’re home? I hadn’t heard from you in a few days and wanted to make sure you weren’t upside down in a ditch somewhere.“ “You looked so sad in that picture somebody posted of your lab group. Are you ok? Are you sure? You can talk to me about anything, you know, even if you’re pregnant. Or depressed. I promise I won’t have a conniption.” Pour a cup of tea, my friend, because they’re about to tell you everything!

 

See? That’s it! Having a wonderful relationship with your adult children is that easy! If I can excel at these, then so can you!

You’re doing great!

ABC Post 7--How to Host a Fabric Swap

My friend Simone and I are equally crazy about fabric. Not only do we both like to sew, but we love every aspect of fabric: looking at it, planning projects, feeling it with our fingers.

A year ago, we fulfilled a long-held dream and went shopping together in the fabric/fashion district of Los Angeles.

It was way too much fun.

This year, we decided to host a fabric swap in the loft of our new barn.

I was introduced to the idea about three years ago when I spoke at a ladies’ retreat in Montana. A fabric swap was a traditional part of their retreat, and I enjoyed being part of an enthusiastic swarm of ladies around the well-stocked tables.

Our swap was successful, we felt. The parts that didn’t go so well were still instructive, so we counted the whole thing as a win.

Here are a few instructions and information bits to keep in mind if you’d like to try it yourself:

1.      Just to be clear, we called it a swap because people brought their fabric and went home with other people’s stash, but it was actually a sale. No one swapped one fabric piece for another, as that’s too complicated.

2.      Spread the word. Simone made up a flyer, and I put a pile of them at the local Mennonite store. We both posted information on Facebook and Instagram, and we mailed flyers to friends in other Mennonite churches in Oregon.
A few friends from other churches suggested putting a picture of the flyer on their church ladies’ chat group. That was actually far more efficient than paper flyers.
We started posting about the February 18 sale before Christmas, but it would have been ok to wait a month longer.

3.      Have the sellers do most of the work. Measuring and pricing are the fiddliest parts of the process, so we had everyone measure their own fabric and label it with their name, the measurements, and the price.
We also had them deliver the fabric to our place and pick up the leftovers afterward.

4.      Decide on scope. We chose to offer fabric, notions, batting, and patterns, but not clothing or other craft items.

5.      Document everything. We asked the sellers to make a list of all their fabric and give it to us. Some had detailed pages and some simply took pictures of all the labeled fabric. Either way, it was great to have the documentation to fall back on when a few labels fell off during the sale.
I had a notebook for the sale and wrote each seller’s name at the top of a page.

Label everything!

6.      Decide on your cut. We had invested quite a bit of time, plus we had the postage and other expenses. I thought a 5% cut would be sufficient, but Simone, who has far more of a business head than me, thought it should be at least 10%. As it turned out, 10% wasn’t all that much, divided between us, especially since we had to pay a 2.6% fee on credit card sales.
I think 20% might be more reasonable.

7.      Speaking of credit cards, I got a Square reader years ago so people could pay with a credit card at book sales. It came in very handy at our sale, especially for the women with lots of daughters who spent over $150.
Offering PayPal or Venmo is also a good option.

8.      Find a comfortable and well-lit facility. Our multi-purpose barn loft qualifies because Paul likes everything lit up like Autzen Stadium under the floodlights. Also, I was so enamored with the skylights I saw in Midwestern Amish stores that I insisted on two of them in the loft ceiling. The result is a bright combination of natural and artificial light. One customer who complimented this aspect of the sale said she will shop or not shop at certain fabric stores, depending on the lighting. We were happy to win her approval.
We also had comfortable chairs to sit on if shopping grew wearisome.

9.      Make it fun. We had a bowl of new notions like pattern weights and magnetic seam-width markers as door prizes. Every half hour or so, Simone’s timer would go off, and whoever was closest to the checkout table got to pick out a prize.

10.   If you don’t have fabric on bolts, the easiest and boringest way to display it is spread out on tables. I wanted a boutique look rather than a garage-sale look, so we tried hard to creatively set it up, down, and sideways.
I have a large clothing-display rack that used to be at the old Meier and Frank store in Eugene, so we put the dress fabric on hangers on that rack.
We hung pieces on two laundry racks.
Simone sorted the quilting cottons by color and stacked them on bookshelves.
We brought in benches and baskets to display fabric at different heights.
We set our dress forms in the windows and draped fabric around them.

11.   We set up one table for by-the-yard purchases. Simone had a large cutting mat that she placed on the table along with a yardstick, rotary cutter, and labels. If someone wanted lace or upholstery fabric by the yard, she cut it off and labeled it with price and seller.

12.   Simone’s daughter Dolly puts on exquisite tea parties several times a year with her friend Hannah. She offered to lend her skills to our event. Lucky us. She kept the coffee hot and also served chocolate chip cookies, gluten-free cookies, and tortilla rollups. The husbands and children who came along seemed to especially enjoy the snacks.

Listening to Dolly and Hannah discuss guys on a dating app was an unexpected perk of the process. 

13.   For the checkout process, we removed all the labels from a customer’s choices and added up the prices. After they paid and left, we put all the labels in a greeting-card box.
As she had time, Simone took all the labels and wrote the numbers on each seller’s page in the notebook. She clipped each seller’s labels together with a clothespin. We kept all the labels for a couple of weeks after the sale, just in case any accounting issues came up.
At the end of the sale, she added up the totals, took a 10% cut, and wrote out the checks.

Each sellers labels, clothespinned together.

14.   Dress-sized knits turned out to be the best sellers, especially floral double-brushed polys. Poly knits from the 80s and 90s didn’t sell well, but vintage double knits from the 70s did surprisingly well. I guess not everyone gets mentally transported back to junior high at the sight of those heavy, itchy knits that evoke humid summer Sundays and trying to impress teenage boys.

Older women were more likely to buy quilting cottons. Scrap bags and small remnants didn’t do well at all.

I sold quite a few fabrics I’d picked up in Los Angeles, which I took as a clear sign that I need to go get more.
For our sale next year.
Because of course we have to do this again.

15.   Overall, the benefits of hosting the sale included: getting rid of some of my stash, meeting people, sharing the community’s resources to benefit one another, a bit of income, and accomplishing a fun project and dream with Simone.

Share your questions in the comments. If you’ve hosted or attended a swap and have tips to share, I’d love to hear them.

P.S. You, like some of our family members, might be wondering if Simone and I, surrounded by temptation, actually managed to have a net loss in our vast fabric supplies. I can't speak for Simone, but I'm happy to report that I bought only two pieces and sold about twenty times that. Some of you know what restraint this required.

ABC Post 5--Looking for Honest Books & A Review of Charlie's Boy

My daughter Emily, daughter-in-law Phoebe, and I have taken up the annual April Blogging Challenge, posting Monday through Friday during the month of April. You can catch up with Emily here and Phoebe here.

This is a really long post. I considered posting it in two parts, but it makes more sense in one. Feel free to get a cup of coffee or do a load of laundry partway through.

If you only want to read the book review, scroll down to the shot of the book cover.

 Diogenes, you might recall, was the guy in Greek legend who walked around with a lamp, looking for an honest man.

Sometimes I think of myself as Dorcogenes, hunting for an honest Mennonite book.

We Anabaptists believe that “faith without works is dead.” Obedience is important, even at great sacrifice, and faith is as important in everyday life as in the specifically holy moments of worship on Sundays. 

We also believe in choices leading to consequences, sowing and reaping, and men’s courses foreshadowing certain ends, as Charles Dickens said. 

That's what I taught my children: your choices matter.

However, it seems to me we have taken this belief further than God ever intended. We convince ourselves that behaving properly, working hard, and following the rules will always lead to the logical rewards of happy marriages, functional families, good health, prosperity, and respect from others.

This leads, I believe, to a dangerous fallacy: I have the power to make everything turn out ok. And if it doesn’t turn out ok, it’s my fault. It puts us in a God-like position that we were never meant to occupy, and it doesn’t build a foundation of faith for the times when nothing makes sense.

As a culture, we’re not sure what to do with the real-life stories that don’t turn out, the children of good parents who make bad choices, the hard-working carpenters who suffer financial losses, the people who leave our church, or the women in modest cape dresses who were sexually assaulted and/or whose mental health disintegrated. 

Do we have a faith that can stay strong even when the sweet married couple struggles with infertility while the alcoholic single mom across the street keeps having babies? What about when we do our best and things still don’t work out? Or when someone else messes up, yet their kids turn out better than mine?

Is there grace for the truth of our lives?

The belief that I can control the outcome by living right manifests itself in Anabaptist literature, from Sunday school flyers with naughty children set back on the straight and narrow to biographies and how-to books. 

Here are two examples, and if you want actual titles and such, you can message me. I'm trying to verify my statements without unduly discouraging the authors, which might be impossible. I’m not saying that these books didn’t have good qualities or interesting content, but they both had that disturbing theme.

Paul recently read a book about local family and church history. Full of authentic old letters and other historical documents, the book seemed factual and objective at first glance and was an interesting read, with many connections to people and places we know. But the author shaped the narrative to emphasize good end results if you remained a faithful conservative Mennonite.

Knowing many of the people involved, we felt that important details were omitted, and the truth was much more complicated and nuanced. It would not have dishonored the family or God to add more dimensions to the story.

I believe in grace for the truth of our lives.

We also read a book on marriage by a Mennonite woman. The author’s husband was distant, demanding, cold, and cruel. She doesn’t name his abuse or use those words—they are my conclusions from her stories. For example, he didn’t allow his wife to get medical help when she had severe postpartum depression, and he was very unhelpful around the house even during three difficult pregnancies and numerous house moves. He had another woman in his life, and it is unclear whether he limited his interaction to texting.

The author says she changed her husband and her marriage by trusting God and becoming more submissive and cheerful, altering her life in every way to cater to her husband’s wishes. For example, she gave up a successful home business for his sake and forced herself to cry less when she was depressed, which some of us have tried in the past and didn't have the superhuman strength to achieve.

It left me feeling like we weren’t hearing the full story, like wide swaths of truth were ignored, and others were manipulated. More troubling, the central message was this: a woman has the power to change her husband and a bad situation by doing everything right. Thus, logically, if the reader’s man and marriage don’t change, it’s her fault for somehow not doing the right things, despite her heroic efforts. There is no grace for bad days, overwhelming circumstances, and not knowing what on earth to do.

I am responsible for my choices as a person and a wife, and they affect my husband and our marriage. However, I am not God, and I don’t have the power to change my husband’s heart or the eventual outcomes, and any message otherwise is dangerous. I know many Christian women who have put incredible work and sacrifice into their marriages but were not able to sanctify their husbands or save their marriages.

So, when I run across Mennonite books that tell honest stories with a theme of faith and redemption, I joyfully pounce on them.

Two such books that I’ve reviewed in the past year are Turtle Heart by Luci Kinsinger and Peanut Butter and Dragon Wings by Shari Zook.

I was drawn to them because of the real-ness and the grace in the middle of brokenness and imperfection. In both of them, we see the process of growth. We don’t know everything, and so, beginning at Point A, we make choices out of where we are. Then things happen, and we learn, change, and grow. At the end, we are at Point B, and we are different than before. But we couldn’t reach the better and wiser end without going through the long, hard process.

Truth is your friend, and it walks hand in hand with grace. Grace is meaningless if we can’t tell the truth about how broken we are.

I would like to think Shari and Luci, with their authentic stories, determined honesty, and hard-won redemption, are signs that the cultural ship is turning. My daughter Emily's book, The Highway and Me and My Earl Grey Tea, fits this category as well.

To be clear, by “honest,” I don’t mean tasteless tell-alls that feel like someone vomiting in your lap. Nor do I insist that every detail and conversation must be verified and all sources cited. Or that there can be no conclusions drawn from past events.

Instead, I look for a general sense that the author is:

a) The same person in the public eye as they are in private. Their story has a ring of truth. You don’t smell a rat. 

b) Committed to telling the truth even if it makes them or others look awkward or imperfect.

c) Ok with lingering questions and real-life outcomes that don’t make sense yet.

d) Looking far below the surface to figure out what motivated the events and the characters’ choices.

e) Not wedging events into a pre-planned religious formula.

f) Writing dialogue that sounds like real people talking.

g) Ok with being questioned about why and how they wrote what they did.

Justin Stauffer, the author of Charlie’s Boy--Into this House We're Born is no longer conservative Mennonite, but he used to be, so I feel that the discussion of honesty among Mennonite writers is relevant here.

Charlie’s Boy is based on the author’s own story. He says, “I do not market the book as fiction or an autobiography although one could make a strong argument for either. The genre is creative non-fiction, which I did not know existed until I was a student at Rosedale Bible College a few years ago. That knowledge was revolutionary for me as it allowed me to tell my story truthfully while leaving room for a lot of grace and nuance (two of my favorite things).”

It takes place in Alberta in the 1980s—if I calculated correctly—around the time that I first came to Oregon to teach school. One of many reasons that Justin’s story hit me in the gut was that the Mennonite culture in his home church was so similar to the one in Oregon—after all, they belonged to the same conference and used to get together for Annual Meetings and other events.

Coming from an Amish/Beachy past in the Midwest, I found that the Mennonite culture in the West was like nothing I had ever seen or imagined. People took the church rules so seriously that they made our strict church back home look lackadaisical by comparison. Everyone seemed watchful and cautious. Even youth-group girls talked solemnly about “personal convictions” they had about clothing or music. Back home, we discussed whether or not we wanted to stay Mennonite when we grew up. That subject was taboo in the youth group in Oregon.

A particular knit fabric—smooth, tightly knit, with small flowers--was popular among all the Mennonite ladies back then. They always had pointed collars and smooth gored skirts with no gathers, and long sleeves with a cuff or a bit of elastic at the wrist.

There’s a picture of Justin’s mother wearing just such a dress on his Facebook page, except hers didn’t have the pointed collar, and one look transported me back to that unsettling experience of being plunked, all wide-eyed and clueless, into this new culture.

I think that connection helped me feel the pain of Justin’s situation: his mom was the minister’s daughter. His dad was a renegade who drank too much alcohol and in every way didn’t fit in.

I try to imagine it, and it is almost too complicated and painful to examine closely: the dutiful daughter, belonging to the church and wanting so badly to please her powerful dad. And her husband is the antithesis of all she’s been taught. Her good behavior was supposed to lead to respect, belonging, a great marriage, and happy endings. She tries so hard to do everything right, and her husband is the plot twist that makes no sense at all. 

Justin, the son, known as Muggsey, is caught not only between his parents but also the culture, the grandpa, the uncles, the friends, everyone. He seems yanked in all directions, misunderstood, forced to be a go-between. He has a deep and desperate longing to play sports. Dad would be ok with this. Mom would not. It hurts to read it.

No one follows the script. The good people are often cruel and confusing. The bad people reach the heart of a floundering boy with kindness and empathy. Dad, for all his failures and weaknesses, has the wisest insights of anyone. My husband read it and said, "You end up feeling sorry for everyone."

Being Mennonite, I frequently found myself yanked out of the story at first because I was trying to figure out exactly where this all happened, and when, and at what church, and who was who? Was Grandpa the notorious Mervin Bear, perhaps? (No.) Had I met Mom at the October meetings at Estacada in 1981? Which aunts and uncles belonged where, and what on earth was with the Hutterite references and all the nicknames for the children?

I finally decided to read the book like I read poetry, which is like canoeing across a lake. You skim over the top, absorbing the experience, without diving into the water to explore all the reeds and fish and mud.

In doing so, I felt the essence of the story surround me, the glassy water, the splash of the paddles, and the cattails at the edge. It was beautiful.

What I loved best was the sense that, even though the author crafted and shaped the narrative, I was reading something essentially authentic and true. He wasn’t hiding the truth to prop up a veneer or to prove a point. It felt true to life in beautiful and heartbreaking ways including, to be clear, both profanity and alcohol.

I wasn’t sure that the book, written in more of a literary style than I’m used to, would have a satisfying ending. So many real-life stories never end satisfactorily, but whatever I might say about authenticity and truth, I do like a book to resolve in the end.

This one wasn’t quite what I expected, but it tied up the loose ends and let me exhale. 

I sent the author some questions, which he graciously answered. Here’s some of our exchange.

Me: I'm curious about the style. In some ways it's more literary-fiction than memoir or contemporary Christian fiction. A lot is left unsaid, and the reader is carried along more by the emotion of the story than the plot. This is true of the final chapter in particular. What influenced the decision to choose this style? Or did it develop organically without a conscious choice?

Justin: While I understand why folks may want to classify “Charlie’s Boy” as memoir or Christian fiction, I get a little uptight when those are the genres that are used to describe it. I love that you bring literary-fiction into the conversation and take it as a compliment—that is what I want it to be described as. I appreciate the controversy created by that term and before I began writing I contemplated what I could do to write something that couldn’t be fit neatly into one box or another. I had a fantastic English teacher who gave me a number of great prompts and it was during her literature class that I wrote the prologue and epilogue and settled on the voice in Muggsey’s head being central to the story. We read some amazing literature during that semester and I tried very hard to emulate some of the things I read and discovered.

Me: I am a Minnesota girl, and I like to know where I am and which way is north, both in real life and in fiction. I get confused easily with literary fiction and deep symbolism. However, also like a real Minnesotan, I like to have a thread to follow through a story, like a rope to follow to the barn in a blizzard, and the internal journey of Muggsey and the dad/mom/grandpa/church/God conflicts provided a strong rope to hang onto when I wasn't sure what was going on otherwise.

Justin: This comment is truly rewarding for me. I did try to leave some treasures buried in the words along the way, but more than anything, I wanted the questions to drive the proverbial train. 

If you are familiar with “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller, you will recall how the lack of resolution in Jazz music was what led to his choice of title. I loved that book and that idea really stuck with me. It was also especially poignant because BLJ was one of two precious books that Dad gifted me with. That lack of resolution has been the greatest constant in my life and I think it is what is lacking in most, but especially Christian, fiction. Folks seem to want their stories tied up in a neat bow and handed to them with full resolution. In my experience, life is never really that way.

 So, as Diana and I waded through the thoughts and emotions the process of writing this story brought us, we became cognizant of several deep-seated desires relating to the end product. One, we wanted my story to be truthful without being hurtful. Two, we wanted every character to demonstrate a capacity for both heroism and villainy. Three, we want to ask questions that would stimulate conversations rather than try to give patented answers to questions that are bigger than we are. Four, we wanted the reader to experience some discomfort and reach the end with no resolution but a lot of hope in the central theme of redemption.

Me: Did you have any fears of mentioning cultural peculiarities that a non-Mennonite reader wouldn't "get"? 

Justin: No, quite the opposite. Other than the tie in the first chapter, which I think begs the question, “What is going on here / this is weird,” I think they gave me an opportunity to build word pictures. Since most of my audience understands these peculiarities, I don’t know if they created a problem or added a positive layer of intrigue. I guess I’ll need an outside critic to answer that, but I haven’t received any real feedback regarding such issues (although I have received a lot of feedback from several non-Mennonite readers). Most folks have religious peculiarities of their own, so my assumption is that they made their own assumptions 

Me: How did you handle the inevitable family members who felt that these things should not be spoken of? 

Justin: It is difficult to navigate those waters—for sure! My family has been mostly gracious. The ones who took the greatest offense have been workable and I feel like we have been able to talk through most of the issues. The blowback I received was expected, some easy enough to navigate with a good heart-to-heart, some probably better left alone to soak for a while. Obviously, there was a lot of difficult material for my mom to read and relive, but she has been incredibly supportive and willing to let me share my story. My sister was a constant sounding board. She never wavered in encouraging me to finish and publish it. My Uncle Mark and Aunt Grace are the only other living characters who got a lot of mention as themselves and they have been amazing.

 In a very expected irony, the greatest concerns were with my portrayal of Grampa. I feel like I was very gracious to him, others feel like I was less than gracious. Oddly enough, outside of family, everyone seems to think my family is awesome and they would love to meet them all. There were also some minor concerns of privacy and some concerns that folks in the community might view the family less favorably, but mostly, the ones who had concerns left me with, “It’s your story.” 

Justin added, in a personal note, I have read much of your writing on social media, and I believe you are seeking the same things I am. Grace, hope, and intentional redemption. 

Thank you, Justin.

You can order your copy of Charlie's Boy here.

ABC 2--A Tribute to Verda

 I began writing for publication back in the Dark Ages. A few of you Ancient Ones recall those days—telling stories around the fire while the wolves howled in the distance, typing submissions on typewriters with Ko-Rec-Type near at hand, sandwiching carbon paper between the white pages, sending articles in the mail to potential publishers, and eventually seeing our names in magazines or newspapers—in ink, on paper.

Without email or social media, we somehow managed to have a network of writers. Through them, I heard of Verda Glick and her Writers Workshops By Mail.

Verda and her husband Eli had moved to El Salvador as missionaries early in their marriage and eventually made it their home for good. In addition to all her other responsibilities as a pastor’s wife and mother of a large family, Verda was a writer. And on top of all that, she mentored other writers.

As I understand it, every time she received enough requests, she began another writers group. Each group had about six participants, and Verda was an active part of all of them. I think there were ten active groups when I joined, around 1995.

The process was a bit complicated, but it made sense. We were constantly circulating two contributions. On the first round, everyone critiqued everyone else’s chapters, writing in the margins in a specific ink color. The second time around, you got to read what everyone further down the line had commented.

Then you removed your oldest contribution and set it aside, presumably to edit before you sent it out for publication. You wrote a letter to the group, if you wished, added a new manuscript, and mailed the whole packet to the next person on the list.

 I tended to keep the packet too long, which meant I had to add postage stamps for the next person. I’m sure I overshared in the letters and, being a young and fledgling writer, I took everyone’s comments way too personally.

One woman in particular was fiery and opinionated, freely taking issue with the content of our chapters and telling us all how we ought to live, believe, and write. I held a deep hatred and resentment toward her.

At that time I was still enmeshed in the Ella Enchanted curse, where I felt compelled to do exactly what I was told, no matter what it was or who said it, which of course leads inevitably to resentment.

During this time, I had taken a few classes on essay writing and memoirs at the local community college. They were enormously helpful, not so much for the skills I learned as the affirmation that essays were my niche.

I shared about this in a letter to my workshop. Later, I wrote a letter in my usual angsty style about feeling lost in the writing/publishing world, and what direction I should take?

Well. This particular lady—it’s probably good I don’t recall her name--fired back at me, and I’m pretty sure this is verbatim, because it wore a groove in my brain: “Stop taking those silly classes and get on your knees for a few hours instead, and ask God for direction about what to write!”

I was so offended. How DARE she?? It was none of her business!! I LIKED those classes! They HELPED.

I fumed and stewed about this.

Of course I didn’t say this in my letter, because I didn’t know how to be direct, but I think Verda picked up on the tempests blowing in the group. I don’t remember what she said, only that her words were like a soothing ointment on a flaming rash. She affirmed me, my skills, my calling, my classes, my journey—all of it. She sounded calm and good-humored, and she didn’t agree with the other woman or chide my anxiety and immaturity.

My wild feelings settled down, and I found a path forward. A couple of years later, I got a job writing a column for the newspaper and went down that path for the next 19 years.

I don’t hate that feisty woman in the group any more, now that I know she’s allowed to think what she wants, and I don’t have to do what she says.

A few years after the heated exchange in the workshop, I met Verda at the Christian Light Writers and Artists Workshop. She was smiling, motherly, and comfortable. She gave me a huge hug and acted honored to meet me.

Recently, Verda was losing her battle with cancer, and the family invited her friends and readers to send her messages.

What do you say to someone like Verda who is nearing the end of her life?

I went to my magical modern computer and composed an email.  Oh Verda, I'm so sorry to hear the cancer has spread but grateful that He is WITH you and giving you peace. Thank you for your enormous influence on my life and especially my writing. What a gift you are.

I was surprised and delighted to receive a reply. Verda said: Huh?? Me?? Influence YOU and your writing? I don't think so. But oh how you made my day!

How could she not know how she had blessed me? I’ll bet there are hundreds of us, and she had no idea.

In some ways, with the newspaper column ended, I’m once again an angsty young writer trying to find a path forward. I think if she were here, she would give me a hug and assure me that I have what it takes, and it will all work out.

I need to go cry for a little bit now, so I will leave you to think about how you can influence people in your world simply by being gentle, supportive, wise, and affirming, mixed with excellence in your field and warm hugs when the opportunity arises.

I actually located one of the first critiques Verda wrote after I joined the group. This was for an essay about Paul's grandpa.