how I'll teach my children to pray

When you are very small and very resistant to sleeping when society says you should, I'll stand holding you in the dark and sing Bible camp songs I've forgotten I know. From the depths of my sleep-deprived desperation scripture set to music will pour out of me and become the fabric of your bedtime memories. Years after we've put this ritual behind us I will catch you humming these tunes under your breath as you create masterpieces with markers at the kitchen table and I will realize the magic of the psalms all over again.

Mama: O God of what we've forgotten we know
Children: Hear our prayer.

Anytime we hear sirens I'll remind you to pray for the helpers. We'll go through the list of first responders. We'll cover doctors and hospital staff. We'll pray for peace of mind and clarity in decision-making for families of victims and you'll ask questions about fire trucks and how accidents happen and I will answer you while silently thanking God that it wasn't us that called for sirens, it wasn't my babies needing the helpers. 

Mama: O God of my selfish gratitude
Children: Hear our prayer.

There will be perfect moments when everyone is in a good mood and the perfect song is playing and you are stirring biscuit dough in a bowl that belonged to my grandmother and we'll have to stop stirring and join hands even though we are covered in flour just to sway sillily because dancing is how we celebrate perfect moments and it is darn sure how we pray.

Mama: O God of kitchen dancing
Children: Hear our prayer.

I will hike you up mountainsides and into deep forests. We will wade into rivers and plunge our bodies into the ocean. We will watch sunsets and howl at the full moon. You'll complain about the bug bites, the steep inclines, the temperature, the boredom, but onward and upward we'll go, exploring every nook and cranny of our spaceship home. We will learn how life works (in spiraling patterns), where beauty can be found (everywhere, if we look hard enough), how wonderfully and fearfully made it all truly is. You'll thank me for it someday. I'm thankful for it already.

Mama: O God of creation, of wonder, of all things great and small
Children: Hear our prayer.

I will cry. You will see me do it. It might be tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes when I listen to you sing along in the car to a song I love. It might be silent shoulder heaving at the kitchen counter because I am overwhelmed by all the things I fear I've failed to conquer in my life. You'll watch Papa hold me as my body laments all the world I cannot save. At least once in your life you will catch me screaming in the backyard, overcome by injustice and tragedy, as if all of humanity is mine alone to bear witness to. This is who I am. This is how I pray.

Mama: O God of the canaries in the coal mines,
Children: Hear our prayer.

I will fail you. I will forget to pack your lunch. I'll be late to pick you up from swim practice. I will yell at you for no other reason than I am tired and you are nearby. I will be sarcastic when you are seeking sweetness. I will misinterpret your emotions. Sometimes I won't even realize these shortcomings. Other times, I am embarrassed to admit, they will be intentional. My relationship with you will give me ample opportunity to practice asking forgiveness, making amends. This is how we love each other, this forgiveness and amend-making. This, too, is prayer.

Mama: O God of second chances, of mercies anew every morning
Children: Hear our prayer. 

My body grew yours. We are connected in the way all things are connected. These gossamer threads of being link us backwards and forwards to the stardust we came from and the stardust we will be again. Your very existence is my connection to what is, what will be, what came before. The life in me honors the life in you. Uncle Walt reminds us we are verse contributors in this play of life. Let's make our verse beautiful together. 

Mama: O me! O life! O God of poetry and stardust!
Children: Hear our prayer. 

the dishwasher

my name is wendy. I'm a homesteader and I use my dishwasher. daily. sometimes twice a day.

it is hard for me to pinpoint exactly when we officially became homesteaders. was I a homesteader when I lived in an apartment in a city and walked my pregnant belly and my toddler half a mile to the community garden to deposit our compost once a week? were we homesteading when we taught our foster kids how to plant tomatoes beside the driveway every spring? maybe I wasn't official until I baked my first loaf of bread from scratch or botched my first batch of cheese. did the homesteading life start when we moved to the country and hung up a clothesline? when my husband finally started listing "farmer" as his full-time occupation?

the "when" of a homesteading journey can be a little tricky. there isn't a checklist to go by or an official act of initiation in this game. and everybody's definition is a little bit different. I can think back to my ambitions when we first started being the weird ones in our extended family. those ambitions certainly did not include using an electric dishwasher on a daily basis. we were going to live off the grid, in the woods, off the land, in the moment! it was going to be hard and satisfying all at the same time. and once we started, it was going to be full steam ahead, no turning back, carpe the homesteading diem!

I guess I don't have to tell you things didn't quite work out the way I'd envisioned. our needs changed, our visions changed, heck, the world around us just seems to keep changing. but even if the "hows" and the "whens" are hard to nail down, the "whys" of this life are still crystal clear to me. and the "whys" we have settled on leave room for me to use my dishwasher.

we homestead for two main reasons: to make our life slower and simpler, and to prepare ourselves for having to undergo major lifestyle changes as the world around us changes. we want to enjoy our day-to-day as a family (and as individuals, too) and we also want to have the skills we need if there suddenly is no more electricity or if buying food large scale is no longer an option. I want to have the skills I need to keep my family safe, warm, and fed if the grid were to disappear tomorrow. I want to know we can eat from our own yard if there is a natural disaster and food deliveries to local stores stop. so we homestead not only to provide a slower pace of life for ourselves, but also to practice for whatever may happen next.

here's how I justify my dishwasher under those "whys" of homesteading: I know how to wash dishes. I have mastered that skill through years of practice both as a kid and as an adult. I know that my kids would not be emotionally rattled if our dishwasher was suddenly removed from our lives. and in the day-to-day realm, it makes our life simpler to run a load of dishes through the dishwasher than it does to wash them by hand. I get more time to play chess with my son and to draw with my daughter as the dishwasher hums along in the background. all the time I am not washing dishes by hand can be used to whip up a pot of soup for supper, collect kindling in the yard, or read up on peak oil cozy by my wood stove. to me, the dishwasher is a keeper for those very reasons. and if the dishwasher goes kaput tomorrow, we probably wouldn't pay to have it fixed. we can certainly live without it. but for now, electricity is cleaning my dishes.

the biggest lessons in homestead for me haven't been the skills I've accomplished or the food I've preserved or even the relationships I've forged through this lifestyle change. the most important lessons for me are the internal ones: learning to detach from an intended outcome and just see what happens, learning to be gentle and kind to myself as I figure things out, granting grace to myself and my family as we all learn together. and sometimes that grace requires a little help from my dishwasher.

wendy and her homesteading family live on the tippy top of a mountain just outside of brevard, nc. you can read more about their adventures at mindthosemanners.blogspot.com.