Names, Considered

I like the name Eve as a first name. But for such a small, soft name, it's a headache to pair with a middle name. I've been culling through name books, consulting with fellow Name Enthusiasts, and discussing possibilities with my obliging husband. This is the sort of thing I do for fun. Some people follow sports, some people cross-stitch. I play with names.

Here are some of the pairings I like:
Eve Gabrielle
Eve Mariella
Eve Linnea

Here are some I've eliminated:
Eve Genevieve
Eve Noelle
Eve Minerva (No, Kristen. I tried. Nope. [Hand raised] Doesn't work. Nope.)

I like Eve Geneva, as well. Like, as a character in a children's book: "Deacon Darren and Eve Geneva Go To Church."

-- SJ

Your question is, Is there a Reason for this post? My answer is, You've been reading my blog for how long and you still ask that?

Christmas with the Joneses

Christmas with the Joneses! Not a bad shot for 14 people, although of the four children who aren't exactly picture-perfect, three of them belong to us. L-R back row: Darren, Sara, Jill, Evan, Lindsay. Second row: Stuart, Mr. Phil, Miss Bev, Addie. First row: Tucker, Jackson, Daphne, Jed, and Chloe.


The three "girls." Lindsay had to wait a long time for sisters, but we're the lucky ones who got the job.

Darren-and-Sara and Evan-and-Jill, and Lindsay who wailed, "Don't I at least get a stuffed animal to hold?"

-- SJ

"The Begotten" -- What We Think

Again I say: It's not that Francine Rivers and her ilk are such atrocious writers. The writing tends to be unexceptional. You can diagram the sentences, and they're all correct. There are no misused words. The sentences, paragraphs, and pages communicate the message clearly, and story unfolds in an easily traceable arc. It's all very functional, with a shrink-wrapped, ready-made feeling about it.

The problem is that these books, these unsurprising stories with their unexciting wordsmithing, are so wildly popular among Christian women. It's not a new complaint, that the public accepts mediocrity with enthusiasm: but it's still galling that these books inspire wonder and excitement among thinking women.

Darren picked up a book by Lisa Bergren called "The Begotten," thinking it looked interesting. The premise asks "what if" there was a lost letter of Paul's, never cannonized into Scripture but never entirely lost, prophesying that people with extraordinary spiritual gifts of healing, wisdom, etc. will rise up and save Christendom from a great supernatural evil? It was only when he read the blurbs on the back of the book, from Liz Curtis Higgs and Robin Jones Gunn, that he realized he'd breached the gender barrier. Still, he gave it a shot. After about 50 pages, he was ready to give it to the firing squad.

So he brought it home to me.

I, too, gave it a 50-page run. My overwhelming impression was the same as when I was reading "Redeeming Love" by Francine Rivers: boredom. The author has no notion of storytelling, so the great exciting revelation of a lost-and-found letter from Paul is dealt with in about three pages at the beginning of the story. The revelation of the heroine's marvelous gift of healing comes only after a great deal of information-laden dialogue and an undramatic accident. It's as if Bergren, knowing where she needed to go with the story, simply went point-to-point on her plot outline. "Oh, now I need to show how Daria can heal, so now this will happen, right in the middle of this information-laden conversation."

The story is set in medieval times. You can tell it's the Middle Ages because Bergren capitalizes "the Church" and her characters say "Nay" and "mayhap." Really, modern evangelical Protestants shouldn't try writing about the Middle Ages. They don't understand anything about Church authority (except it was oppressive or something); about the liturgy; about sacraments; and certainly not about the rich, complex, and rather strange medieval theology. Instead, this book just builds the basic stage sets: priests and bishops, beggars, dirty streets. It's set in Italy, which the author obviously visited and absorbed for local color. Once the sets are painted and put in place, Bergren brings on her cast of 21st century charismatic evangelicals, in full medieval costume, scripts in hand.

So, in a time and place where priests chanted prayers in Latin, where good Christians made pilgrimages and did great deeds for the glory of God, where saints and Mary were highly venerated and Christ was viewed as a stern judge -- in this time and place, Bergren has a bishop counsel a knight of the "Church," "Come what may, believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, and none can stand against you. None." I don't disagree with the sentiment, but the bishop's t-shirt is showing through his chasuble.

The stage sets show up pretty flimsy once the characters start praying. When the heroine discovers she has a supernatural gift of healing, her priest advises that she just pray whatever comes to mind. That's SO Middle Ages. The heroine then prays this prayer:

"Heal her now. Lord God, Lord Jesus Christ, Lord on High, come and be present here. Enter her arteries and veins, enter her bones and tendons. Her muscles. Begin your healing work. Father God, heal her completely. Bring her back to completeness, mending every single bone. Let her use this moment and her music to serve you. Let her celebrate the glory of you might, Jesus. Let these nuns know tonight, you drew nearer than ever before. You can do this... You can do this, Father God. We ask you to do this. ..." [It goes on for another three lines.]

It was at this point that, as Darren said, it started sounding like a bad high school play. Things didn't improve, as far as I could tell from skimming the end, and evidently it's the first of a trilogy. I'll give it a miss. But no doubt it will thrill many (female) (Christian) readers, who evidently subscribe to a line from a bad eighth-grade play in my own personal history: Mediocrity is better than nothing.

-- SJ

Flee Listful Thoughts

With a trip North approaching, and Christmas rushing in like a freight train (or a mysterious midnight steam locomotive heading for the North Pole), I've had to go against a very basic urge of my nature. I've had to sit down and make lists.

There are people in the world who enjoy making lists, who feel lost in an trackless wilderness without the comforting boundaries of a list to keep them on course. My mother-in-law is one of those people. Her whole life is ordered and arranged by lists, and she snuggles into them as if they're made of fur. My husband, too, enjoys a list. For them, it's the first step to getting anything done. It's organized and freeing. It's uplifting.

As is possibly anticipated, I am not a list person. In fact, I'm actively an anti-list person. Lists, to me, are not made of fur. They're made of iron chain mail. Lists jeer at me, shout at me, and eventually scuttle off into hiding so I have to rewrite them. They spoil the view of my trackless wilderness by throwing up fences that I have to climb over. I approach a list like a mercenery soldier: it gets the job done, but I don't like using it, and I dispose of its services as soon as possible.

Maturity and motherhood have forced me into listing. At the beginning of this week, I sat down and wrote out five lists of what needed to be done by this weekend: cleaning, buying, packing, etc. Then I threw the notebook aside and called Darren to wail about my fate for a while. Sure, it keeps me on track. Or rather, the sheer weight of the combined tasks keeps me from darting off onto side trails. The only thing that keeps me slogging through is the sweet knowledge that I will get it all done, and then I can rip the lists into pieces and dance on the remains.

-- SJ

Tying Up Loose Ends

I was strolling through some old posts and came across one that struck a pang to my guilty conscience. It's very typical of both of Darren and me to get something off to a good start, mostly finish it, and leave the loose ends dangling. Loose ends don't look tidy, but if you live with them long enough, you get used to them.

In this case, it's the Scavenger Hunt we did almost a year ago. We fully intended to distribute small prizes to everyone mentioned. But my good idea for prizes didn't work out in the following couple of weeks, and then Life happened, and then... well, loose ends can take on even a decorative effect if you are accustomed enough to them.

But here it is Christmas, a time of goodwill and peace. Not to mention Advent, a time of penitence and conscience-clearing. So I figured it's as good a time as any to make good on old promises.

(Looking over the post again, I see that I actually anticipated myself: I promised prizes "within the 2007 calendar year." Knowing yourself is the first step to fulfillment.)

So Rose, Aaron, Ranee, QoC, Charlessa and Jesse, your prizes are forthcoming. Honest. If we don't get them to you in a reasonable time, I swear to read another Francine Rivers book and write an entirely positive and glowing review. Now you HAVE to know I'm serious.

-- SJ

Agile Linguist

It took me a while before I realized that Darren doesn't always answer my questions in a clear and straighforward manner. What he does say is in such a compliant tone, and with such reasonable words, that I'd go away happily thinking I had an answer, only to reflect later and realize I didn't have anything of the sort.

Since I've caught on, it's become a personal game to try to trap him into a self-incriminating answer. I don't know if I've ever succeeded. I'll say something loaded like,

"Don't you like the way your wife steals your socks because she hasn't done laundry so all hers are dirty?"

He'll reply genially,

"I'm glad they're useful to you."

I'll say,

"With gas prices so high, I guess it's a good thing I'm stuck at home with three kids most of the time."

He replies,

"It's nice that we have a second vehicle that's here if you need it."

The other day I'd set up our plastic "nursery fence" in the living room so I could take care of the laundry. (You know you have a one-year-old if you have to barricade yourself just to fold clothes.) While Darren played AoM with the kids, I sat in the fence and matched socks.

"Don't mind me!" I said loudly. "You keep your wife in a cage, but that's okay."

His immediate answer was, "I keep her in the cage only when I don't want her with me, which means she's out most of the time."

Recently while cuddling, Darren asked (I can't remember exactly how it came up)if he'd hear the ocean if he put his ear to mine. Indignant at the suggestion that there was nothing but air in my head, I replied, "No, you wouldn't! It's not empty in there!"

Smoothly, he extricated himself with, "Because it's full of compliments, of course."

-- SJ

Random Story About Preaching

Last Sunday I was asked to preach the sermon. It’s always a little hard for me to preach the first Sunday of Advent, because the focus is on the Second Coming of Christ, and I studied that so much during my teens and early twenties that I’m kind of burned out on it now. Which is probably why God has had me preach it the last three years running :)

But this time, I had fun with it. (If you click here to see the readings, the rest of the post will make more sense.) When I’m asked to preach, I usually preach on the Old Testament or the Psalm, and this time was no exception.

As I was preparing, I was feeling pretty good about the direction the sermon was going. It was a teaching sermon, based on the Church Fathers’ style of interpretation that each Scripture has 4 senses: literal, allegorical, moral, and mystic (anagogical). I was going to apply this to Isaiah 2:1-5, but because I wanted to make sure I applied the first two senses rightly (especially since we have several Dispensationalists in the congregation), I did some research.

One of the links I almost always use in sermon preparation is Blue Letter Bible. So I clicked on over and looked up to see what commentaries I could find on the Isaiah passage. And I ran across C.H. Spurgeon’s sermon on the same passage I was preaching from.

Talk about being blown away. The little sermon I was putting together suddenly seemed very small in my eyes.

So I did something I never do and read a very lengthy selection during part of my sermon. It worked out pretty well, although I certainly don’t plan to do it regularly.

--DJ

-------------
For those who are interested in the sermon, here is my outline.

The early Church Fathers often interpreted the Bible, especially the Old Testament, in four different ways.

Literal:
“In the latter days the mountain of the Lord’s house will be exalted.” Whenever you see a mountain in Scripture, it is linked to three things: covenant, worship, and law-giving.

Examples:
* Eden: covenant with Adam and Eve, worship with God face-to-face, first laws
* Noah: covenant, sacrifice, new laws
* Abraham: covenant, sacrifice (substitution)
* Sinai: worship (Moses and the elders), covenant, Ten Commandments
* Temple Mount: the high point of this theme in the Old Testament
* Calvary: the fulfillment of the mountain theme - a New Covenant, a sacrifice, and a new law – “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Note: There are also bad examples of this mountain theme.
* Babel: worship of false gods, rejection of covenant
* High places: worship of false gods, rejection of covenant, rejection of Commandments

The literal fulfillment of this prophecy began at the day of Pentecost in Acts. Peter’s speech specifically links this event to the last days.## (See note below).

Allegorical:
The Church is the Lord’s house.

The Church is the new Jerusalem, established on top of the mountains.

The very radical prophecy that “all nations” would flow into the Temple hitherto reserved for Jews was fulfilled in the new Temple, the Church. There is no longer a dividing wall; it has been torn down. Not just the wall between God and man, but between Jew and Gentile.

Because of this, we are encouraged to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for the unity and peace of the Church, that peace may come to the whole Church, and through us, to the world.

This exaltation is the “Already, but not yet” of God’s promise – the Lord’s house has been exalted, but it’s final exaltation is yet to come.

This peace is the promise of the angels’ song that we will celebrate in a few weeks – “Peace on earth, good will to men.”

Moral:
How do we live as citizens of the New Jerusalem?

* Love your neighbor as yourself
* Walk as in the day, not as if it were night
* Walk in celebration, not revelry – control, motive
* Walk in peace, not strife
* Walk as one looking for the Second Coming, when He is coming like a thief in the night

Anagogical (mystical):
Let’s go back to the beginning of the sermon, when we talked about mountains in Scripture. What is this (pointing to the altar)? It’s an altar. What is an altar? It is a small mountain, a place of covenant and worship.

It is where the sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, is re-presented each week

Come to Christ, remembering that He came once to die for you and will come again to set up the fullness of His Kingdom. Isaiah said it best, “O house of Jacob, come and let us walk In the light of the LORD.”

Finish with Spurgeon quote:
“The destiny of the church is universal monarchy. What Alexander fought for, what Caesar died to obtain, what Napoleon wasted an his life to achieve, that Christ shall have: the universal monarchy of the broad acres of the earth. ‘The sea is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.’ The whole earth shall come, and worship, and bow down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker; for every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

--DJ

## This was the part that I had to research, because I wanted to make sure I was correct in the interpretation. I found out that this passage was viewed by the early Church Fathers as one of the prime prophecies that had been fulfilled by the existence of the Church.

Now I Remember

There are four years between Stuart and Daphne. When I had just the two kids, and then when I had two kids and a baby, I looked back at my former self and wondered what my problem had been. Why didn't I ever fold laundry during the day? Why didn't I keep the kitchen floor swept? Why did so many of our things end up in pieces, scattered, and eventually broken? At least it was satisfying to see how much I'd improved in later years.

Now I have a one-year-old again. And now I remember.

I can't sweep the kitchen floor without Daphne hurrying in to take the broom from me or pick through the trash pile.

I can't fold laundry without Daphne crawling all over the piles, dragging out random pieces of clothes for me to put on her, or just savoring the moment by sitting in my lap.

In our living room, right now, there's a clementine, a cooling rack, and my blender pitcher. No sooner do I put something where it goes, than Daphne shows up with some other innocuous item and leaves it stranded far away from its home. Eventually I get tired of picking these things up. That's when they get broken and thrown away.

I'm remembering how hard it is to keep house with a one-year-old. And then I remember that when Stuart was one, Addie was only two and a half. I had two of them crawling on my laundry and picking through my trash pile. I had two of them scattering the printer paper and dragging bowls out of the cabinets.

So now I look back on those days and wonder, How did I get anything at all done? In retrospect, I'm pretty impressed with myself.

-- SJ

My First Manga In-Joke

It's Full Metal Baby!!

-- SJ

Friendly and Foreign

Hypothetically speaking, if you were a writing-literary sort of person who disliked both poetry and plays, and who didn't read the King James Version of the Bible because the archaic language filled up your head with no meaning, what would you Do about Shakespeare?

You'd check out Norrie Epstein's "The Friendly Shakespeare," giving you a conversant knowledge of most of the plays and the Elizabethan era, without actually having to read any of the actual text.

I first discovered TFS years ago. I remember lying in the grass on a warm Mississippi afternoon reading about star-crossed lovers and cross-dressers. My previous encounters with Shakespeare had been less than inspiring. Instead of rapturous sighs and murmurs over the beauty of his words, I was wont to screech, "Why doesn't he just GET TO THE POINT?!" Of course, as Epstein explains in her book, if Shakespeare just "got to the point," the plays would be impossibly trite and dull. This book, promised to be a painless (and not always glowing) introduction to the Bard, gave me a glimmering of why he is such a literary giant.

This Thanksgiving, I reread the book, and enjoyed it yet again. If I can dig up our Shakespeare collection, I'm going to take a stab at it again. (Not literally, I mean... which is definite progress.) What I really need to do is sit down with Darren and watch "Henry V" with him. Darren has agreed that we can stop it at any time and let me screech, "WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT?" (Darren is the person who, for one of his birthdays, invited friends over for a reading of "The Tempest.")

One word of interest: when one is an unmarried, virginal, good-courtship-girl, it is a very blushful experience to have Shakespeare's puns and wordplays explained.

In the same series, but by a different author, Natalie somebody, is "The Friendly Jane Austen." This book isn't as engaging as the Shakespeare one, but is good for a light read. The best, of course, is Austen quotes: she's terribly funny even after two hundred years, all the more impressive considering how quickly comedy goes stale. Of course, I didn't have to be convinced to love Jane Austen. I even found myself sighing -- yea, rapturously -- when I read that one of the women interveiwed owns not only a first edition of "Emma," but Jane Austen's autograph as well.

For a complete change of direction, Darren and I both have been introduced to manga, thanks to Darren's cousin Derrick. Manga is Japanese graphic novels -- more depth than comic books, but still escapist reading. We've finished two of the "FullMetal Alchemist" series. Despite some rather gruesome violence and some odd Japanese drawing conventions, the stories are lots of fun. It takes some initial adjustment: the manga books are printed in the Japanese format, which runs backwards to what we're used to. Occasionally I'll get disoriented and read the panels in entirely the wrong order. The story isn't exactly complex, however, so I easily readjust.

"Baby Doolittle" is over, so Daphne has joined me at the computer, so this blog post is done.

-- SJ

Photo Hodgepodge

No particular theme, no particular order, but hey, it's pictures!



Five-year-old Stuart, the Pajama Pirate, wearing his gift from his godparents.


A Daphne-sized rocker. She's pretty pleased, you think?


Angels and Pharoahs on Halloween. I cut down Stuart's headdress later so it was more manageable. Both costumes are homemade... you think?


Not that Addie is quirky or anything. The other kids just have more gravity.



Because I never get a showing in these pictoral tours. Addie took this picture, hence the artistic angle. I'm holding Yellow Chickie, Daphne's great love. And I look just like my mother "except wearing brighter clothes," Addie said. (My mother favors rust and browns.)


The good Daddy and the budding bookworm.

-- SJ

Cranial Entertainment

Note: I was not paid for this endorsement, but I should have been.

"No, Stuart. We already have one caribou. We don't need another one."

I actually said these words last week. My sister-in-law Jessica, who had called for gift ideas for Stuart, was a little surprised. She was further surprised when I directed her to the children's games (she was calling from a toy store) and said, "Find the Cranium games and choose one. Except Balloon Lagoon, Hullabaloo, Ziggity, and, of course, Cariboo." Didn't I want to specify which one? "Nope. They're all good."

We own or have played five Cranium games, not counting the original adult game, and they've all been hits. Jessica sent us Bumparena, and we've played it four or five times since yesterday. The games are marvels of design. They all have some sort of gimmick that the kids love, like balls or flipping doors or a musical timer. (Balloon Lagoon is so gimmicky that it rivals that Paragon of Gimmicks, Mousetrap.) However, the games are easy to set up (take that, Mousetrap!) and easy to put away. And the rules are simple: you can play a Cranium game within minutes of setting it up. The most amazing thing about these games, however, is that they're engaging enough for parents to play. Even without kids: Darren and I have a date to play Bumparena one evening after bedtime. (That sounds a lot racier than it actually it. The game consists of a tilted platform, plastic "bumpers" you can place at various points, and eight balls to navigate the course and end up in a goal at the bottom.)

Because of the multitude of pieces and parts, the games would be a disaster for the under-3 set. (We currently are missing one Cariboo ball -- out of six -- and the Cariboo "key," which I last spotted in the kitchen after Daphne got done with it.) But starting with age 4, they're perfect for a family game time. It helps fill up the years until the kids are old enough for Trivial Pursuit.

-- SJ

Five Years Old!

Five years ago, I was lying in bed and holding a little bundle that looked like a sausage roll with a head. Today, he's far too big for me to hold in bed (although, like an overgrown puppy, he doesn't realize that) and he looks like a grin with feet.

Stuart seeks out things to laugh about. That failing, he makes up his own funny sounds and stories. Currently, they're funny mostly to him and his invisible cloud of "friends," but that seems to be enough audience to satisfy him. He's still obsessed with Age of Mythology. He's discovered the wonderful possilibilities of the syllables "pee" and "poo." He loves company, loves stories, loves draping himself over us.

Addie is his best friend, Daphne is his biggest rival. (Both are thrillingly easy to annoy.) Daddy is still his hero above all heroes. And, for better or for worse, he's just like his Mama.

As everyone else celebrates Thanksgiving, we have the added pleasure of celebrating Stuart. He isn't as universally known, but he's good for a lot more laughs.

-- SJ

Books, Plays, and What I Think

Did you miss me? Our computer went in for an upgrade (not switching from dial-up, sorry, RLR). So I've been offline since Sunday night. Poor me. Poor Darren. Poor kids. Poor world in general. Stuart was languishing on the floor yesterday and said pathetically, "I wish we'd sent the computer for an upgrade EARLIER." But now we're back, getting our fixes of blogging, emails, and Age of Mythology. And the computer works nicely, too.

In the cold void during The Upgrade, I read:

1. A book that drove me crazy

2. A book that delighted me

3. A book that made me laugh when it wasn't intending to.

4. Two plays that artlessly express the male and female perspectives of life.

1. My friend Deidre is, I suppose, now educated in the perils of recommending a book for me to read. A word, Deidre: I'm glad to talk over the serious themes of the book, really. It was a retelling of the Biblical book of Hosea, so there's lots to talk over. (For those who aren't Biblical nerds so don't know All The Stories: God told the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, symbolic of His love toward wayward Israel. The prostitute, unfortunately named Gomer, ran back to her old life several times, but in an act of unconditional love, Hosea always went after her and brought her home again.)

So the theme of the book is great. It's just the setting and the characters that made me want to chew holes in the pages. 1850s mining town, golden-haired heroine (she was a prostitute, but OF COURSE was the most beautiful and most desired harlot in the whole town. Why couldn't she have been short, plump, and squinty?), and broad-shouldered, blue-eyed hero. And the author didn't name the heroine Gomer, either. Coward.

2. "Gilead" by somebody I don't remember. Darren's boss, Jim, recommended it to him, but I grabbed it first. It's a novel, but it reads like a real memoir. Rev. John Ames, an old man who knows he will die soon of a heart problem, is writing to his young son (he married late in life) to tell him everything a father would tell his son under normal circumstances. It's a deep book, slow-moving, but beautifully written. What starts out as a letter about antecedents and family history turns into an account of learning forgiveness late in life. I loved it.

3. "Signatures" by Dan O'Neill, a biography of John Michael Talbot. Talbot, a Franciscan monk and Christian singer, evidently has a long history in music circles: I didn't hear about him till I married Darren. His music is mellow and devotional. (Darren's brother and sister claim that Talbot has only one song that he plays over and over.) What about the book that makes Darren and me laugh is that the author simply cannot express his admiration of Talbot enough. He's cool, or he's a spiritual master, or he's wise, or he's suffered, or, well, he's just John Michael Talbot and let's sit at his feet and gaze upon him in wonder! We refer to it as the "St. John Michael book." It is written well enough that I'm still reading it. And still snickering.

4. The plays are originals, dictated by none other than Addie and Stuart. We're going to send them to my family in Mississippi, where Matt, Jessica, and Courtney are going to perform them for the family Christmas revue.

Addie's play involves unicorns, horses, and ponies. And one minotaur, who has one line: "Arrgh! Lots of nice meat!" (referring to the unicorns). They defeat the minotaurs by laughing at them and making them feel bad.

Stuart's play is much shorter -- one scene -- but full of action. In fact, it had no dialogue: I had to add it. His cast involves himself, a cyclops, seven phoenixes, two centaurs, and 70 lions. It has a "really funny part" where he's running around and runs into a gate and falls down. I can't wait to see the stage version.

-- SJ

Confessions

1. Everybody loves the "Little House" series. Addie's godmother, Dana, gave her the set for her last birthday, explaining that she (Dana) loved the series when she was Addie's age. Darren has been reading them aloud at night, now halfway through "Plum Creek."

My confession: I didn't like the books when I was younger, and with all due apologies to my "Little House" loving friends, I still don't like them. They don't inspire me with awe and excitement as I share with Lauran the hard pioneer life. They leave me wondering, "Why the heck did Pa drag his family away from the relative safety of the East for such a touch-and-go life on the prairie?!" A pioneer in spirit I am not.

2. One of the little joys of parenting is sitting with your children and reading aloud. One of the great joys of parenting is watching your child's love of books grow, as you read aloud to them.

My confession:I don't like reading aloud, not even cuddled on the couch with my children. I can't read very long without yawning through the words. I never read the same book more than twice through. But, what I do love to do is tell stories, whether of my childhood or something I've made up. I'm glad to tell the kids ABOUT a book. I also enjoy reading their history aloud because we can stop and talk about it. Meanwhile, Darren does the real reading aloud, and they don't seem to be suffering: now when we get in the van, even Daphne clamors for a book to read.


-- SJ

What's in a Name?

As always, these are real and verifiable names (if you read my hometown paper, mostly) given to real and verifiable kids (if you contact their therapists later in life):

* Brailie
* Rance
* Annalise

Wait, Annalise? That's not so bad.
No, wait, it's spelled ANALYSE.

* Kage

Just ponder that one. It's the same sound as Gage and Kaden, only shorter, snappier, and stupider.

The following, taken separately, are a bit precious but tolerable (with the possible exception of Braylyn). But together, in one family, definitely exceeds the recommended allowance of uniqueness:
* Jewel
* Braylyn
* Dylan
* Dylanie

And then there's the Case of the Missing Vowels:
* Aydn Khol

It isn't a good naming trend to go with clusters of consonants and let people fill in the vowels. The Hebrews did it, and you'll notice that after a while they stopped producing ANY top-1000 baby names.

-- SJ

Another Feast of All Saints

The Sixth Annual All Saints' Day party was last night.

The food was good.

The company was lively, the kids were uproarious, the singing was lovely, the game was fun.

And also there was good food.

This year, we asked everyone to bring a food related to the Bible. Or, rather, food "related" to the Bible. The tenuous associations made me glad that nobody among us makes a hobby of theology. One of the burdens of hosting is that we had to sample something of everything, but Darren and I valiantly rose to the challenge. It was very full-filling. Hahaha. (I can't believe I let that stand.)

We asked everyone to write out what they brought, and the justification for it. As follows:

Katie S.: "Bitter" herb bread.

Leah D.: A fruit tray. "Forbidden fruit: Eat at your own risk!"

Daniel and Rachel S.:
Bread with goat cheese "because David brought cheese and bread to the front lines of battle;
Ham: "Arise and eat!"

Jesse and Charlessa McConnell:
Deviled eggs: "The term 'deviled' first meant 'highly spiced' and was first used in 1786. Today, it has a more general term of something with spice. 'Deviled' relation to the Bible: obvious."
Puppy Chow (Chex cereal coated with peanut butter and chocolate): "Because even we gentile 'dogs' get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. Matthew 15:22-28."

* Stuart loved the puppy chow. He thought it was frosted shredded wheat cereal and wanted some for breakfast this morning.

Peter and Kelly S: Croissants, some with apple, and some with chicken: "Croissants were originally in a cross shape. They're cut into pinwheels in reference to the wheels in Ezekiel 1."

Peter and Julie L: Kung Pao chicken: "The Kings from the East brought some yummy Oriental food!"

Leah G: Little loaves of wheat bread and Goldfish snack crackers: "Seven loaves and a few small fishes"; grape jelly: "fruit of the vine" jelly.

Suzanne S:
Prodigal meatballs: "The prodigal son went from the pig sty to the fatted calf. These meatballs are made with pork and veal."
Famine cookies and pistachio nuts: "What Joseph's brothers took back to Egypt as a bribe to Joseph: "... take a little gift: a little balm and a little honey, some spices and myrrh, some pistachio nuts and almonds. -- from Genesis 43)."

Grace M: Death in the Pot Stew (our synopsis, as we lost Grace's card): "The school of the prophets gathered food for stew, and someone put in poisonous gourds. 'Man of God, there is death in the pot!' they wailed to Elisha. Elisha threw in meal and the stew was safe." Grace said she didn't have meal, but checked Betty Crocker, who said that cornstarch could be substituted.

Deidre and Jeremiah M.: Garlic Mashed Potatoes: "Okay, Deidre, what on earth does garlic mashed potatoes have to do with the Bible?" "Well, there was a day that God created vegetables, right?"

Darren and Sara: Beef stew: "Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of 'pottage.' It was probably lentils, but we feel sure that Jacob would have made beef stew if he'd thought of it."

Nina and Dana S.: Chocolate-covered Chinese noodles: "John the Baptist ate locust legs!"

* This appetizing dish was big hit with the under-10 crowd. Addie didn't want Nina to take them back home.
"I'll give your mom the recipe," Nina promised.
"But we don't have any pretzels!" Addie protested.
"Actually, it's called Chinese noodles."
"But we don't have any Chinese noodles!"
"You can get them at the store."
"The store with the kids' playroom, or the one without?"
"Either one."
"But the grocery store doesn't know anything about China!"

This year we did do something that we could back up straight from Scripture: we made tied fleece blankets. I'd already bought the fleece and cut a fringe all around. Throughout the night, people tied the fringes, so by the end of the party, we had two child-sized blankets ready to be donated to the local women's shelter. In the Bible, James says that "true religion" includes taking care of widows and orphans; and he further warns that it's no use to say to someone "be warm and well-fed" if you don't give him anything to warm or feed him. We hope a warm, bright blanket will make a couple of displaced children and their mother a little happier.

The first year we hosted an ASD party, the younger set included: Addie. This year, the children's contingent included: Addie, Stuart, Daphne, Mollie, Evan, Mary, Liam, Gracie, Cary, and Jeremiah. Talk about an increase in volume, in many senses of the word! Fortunately, Daniel S. made sure that our new playroom was completed in time for the party, so our Grown-Up Party was interrupted only occasionally by free-range children. All of whom seemed to enjoy themselves, judging from the noise.

It was, as usual, enormous fun. Our guests always get into the spirit of things, making this party an event we look forward to hosting all year.

-- SJ

Mundania 13

* I am completely out of ideas for blogging, which can't mean anything but a Mundania post.

* An appropriately-numbered Mundania post, considering tomorrow.

* It's a busy week for us low-key Joneses. We have something on every evening. (That's the way Darren phrases it, and my first response is always, "I'll probably have on clothes, although that's not a guarantee for some of the kids in the house.") We usually avoid having something planned for every night. That's what purgatory would be for us: "Welcome to the World In-Between! Let's see... oh, yes, both of you are assigned to the Type A room. They're repainting it right now, so just join right in. Afterward you're all going for a hike, after which you'll plan a seven-course formal dinner, while attending a soccer game, before returning to the room. At which point you'll be repainting it, of course."

* Speaking of painting a room, by the end of this week we should have two brand-new, freshly-painted rooms to use. And the best part is, we haven't had to do a single thing. We hired a friend to convert our garage into a playroom, a guest room, and a small storage room. Well, okay, we paid him for it, but we're always happier to pay for the work rather than do it ourselves.

* For zoning purposes, the guest room is actually a "storage room." Which it is -- they'll be mounting several shelves on the wall. Daniel, the builder, suggested that if we make the shelves just a little bigger, we could store guests on them.

* One of the Big Events of this week is Trick-or-Treating. This year, Stuart is a Pharoah, compliments of an easy no-sew guide from Family Fun magazine. Addie is an angel, sporting a large set of wings constructed from coat hangers and a white scarf. I love the idea of making costumes, but my zeal usually outstrips my ability. This year is a success, though.

* The other Big Event of the week is our Sixth Annual All Saints' Day Party. It's funny to remember that at our first one -- which was Darren's idea, sorry to spring THAT surprise on you -- I was very pregnant with Stuart. How time marches on!

* Probably I should feed my kids breakfast.

-- SJ

The Social Dynamics of Children

When we were looking for a new house 5 years ago, we were immediately attracted to the neighborhood because when we came to view the house that was for sale, there were kids playing everywhere. When we moved in 3 months later, we were delighted to find that right across the road was a family with a daughter the same age as Addie. She and Mollie have now become fast friends.

There is a little girl down the street (I'll call her River) who is also good friends with Mollie. I often look outside and see Mollie, Addie, and River playing together. However, Mollie is the glue. River rarely comes over to play with Addie. When the 3 of them are together, Mollie is the one who assigns roles, decides what games to play, and generally runs things (even though River is older).

It reminded me of growing up on Chestnut Hill, where Blake was the glue. Keith and Evan and I rarely played together if it was just the 3 of us, and I never played with Camille and Justin. But we would all get together at Blake's house, where he would assign us roles, instruct us in what games to play, and generally run things. Most of my summer days as a kid were spent over at Blake's house, where I'd stay after we went to 9:00 hour in the meeting room above the garage.

It's fun to see these dynamics play out from the perspective of an adult. I think that Addie plays the role of Keith - if she doesn't like how something is going, she'll just go off to do her own thing (although her leave-taking is far more dramatic than anything Keith would have done). Stuart, I'm afraid, tends to be more like me - if he doesn't like something, he will cry to try to get his own way. I was very bad about doing this as a child.

Blake, by the way, is now in seminary. I think he'll make a good pastor. And I still enjoy having someone else in charge, which is a major reason I'm a deacon, not a priest. Keith is off saving the world and raising 3 boys (a prospect that daunts me).

--DJ

Porcupines and Dead Horses

Darren got a new razor.

SMJ: "Will you shave your legs with your new razor?"
DAJ: "No. Mama does, not me."
AMJ: "Why does Mama shave her legs?"
Me: "M-E-N."
DAJ (more diplomatically): "Because Daddy likes it when Mama's legs are smooth."
AMJ: "But sometimes Mama's legs are echidna-like."

Echidnas are Australian porcupines.

***
Stuart engages in a form of conversation that Darren and I like to call "deceased equine brutality." He flays that dead horse. As follows:

Me to D: "Remember that time at the airport when that guy just sat in the pick-up lane and held up traffic for ten minutes? He wouldn't even go when somebody walked to his window and pointed it out. I was so mad I wanted to pop his tires. On second thought, that wouldn't have helped anything."

SMJ, coming in at the end of the conversation: "Pop whose tires?"
DAJ: "A man that Mama was talking about."
SMJ: "What was he doing?"
Me: (repeats entire story)
SMJ: "What tires?"
DAJ: (explains the use of tires on cars.)
SMJ: "Was he in a truck?"
Me: "Yes."
SMJ: "Oh. I thought he was just sitting on a post."
DAJ: "No, he was in his truck, and it wasn't moving, and it was causing problems."
SMJ: "What color was his truck?"
DandS: "Stuart! We are DONE with this conversation!"

-- SJ

Bless Your Pea-Pickin' Heart

I've been searching for post ideas for two days. I found a couple, but they got away before I wrote them down. It's not that I don't have anything to write about: but I was trying to come up with something that didn't involve the kids. Life has been good lately, but not terribly varied. Basically, I do Kids.

I'm also going through my old story files, and today inspiration struck: I'll just post one of my old stories! These stories have nothing to do with my kids, because when I wrote them, A&S&D didn't exist. For that matter, Sara Jones didn't even exist: I knew Darren, but we weren't courting yet. This story is one that I wrote for my newspaper column, Tales from the Creekbank, sometime in 1999. Here's a taste of the South for y'all.

"Bless Your Pea-Pickin' Heart"
In April, we start suspecting it. In May, we’re almost certain of it. By June, there’s no disputing it. Heat and humidity, cicadas and lightning bugs, rainstorms and yellow flies and magnolias, all in a world of a thousand shades of green – Summer has arrived.

When I was younger, I didn’t depend on the calendar to tell me when summer was underway. In fact, I always thought that whoever set the “official first day of summer” at June 20 or June 21 (I suspected it was a group of stuffy scientists who wore white coats and never went swimming in the creek) wasted a good portion of the summer. In my opinion, summer started the first day that we could go swimming. Summer was in full swing the first morning we got up to go pea-picking.

Some June morning practically at the break of dawn, a parent’s voice would ring through the house: “Y’all! Get up! We’ve got peas to pick, and we have to get out there before it gets too hot to work!”

An indistinct moan or two, and an overwhelming silence from the rest of the bedrooms, suggested that we didn’t care if it got too hot before we made it to the pea patch. That, in fact, we would prefer that it did get too hot, because then there would be no need to get out of bed in the first place. Merely because we were out of bed and leaving the house about a half an hour later does not mean we’d changed our minds.

We were a ragtag crew as we walked to the field those mornings. Old T-shirts, battered hats of all types, jeans with ragged cuffs – it didn’t matter what we wore. It was impossible to dress properly for a pea-picking session. Shorts kept you cool, and also left your legs to the mercy of briars and yellow flies (which, unfortunately, have no mercy). Jeans offered more protection, and halfway down the second row of peas, they became so saturated with dew that each leg weighed an extra half-pound. Skirts were impossible to manage. You often walked three bushes down, only to find that the hem of your skirt was lingering back at the first plant, apparently talking about what they had in common and exchanging phone numbers. Socks collected water and dirt, and we often finished our picking sessions with our shoes more full of water than feet.

The worst part of it all was that none of it was a good enough excuse to leave the pea patch. Nothing short of serious illness could exempt us from pea-picking, and even then we probably had to show signs of imminent death.

When we got to the field, our grandparents and uncle always were there ahead of us. They usually had picked two or three bushels already. Each. We each took a bucket, since Grandma and Grandpa always thoughtfully provided enough for everyone. I tried to decide whether it was better to get a smaller bucket, which would fill up more quickly, or a larger one, which would hold more peas at a time. I never could decide which was better, probably because no one else gave me time to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages. “Sara, just take a stupid bucket,” was usually their advice.

Then we would start picking. Rows and rows of tangled green vines stretched before us, the long green- and purple-hulled peas waving gleefully in the warm sun. “Good morning!” they would call with malicious cheer. “You have to pick all of us today or else we’ll all die!” Whoever doubts that peas can say anything, much less with malicious cheer, has never faced an unpicked pea patch at 7:00 on a June morning.

Step. Pick. Toss in bucket. Step. Pick. Toss in bucket. I would pull off all the peas I could see, then poke gingerly among the leaves for any I couldn’t see. Vines and briars tried to hold hands with me, while various bugs and flying things busied themselves around my head. I usually didn’t spend much time looking for the peas in the inner parts of the tangles. Besides the heat, the wet, the bugs, and the dirt, there was always the thrilling possibility that someone would find, in Uncle Will’s words, “things that go slither and chomp.” We didn’t often come across a snake, although being bitten at least would have been a good excuse to leave the field.

Once we’d filled our buckets, we’d trot back down to the edge of the field and empty the buckets into big galvanized washtubs. Then we’d set to work again, filling up the buckets once more. We had to work quickly, because the early-morning cool didn’t last very long. Many mornings were very warm, and many mornings were rainy. I know because we were usually present when the two coincided. The grownups would say, “If it thunders, we’ll have to quit until the storm passes.” Of course, it never thundered, and a mere rainstorm wasn’t a good excuse to leave the field.

When the sun grew too hot, usually around 10:00, we straggled out of the field, collected all the buckets, loaded the tubs of peas onto the truck, and headed home. Once there, we’d change clothes, perhaps take a shower, then take a chair on the back porch, relax, and... shell peas.

Shelling peas was as much of a job as picking them. We’d pull our chairs into groups, with a couple of buckets to collect the hulls. Everyone took a pan or bowl and grabbed a handful of peas to start. I never could decide if it was better to get a pan, which could hold more hulls, or a bowl, which made it look like you’d done a lot more than you had. But I never had much time to devote to the decision. “Here you go, Sam,” Grandpa would advise, handing me a bowl.

My brothers and sisters and I would get bored after a while – usually about the nineteenth pea. We amused ourselves by playing Twenty Questions, word games, or taking turns reading Trivial Pursuit cards to one another. At one time we had a Bible Trivia game, but then my siblings accused me of memorizing all the answers. They were just jealous, of course. Like Cain was of Abel on Bible Trivia Card Number 177.

Three or four bushels into the day, we would get tired of all our games and start throwing peas at each other. This amused us a lot, but it didn’t amuse the grown-ups, so we had to return to Twenty Questions.

After the peas were shelled, the grown-ups would blanch and cool them and then bag them for the freezer. The rest of us would sweep off the porch, empty the hull buckets, and, if we were fortunate, head for the creek.

Pea season seemed to last three and a half years – getting up early, slogging through dirt and bugs and vines, spending hours and hours shelling and sweeping. A person might ask why we would go through such an ordeal every summer, and then plant more peas so we had it to do again the next summer.

The person who asks that has never sat down to a table with Grandma’s biscuits, iced tea, and a great big bowl of steaming-hot fresh field peas. That’s when we decided it was all worth it.

-- SJ (or, to be more accurate, SR)

Just for the Record...

She is a girl:
After our learning co-op spent a morning making medieval clothes, Addie told me, "Mama, a boy wearing a sparkly silk cape told me that my hat was beautiful! He liked it. I told him thank you."

He is a boy:
After I finished telling them a serial adventure story, we went over the most exciting parts. Stuart's favorite part? "When Decci threw up all over that soldier! That was funny."

-- SJ

Happy Birthday to Darren!

And it's here, it's now, it's today: Happy birthday, Darren!

For today's post, we've interviewed a few passing children to ask what their take on today is. First we had to drag two of the children away from a Bobbsey Twins book, which Addie was reading to Stuart.

Q: Why is Daddy special?
AMJ: Because we love him.
SMJ: Because he's funny.
DMJ: Da! ["Because I am his daughter."]

Q: What does Daddy do that is fun?
AMJ: Comforts me when I'm lonely.
SMJ: Play Age of Mythology.
DMJ: Da! ["Reads me books, but always one time fewer than I actually want."]

Q: If Daddy could have anything he wanted, what would it be?
AMJ: *mentions a present that Daddy doesn't yet know about*
SMJ: *mentions another present that Daddy does know about, despite Mama's best efforts*
DMJ: Yahhh! Wahhh! ["I don't care what Daddy wants. I want the COMPUTER!"]

I love you, Darren! You're an easy person to live with and an easier person to love. It's also convenient that what you want most happens to be what we've already gotten for you. I've been blessed to know you for ten years out of the last thirty-four, and look forward to making up the lack.

-- SJ

Selection from the Irreverent Song Book 3

This praise song is not one I like, and it sticks in my head and annoys me:

Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord.
Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord.
And He
Shall lift
You up
Higher and higher!

And He
Shall lift
You up.

It really isn't my fault, then, that the following suggested itself after a few times of loading the kids in the van, when I always announce, "In you go! Buckle yourself!" Darren helped me develop the theme.

Buckle yourself in the seat of the Ford.
Buckle yourself in the seat of the Ford.
For we
Shall soon
Speed up
Faster and faster!

For we
Shall soon
Speed up.

-- SJ

Mundania 12

Always A Clean Inbox... Our email program has gone from crashing every six months or so, to crashing about three times a day. I have the installation CD, so can stay online, but have no backlog of emails to worry about. Also no address book, so I don't have to be bothered with keeping in touch with anyone, with is a wonderfully liberating thing for anyone who LIKES to be lonely. Perhaps a bit belatedly, it occurred to us to save the addresses that come in in a WordPerfect file (WP because I'm saving them -- I'm one of the last ten people in the world to use WP instead of Word). So I have most of the important addresses: "important" defined as, "anyone who wrote me in the last week."

Who Needs A Computer, Anyway?... Either me or Stuart; I'm not sure who suffered more. This past week, in addition to the email frolics, our entire computer froze up. Well, not really froze up. It just wouldn't respond. In fact, it was a whole lot like Stuart when he's playing Age of Mythology (yes, he plays it by himself now) and I'm trying to talk to him. For two whole days we couldn't use the computer. Instead, we played outside, we played card games, I wrote out a story I'm telling the kids in parts at night, and Stuart and I lived with the constant reminder that the heartbeat of our living room was silent. This morning, I sat down to look at the problem again. Within five minutes I realized: the left mouse button wasn't working. A good, firm whack got it back into commission, and now the computer gives us that blue glow of comfort again. I think the moral of the story is that we learned to live without electronic entertainment, but that's a dumb story.

"Look at our van! It's got a REALLY BAD DENT!"... Which it does NOT. It's the corner of the front fender, looking remarkably as if it got crunched against a raised concrete sidewalk during an ill-advised attempt to back into a parking space. Since this is the first injury of this kind that we've inflicted on our vehicles, though, A&S are entirely overimpressed with the damage.

In Case You Hadn't Noticed... It was a pretty fun week this week.

Princesses, Mermaids, and Unicorns: The Heart of Classical Music... Inspired, I admit, by a Baby Einstein video, I pulled out the remnants of my classical music collection to introduce A&S to it. Me teaching music appreciation is pretty funny stuff: I know hardly anything, really, about music. The only reason I ever listened to classical music was because I went through the "All Music Except Sacred or Classical Is Evil" phase. Although I became familiar with many pieces, I never really understood them. All I can do is make up stories. But, as it happens, that's just what six-year-olds and four-year-olds like to do.

We listened to "Carnival of the Animals: Aquarium" and enacted an exciting underwater scene involving mermaids, mer-warriors, and sharks. (At first it was just mermaids, but then Stuart came into the room.) Several selections of the music from "Carmen" hit high on the popularity charts with a story about a princess escaping from rebels into a hidden forest camp. (Yes, that one.) With the "William Tell Overture," I was determined not to cast horses in the main role. Addie took the question entirely out of my hands by introducing unicorns, and they galloped to the finale after all. Even Daphne clamored to be held and danced with, and meanwhile I got help getting two rooms cleaned.

Any more suggestions for story-friendly pieces?

-- SJ

Darren Answers Courtship Questions

1. What is the disinclination toward traditional "dating" even between Christian young people?

In my case, the disinclination to dating was based on two things. First, I didn’t feel like pursuing any sort of relationship until I was ready to get married. For me, this meant finishing up school, so I didn’t plan to do any dating until I was done with law school. Second, I’d seen too many friends do the “date and break up” thing in high school, where break ups were expected because everyone knew it wouldn’t end in marriage. Being a reasonably logical person, I couldn’t figure out the benefits of developing an intense emotional relationship with a girl that I knew I wasn’t going to marry. Note: this is slightly different from the standard conservative courtship view, which frowns on developing any emotional relationship with any girl except the one you know you’re going to marry. I don’t find that logical either, and anyone from our conservative homeschool background can tell you the horror stories of the disillusionment that occurs when a young person finds out that the person they’re courting is not the one they’re going to marry, even though they “followed the rules.”

I think part of the reason this was successful for me was that I’m simply not a big “people person.” I’m not one who needs many deep friendships to be happy in my life. Even now, I can count the number of deep friends I have on one hand, and still have fingers left over. Having a “courtship” mentality probably helped me to be more friendly with girls than I otherwise would have, because I wasn’t looking for some sort of dating relationship. Thus, several of my best friends when I was single were girls, but I always tried to take care that they knew there was no romantic interest from me.

2. Is there anything wrong with "heartache" in the learning/teaching process about love and potential marriage?

I would distinguish between avoidable and unavoidable heartache. I don’t see anything wrong with the unavoidable heartache that comes, for example, when a crush dissipates. Having had first-hand experience with this (and no, you’re not going to find out who!), there was no sin or wrong-doing involved; it’s just part of life.

But I do think there is something wrong with a mindset that gets involved in emotional relationships just for personal pleasure or gain. Dawn Eden’s book “The Thrill of the Chaste” deals with this pretty effectively. After all, one definition of sin is seeing another person as an object for my gratification or gain, rather than as a person created in God’s image. And sin always leads to heartache that could have been avoided.

This, of course, leaves a pretty big gray area in the middle, and in my opinion, that’s something to be worked out between God and the individual. Part of being a parent is to help the individual hear God on this matter, which will involve setting rules when the child is young (e.g., “No dating until you’re 17”), just as we set rules in any other area of life (e.g., “Pick up your room every night before bed.”) However, these rules become less relevant as the child grows older. If we’ve done our job as parents right, the child will be more likely to listen to God – but it’s still their decision. As David DuPlessis said, “God has no grandchildren.” Their relationship with Him is something we as parents have a big influence on, but in the end, their choices are their own responsibility.

3. Why do most parents take a much more active role as opposed to the way your folks did it, where they let you be adults and decide amongst yourselves? (I do understand the homeschool concept of girls living at home until marriage, but the courtship ritual, I would imagine, would be a perfect chance for the girl to "practice" (for lack of a better word) coming into her own as an adult and future wife in a household.)

Sara’s answer is right on: we have awesome parents. I’ve met and heard of a number of homeschool parents who have serious boundary and control issues. Thankfully, ours aren’t like that.

4. Are there rules (either stated or unstated) about kissing/holding hands before marriage during courtship?

Yes. I’ve heard of parents who set rules as specific as “You may first hold hands when you are engaged. You may kiss once when he proposes. You must not be anywhere alone, just the two of you, until you are engaged. You may not kiss until you are married.” Our parents didn’t set any such rules; they trusted us, because they knew us – and besides, we were older than a lot of courting homeschool couples than I know about. To me, there's a big difference between 18 and 26.

When I was in Bible School, one of the things that was drilled into me was that as men, we were responsible for the physical aspect of romance and courtship. We were responsible to see that we were pure and holy. It was discourteous and indeed sinful for men to push women for too much physical intimacy before marriage.
So, in our courtship, I was usually the one who set rules for myself, and then shared them with Sara so we could discuss and agree on them. I had made a commitment not to kiss until I’d gotten married, and we kept this one. Beyond that, there weren’t a lot of rules. You wouldn’t be interested in them, and even if you are, you’re not getting them :).

5. In very traditional courtship scenarios, how much control do the parents have versus how much their son or daughter has over the various decisions? What I mean is, do the children decide for themselves if they do, indeed, want to court the other? What about marriage? Do the kids once again have the final say as to whether or not they feel that the other will be a suitable spouse?

I’ve heard a number of stories where this was a serious issue. Mostly, the scenario is that kids like each other, ask parents’ permission to court, parents give it, kids fall head over heels in love, and then one set of parents “revokes consent.” In most of the cases I know about, the kids get married anyway. Sometimes the marriage works, sometimes it doesn’t. I have a difficult time exercising Christian charity to parents who would do that to their children.

6. Will the man once again ask the father's permission to marry the daughter as he asked permission to court her?

I’ve heard both. In my case, Miss Mary (Sara’s mom) and I had discussed back at the beginning of our courtship what expectations she had before I could ask Sara to marry me (have a job lined up, pass the Bar exam, and have a place to live). So I went ahead and asked Sara to marry me without asking Miss Mary again.

--DJ

Your Questions Answered

(Six of them, anyway)

Note: Extremely long post following, further transforming this otherwise eclectic blog into a one-stop-courtship-information site.

It used to be very important to me that people know that I Never Dated. That was before I realized that it’s not really that important to anybody else. I once tried explaining it to a Russian friend of mine, but she got it confused with courts of law and trials. Now the subject hardly comes up – it’s actually nice to fit in with normal society as much as possible – but I’m always interested in the discussion when it does.

In the comments section of the Part II post, Amanda obligingly asked lots of questions that I’m happy to answer. I love dispensing wisdom. Anyone else wanting to contribute is welcome to. Others of you had more parent-guided courtships and liked it just fine, and others had very good dating experiences. (And then there’s the sadly significant number of you who found that courtship didn’t deliver the promised happiness and light, and are still working through it.) The answers to these questions are based on my own impressions and opinions. I place great stock in my own impressions and opinions, but I’m willing to admit they might be limited.

Welcome to the blog, Amanda. Glad you've dropped in. Judging from your questions, you’ve encountered the typical Neo-Traditional Courtship crowd. That’s the perspective I come from. There’s all sorts of brands of courtship otherwise, although according to what I learned as I grew up, they’re all wrong.

1. What is the disinclination toward traditional "dating" even between Christian young people? The thing is, “courtship” and “dating” are small words that package a lot of specialized information. I’ll try to summarize what the courtship crowd hears when you use certain words. I agree with parts of these concepts, but an acquaintance with reality has softened, refined, and in some cases changed my views:

Dating: Relatively new phenomenon in history (new = bad); turns emotional and physical love into mere recreation; sets a pattern for divorce (if you have problems, you just “break up”); implies promises that you don’t keep. In light of the preceding, the logic goes, it’s safe to say that dating is unGodly, and that Christians especially should not engage in it.

Courtship: Traditional approach to marriage (old = good); allows both men and women to focus on God and what He has for them to do until it’s the right time for a relationship; allows a couple to get to know one another in a clearly-defined situation, so there’s no, “But I thought he was serious about me!”; keeps the girl safely under proper authority.

Authority: The Big Concept. If you don’t get this one, you don’t get courtship. A girl is under her father’s authority until she’s married, at which point she’s under her husband’s authority. The way we were taught it, it’s a daughter’s duty not only to obey her father, but to serve him and be guided by his convictions and preferences. (If he likes long hair, she wears her hair long. If he likes playing chess, she learns to play chess.) So naturally, her father plays a major role in the choice of a husband. If he doesn’t like the suitor...

If the girl goes against her father’s wishes, she takes herself out from under his authority and opens herself up to spiritual attacks and destruction. Not that this can be a fear tactic or anything.

2. Is there anything wrong with "heartache" in the learning/teaching process about love and potential marriage? It’s the ideal among the courtship crowd that a romance done right will preclude heartache. After all, courtship must guarantee that you can avoid all the catastrophes that result from dating. There have been many of my friends who look back on a disaster of a relationship and say, “But I don’t know why it happened like that. We did everything right.” One hardcore legalist, Jonathan Lindvall, claims that even courtship isn’t good enough because it doesn’t always “work”: young people occasionally still have to deal with failed relationships. He advocates “betrothal,” and that’s an entirely different world.

Also, in an even greater effort to avoid worldly sorrows, the really hardcore crowd has developed the idea that a single person (especially the girl) is to be not only physically pure, but “emotionally pure.” That means no crushes or attachments before marriage, even to a suitor. But since courtship is by definition a trial period, this idea forces the couple to subvert their attraction for each other until they’re safely engaged, which defeats the entire purpose of courtship. *Deep breath.* Not that I feel strongly on this subject.

3. Why do most parents take a much more active role as opposed to the way your folks did it, where they let you be adults and decide amongst yourselves? (I do understand the homeschool concept of girls living at home until marriage, but the courtship ritual, I would imagine, would be a perfect chance for the girl to "practice" (for lack of a better word) coming into her own as an adult and future wife in a household.)

See: Authority. Less frequently mentioned: control issues.

And you have to realize, our folks are practical, realistic, and -– no slight intended on anyone else’s parents -– five-star amazing. :)

4. Are there rules (either stated or unstated) about kissing/holding hands before marriage during courtship? There are rules about EVERYTHING.

5. In very traditional courtship scenarios, how much control do the parents have versus how much their son or daughter has over the various decisions? What I mean is, do the children decide for themselves if they do, indeed, want to court the other? What about marriage? Do the kids once again have the final say as to whether or not they feel that the other will be a suitable spouse? When you get to “very traditional courtship” you veer into the world of betrothal, which is a strange and unsettling world. Every situation varies. Generally if parents don’t let their children have the final say, those parents have control issues outside normal courtship boundaries.

6. Will the man once again ask the father's permission to marry the daughter as he asked permission to court her? I think so... Authority, after all. There was no father in my case, and it wasn’t like Mom didn’t warn me from the outset that Darren would ask me to marry him by the end of the year.

As I gradually realized, people have been falling in love and marrying for centuries before this new wave of regulated romance came through. It all depends on what your underlying motivation is. The rest is just decoration.

-– SJ

P.S. Darren said he wants to take a stab at these questions when he gets the chance. I'm pretty interested to know what he has to say, as it probably will prove useful in future parenting discussions. ("What do you mean, you 'prefer' Addie and Daphne wear only your favorite colors?!")

Seven Years

On Sunday, it will be seven years since Sara and I got married. At the risk of sounding incredibly mushy, it has been a wonderful seven years.

• We’ve lived in two different houses, each good in its own way. We love the house we’re in now, and are remodeling the garage to turn it into living space.
• We’ve owned five different vehicles, including a minivan that was given to us by a family going off to the mission field.
• We have discovered that while Darren hates mowing the lawn, Sara actually enjoys it.
• We have eaten lots of spaghetti with homemade sauce that beats store-bought stuff all hollow.
• We have discovered that stir-fry cooked by Darren will be sweet and have a thick sauce, while stir-fry cooked by Sara will usually have a vinegary tang to it.
• We have found that being married with children is a wonderful adventure. Oddly, given that neither of us particularly likes adventure, we’re still having a blast!

I love you, Sara!

--DJ

An Old-Fashioned Romance, Part III

We didn't waste a whole lot of time once we made things official. From the evening I received Darren's first letter to our wedding, a mere ten months passed. When we were in the middle of it, though, those weeks between courtship and engagement seemed to drag.

Read Part I here
Read Part II here

September 2000
“Hypothetically speaking, if I were to ask you to marry me and you were to accept, what would you hypothetically think about an autumn wedding?”

Unhypothetically speaking, I was already making wedding plans. Darren and I had spent three months getting to know one another much more personally, and then two months in a bona fide -- and highly enjoyable -- courtship. By the end of April, when Darren posed his hypothetical question, we were basically waiting for Darren to pass the bar exam and get a job before proceeding.

Our families were of the same opinion. About mid-May, things worked out for Darren, his parents, and his sister to visit us for a weekend. Everyone tried to pretend that nothing was certain yet. After all, we were not engaged, merely courting. Everyone tried very hard, but it didn’t work.

Darren’s mother, known to the McAdory/Roberts family as “Miss Bev,” wanted to get a picture of Darren and me wearing matching T-shirts. We tried several times, but her new digital camera wouldn’t cooperate. Meanwhile, Mom came in with a magnolia bloom to show our Yankee friends. We passed it around to admire it, and I ended up holding it just as Miss Bev declared that it was time for another picture attempt.

She caught sight of the magnolia in my hands and exclaimed, “Oh, yes, Sara, you hold that! It’s good practice for...”

It didn’t matter that she didn’t finish her sentence. We all knew what she was going to say anyway. She said weakly, “...for in case you ever want to hold a magnolia.” We laughed harder.

It wasn’t until that weekend that Darren and I admitted that things were very definite. After his mother talked to me about the wedding, and my mother talked to him about the wedding, and our mothers talked to each other about the wedding, Darren and I gave up. We talked about our wedding.

There was still a missing element in the relationship, however. The next day, Darren and his sister and I were going through some snapshots. “This is an awful picture of me,” I declared, holding up one of Darren and me. “But you look fine, Darren.”

“I was just going to remark that you look all right, but it’s a bad picture of me,” he answered.

Lindsay peered over my shoulder and decided, “It’s all right of both of you. It’s just that Sara looks a little ringless.”

Ringless I was. But I had no doubt that I’d get a proposal just as soon as Darren was in a position to offer me one. In fact, since I knew what was coming, there was no way he could surprise me, which sort of ruined my idea of a romantic proposal. Oh, well, can’t have everything according to our romantic little ideas, I told myself.

The courtship progressed, a little slowly. Finally, over Memorial Day weekend, Darren received official word that he had passed the California bar exam. One more hurdle overcome. “When I go up to visit in July,” I predicted to my friend Jessica, “he’ll propose to me.” I even had a good idea of where he would do it, also. Wonderful? Yes. Unexpected? No.

The morning of June 2, about three months after Darren and I began “going to,” I sat down at the computer as usual to e-mail Darren a good-morning note. Because we live so far apart and July was still a month away, I was particularly missing him. The e-mail was entitled “Personal Ad,” and ran along the lines of, “Small-town journalist and fledgling author seeking a 26-year-old, blue-eyed lawyer. Must have wonderful sense of humor, be very intelligent, very thoughtful, and a good friend. Apply by letter, phone, or in person. Preferably in person, along with a several free hours and an available porch swing.” I thought it was pretty funny, myself.

I also got a note from Lindsay, who said that she had asked Darren to take her into Washington, D.C. the next day (not a far drive from where they live in Virginia). I was envious that she would get to spend a whole day with him, while I just had an hour on the phone that night. The end of the e-mail made me feel better, though: “I look forward to having you in the family immensely. Though, of course, who am I to talk about such things till it is official?!” Who, indeed? Lindsay, I found out later, is a first-class sneak.

That evening, various members of my family and I were at our tea shop, eating supper and -- I noticed of my sisters -- not saying much to me about not helping clean up. I was playing with my niece Maegan and about to make myself useful when Lauren came into the back room.

“Sara,” she said in a puzzled tone, “there’s a guy here who says he’s answering... a personal ad?”

A personal ad? I thought as I followed Lauren to the front dining room. The only personal ad I’ve ever written is... Oh!... But he’s in Virginia... He took Lindsay to D.C. today... Surely not...!

And there, sitting with my brother Neil, he surely was. Amid a lot of laughter and a camera flash, I managed a flustered hello, and Darren calmly greeted me and handed me a lovely rose. Although I knew Rosemary and Darren had been conspiring something behind my back, this visit was completely unexpected. At least, it was until I remembered that he had passed the bar exam, elevating him to the status of a lawyer who could probably find a job pretty soon. All of a sudden the visit made complete sense. Nervously, I decided, “He’ll propose tomorrow sometime.”

That evening, after we’d visited with the family a while, Darren and I went out to sit on the front porch swing. We sat for some time, enjoying the summer evening. After a bit, he stood up with some paltry excuse like, “I have to stretch my legs.” I nodded and waited for him to sit back down beside me on the swing.

Instead, he knelt down in front of me.

Darren informed me later that I had a rather scared expression on my face. I looked very charming, he assured me, but didn’t help his nervousness any. I, meanwhile, was stunned by the realization that he was about to propose to me -- not tomorrow, but tonight! I didn’t have much time to ponder the moment, mind you. True to form, Darren condensed the matter into about three sentences and then paused for my answer.

I might mention that, prior to this unexpected little exchange, I’d taken off my glasses. I carry with me now a blurry impression of someone asking me to marry him. As I explained it to my niece Katie, I knew it was either Darren or Leo, and I didn’t think it was Leo -- Leo’s the dog -- so I answered, “Yes.”

He had asked and I had accepted -- we were engaged! Darren gave me my ring, which I held up in the light to inspect. “It’s not a diamond,” I exclaimed. Diamonds, I had just happened to mention a couple months before, are boring. My ring is a small ruby with three inset diamonds on either side. I admired it, very pleased, and he said that he’d bought it a couple of weeks before when he was out shopping with Lindsay.

“Lindsay!” I was suddenly reminded. “She said that you were taking her into D.C. today!”

Actually, as Lindsay herself pointed out when we called her the next day, she’d written that she had asked Darren to take her into D.C. And she had. The conversation transpired as: “Darren, will you take me into D.C. tomorrow?” “No.” “Okay.” Lindsay was very satisfied with herself for being so deceitful. “You didn’t suspect anything, did you?”

And, rather satisfied myself, I answered, “No. It was a complete surprise.”

As an answer to Darren’s hypothetical question back in April, our wedding will be at the end of September. After being married here, we’ll move to northern Virginia. Darren thinks it’s in the South, and I consider it practically North, so it’s a compromise.

In a little less than a year since he first wrote Mom, I will marry the man God chose for me: the man I said I’d never marry, who waited for me, courted me, and won me. It will be a beautiful ending to a lovely courtship, and an exciting beginning to a new life.

-- SJ

An Old-Fashioned Romance, Part II

In retrospect, this story probably looked reeeally odd to normal people. Why all the big fuss just to decide you're going to go out with somebody? But I was writing it partly as an antidote to the super-spiritual courtship stories we'd been steeped in, where everything was carefully scripted, supervised, and didn't look like a whole lot of fun.

Read Part I here.

An Old-Fashioned Romance
August 2000

It was my friend Debra who pointed out that I had to go out of the country to go on my first date. She was right, too. It wasn’t what I would have predicted, but, then, my entire life had taken an entirely unpredicted turn. In light of the fact that Darren Jones had asked to court me, what was so extraordinary about my going to Canada so he could take me out to eat?

Throughout the few weeks after Mom received and answered Darren’s letter, Darren persisted in thinking he wanted to marry me. He wasn’t certain, mind you; that’s where the courtship part came in. I, on the other hand, did not think I wanted to marry Darren. But I wasn’t completely certain about that myself. I had to know him better before I could honestly decide for or against him. That being where the courtship part came in.

Despite my firmly-entrenched idea of never accepting Darren, he managed to scale a few walls even at the start. He had decided two and a half years before that he would like to court me, but he completed law school first – he was patient. Throughout all that time, he didn’t try to “reserve” me by winning my affections, even though there was no guarantee that someone else wouldn’t come along first; he just concentrated on becoming good friends – he was honorable. I certainly put on no pretenses around him, since I didn’t think he noticed me all that much; and he didn’t change his mind about me – he was steady. I allowed myself to say that his behavior was “impressive.”

“‘Impressive’?” my friend Jenna exclaimed. “Sara! You mean noble!” Well, yes, that is what I meant, but I’d perish before admitting it.

After daily e-mails to and from Darren, long conversations with my mother, careful consideration of what I wanted in a husband and whether Darren had those qualities, and above all faith that God wasn’t going to let me blunder into something I’d regret, I finally came to a decision in early December: Yes, I would visit Darren and his family for a week.

Heavens, no, I hadn’t decided to accept his offer of courtship! Not after less than a month – I hardly knew him. No, I arranged to visit him for a week, and he arranged to visit me a for a week later on. After that I’d decide about courtship.

The first week in January, I flew to Nova Scotia, where Darren was at his parents’ home studying for the bar exam. His parents – Mr. Phil and Miss Bev, to be Southern about it – spent the week welcoming me warmly, hosting me cheerfully, and spoiling me shamefully. I fell in love with his parents long before I got around to Darren himself. But Darren didn’t fare too badly, either. He was good enough to keep things easy and friendly, and treated me to amusement parks and movies and an Italian dinner. He bought me a necklace and gave me chocolate-covered cherries. “All right,” I wrote in my journal. “I’m charmed.”

I returned home in rather a glow. My mindset had changed from, “Do I really want to keep him?” to “Do I really want to risk losing him?”

His visit was scheduled for the end of February. By this time, several of our mutual “Virginia friends” knew what was in the air, and they were waiting impatiently for us to stop playing this coy little game of “we’re not courting yet.” Some took the non-pressuring approach, such as Miss Geni: “I won’t try to persuade you. The Holy Spirit does a much better job than I could.” Others took the reasoning approach, a la Mary Rose: “He’s older than you, taller than you, and richer than you. What other considerations could there possibly be?” And then there was the Committee for the Success of Darren, Jenna Pocoroba presiding: “He’s wonderful! He’s marvelous! He’s such a gentleman! We’ve agreed that other guys ought to take lessons from him.”

I asked Darren, “What did you do, bribe all my friends to say good things about you?”

His visit here was as enjoyable as mine up in Nova Scotia. The difference was that while I went up to visit a family, Darren came down to meet a community. There were so many friends who wanted to meet him that we had a gathering at our house the day after he got in – Darren and I referred to it as “The Exhibition.” When he drove me to work that Tuesday morning, the George County Times crew was on hand to meet this upstart Yankee who seemed intent on stealing away a good Southern girl. In fact, he was cordially abducted by Buddy and Barney, Inc. to eat breakfast at Tommy’s Restaurant. Tommy’s generally fries everything, but apparently Darren got grilled. “Oh, well,” I said fatalistically. “If he makes it through that, he’s got good stuff in him.”

He made it through – possibly to the disappointment of some devoted Southerners who would have liked to make this Yankee break and run – and we finished out a grand visit together. Before he left that Saturday, we made it official: Darren and I were courting. (Since “courting” is a term that’s only recently come back into use, it’s hard to know how to refer to it. As my friend Josh pointed out, people who date say they’re “going out” or “going with” someone. He suggested that courting couples say they’re “going to” – as in, “going to get married.” It hasn’t caught on yet.)

Darren’s battle was half-won: I’d consented to courtship. His next campaign was a concentrated effort to make me fall in love with him. By the way, I highly recommend finding a guy who wants you to fall in love with him. He puts a great deal into it, and if he happens to be the wonderful type (three guesses as to who my measure of “wonderful” is), a girl finds it a pleasure to be won over. Courtship, we both discovered, was just plain fun.

And that’s not all of the story.

-- SJ

Read Part III here.

Thank God for Friends

Between work, church, and various homeowner association issues, my life has been very stressful for the last week. I've gone to bed dreading the next day, which is unusual for me.

So today I called my brother Evan, and he prayed for me. And then my legal assistant folded a huge stack of letters, and Peter S stuffed them in envelopes. And my life is much better now.

Friends are good. I am thankful for them, especially in stressful times.

--DJ

P.S. Thanks to another friend, Julie, who encourages the starting of sentences with "And" or "But," and whose writing makes for a good break when I'm tired of stress.

Quick Update - Postcards

As promised, here is the finished wall of postcards. We all love it! Thanks to everyone who sent postcards - we have enough that we'll be able to rotate cards and keep the display fresh.

--DJ

A New Adventure

One of the great things about being a father is that I get to introduce my kids to things that I enjoy.

When I was seven, one of our neighbors taught us a little bit of karate (thanks, Uncle Kenny!). As a legal assistant 15 years later, I took tae kwan do at a local studio in Purcellville and had a blast, especially sparring.

Now I'm starting over, with Addie and Stuart, at a studio just 5 minutes from our house. It's a lot of fun, and both kids are doing well at it.

But one of the best things about it is that now Sara and I aren't the only ones telling the kids, "Stand still!"

--DJ



P.S. Yes, Addie is holding a book. It's for reading out in the car. Isn't that what everyone does in the car?

An Old-Fashioned Romance, Part I

In honor of our approaching anniversary, I'm posting the three-part courtship story that ran in my hometown newspaper. Not everyone gets to print her courtship story for the entire county to enjoy, but I worked at the paper. Besides, I'd been running Tales from the Creekbank stories for two years. (The same stories were posted on Crosswalk.com shortly afterward.) It's familiar to many of you, but a good story always bears repeating. Especially one I had such fun writing in the first place.

An Old-Fashioned Romance
Part I
August 2000

Back in November, Mom got a letter.

I saw it first, late at night after a long day at our tea shop. Sorting through the day’s mail before handing it to Mom, I flipped past a couple of bills, a packet of mail-order “unique and distinctive gifts,” then paused in surprise at a plain, cream-colored envelope. The name on the return-address label gave me a jolt – then realization set in. Although it was addressed to Mrs. Mary McAdory, I knew that it actually concerned Miss Sara Roberts. My thoughts were thrown topsy-turvy: “Surely not this, not yet!” And then, “Surely not him!”

Three years ago, I went to northern Virginia as an intern for Home School Legal Defense Association. Six months in the legal field seemed long enough for me to find out if I really was as interested in law as I thought. As it happened, a mere two weeks was sufficient: I wasn’t that interested. I spent the remaining five and a half months simply enjoying the experience. It wasn’t hard to do, what with my four fellow interns (all of us girls) and the wonderful HSLDA people -- including several eligible and interesting young men.

One of which, I might add, was not Darren Jones.

Actually, Darren wasn’t married, so I guess he was eligible. And he might have been interesting, but none of us saw him often enough to know. While the other guys dropped in for frequent visits – usually around mealtime – Darren spent his spare time closeted in his room, studying law. The only time we were around him for any length of time was in our Constitutional Law class: it took all five of us interns to keep him to answering our instructor’s questions first. I knew him better than the other intern girls did because Darren and I attended a Saturday night Game Night at a couple’s house. We had pleasant chats about books and music, and I yelled at him when he beat me in a game (which means that I did a lot of yelling at him). But by and large, we didn’t have much to do with one another. I left Virginia in June of 1997.

* * *
(That means “Two years later”)

Most correspondence with my Virginia friends had trailed off into occasional notes saying, “Sorry I haven’t written. I’m coming up to visit this summer –- we’ll have to get together!” In fact, it eventually came about that my only regular correspondent was Darren Jones. Our e-mails had begun as infrequent, very general notes, which I answered only because he wrote. When a girl suspects a guy of being interested in her, and has already eliminated him as a possibility, she isn’t particularly eager to build a relationship with him.

However, it appeared that he wasn’t particularly eager to build a relationship, either. His e-mails remained friendly, very entertaining, and utterly above suspicion. Two years in a row, he attended the state homeschool conference in Jackson to run HSLDA’s book table, and two years in a row I returned to Virginia to visit. All four times we saw a little of each other, everything comfortable and casual. Gradually, his pleasant and detached conduct convinced me that his regard for me was merely friendly. When I knew he was “safe,” we became rather good friends.

Yes, I hear those snickers. I heard them for two years, as my friends and even my mother insisted that Darren’s friendliness went much deeper than appearances. But it was very important to me that we be “only friends.” Any sort of romance was serious business. When I was about sixteen, I concluded that God didn’t want me to date merely for the pleasure of a temporary romance. At the same time, I saw that dating relationships very often end in heartache and bitterness. Instead, I chose to wait until God brought me someone who had marriage in mind. Furthermore, this someone had to be at a point in life where he could support a wife. And finally, he had to be the one to approach first. I didn’t want to date – I wanted to be courted. A bit idealistic, maybe, but that was what I had decided and that’s what I’d stick to.

I knew that Darren, like many of the guys I was friends with, didn’t dabble in casual romance any more than I did. Most of us upheld the idea of “courtship.” Although it varied from person to person, it generally meant that if a guy approached a girl to say he was interested, marriage was his intention. I certainly wasn’t going to welcome any such approach from Darren – among other sterling reasons, he was pretty much the opposite of what I expected my husband to look like. And I wasn’t going to be persuaded otherwise, either, much to my friends’ frustration.

“But, Sara,” my friend Jenna wailed during one of our recurring arguments last year, “Why won’t you consider him? I think Darren’s wonderful!”

“Great!” I replied. “Then you marry him.”

He was nearly finished with law school, and really was the only guy I knew who was close to being established and able to marry. I liked his e-mails and his company very much, which made me all the more determined to dismiss him. I even wrote in my journal, November 18, 1998: “I still am not interested in giving up my singleness, and certainly not by means of Darren Jones.” That’s in ink.

Last summer, I was twenty-two years old, fairly happy at home but becoming a tad restless, liking being single but wishing for a little romance. My prospects were nil. I knew a lot of guys, but none of them were in any position to begin a courtship, and besides, no one showed any especial interest in me anyway. It was starting to get just a little irksome. As my friend Dana once put it, “I don’t want swains, exactly, but an admirer or two would be nice.” In fact, I visited Dana in Oregon that summer, and we talked at great length about courtship and romance and the sort of fellows we’d marry – but it was all hypothetical because neither of us knew of anyone who wanted to court us.

When I got back from that visit this past September, life in general picked up pace. Our tea shop was gearing up for Christmas. School had started, so the newspaper had more material than we could print in a week. Darren sent around word that he had finally finished four and a half years of law school, and after his November graduation would be preparing for the California Bar exam. My former housemate Marti wrote to say that she was engaged. I managed to send Marti a best-wishes note, but never did get a congratulatory e-mail sent off to Darren. I felt a little bad, but didn’t really think he would notice.

It was a bolt out of the blue that evening in November – all right, November 12; I happen to remember the date – when I sorted through the mail and found that innocuous-looking envelope addressed to my mother. Return address: Darren A. Jones. Two and a half years of buried suspicions immediately scrambled to the surface. Surely it wasn’t... Surely not Darren...

The letter was direct and minced no words.

“Dear Mrs. McAdory,” it began, “I would like permission to court your daughter Sara.”

That’s just the beginning of the story.

-- SJ

Read Part II

Read Part III