In a lot of ways our culture defines us. It’s there in almost everything we do, say, and think. And we don’t even realize it until we’re confronted with another culture. Of course, it’s so ingrained in us, and so far from our level of conscious thought that we cling to it. And we view it as good, as opposed to all other cultural ideas being bad.

My culture tells me that productivity is king. That it’s more important to be on time for an appointment than it is to spend unplanned time cultivating a friendship. My culture tells me that it’s not ok to ask a woman her age or ask a friend what their house cost - or their car, or stereo, or anything else for that matter. It tells me that individuality is of utmost importance, and asking anyone to conform to my way of doing things is just not right. And it tells me that self-reliance, independence, and work ethic make me who I am.

My in-laws’ culture is different. It has opposite ideas to some of my cultural notions - like it’s more important to finish a conversation and put work into relationships than it is to run for the phone when it rings. It tells them that family ties and having people to count on brings more value than individualism or self-reliance. Their culture says that friends can share anything - even the cost of homes, valuables, or anything else important enough to spend money on.

Some of their ideas seem antiquated to me. Like their insistence that feet must be kept toasty warm at all times. Or that colds come from drafts, or sitting on a cold floor will bring infertility. But those ideas have their equals in my train of thought. I knock on wood. I kiss my fingers and touch them to the top of the car when I go through a yellow light. I can’t understand why a person would subject themselves to eating buckwheat - if not forced to under duress of extreme torture.

But the important thing for me to remember (and for them, too), is that culture brings a wonderful tapestry of different ideas. They’re not wrong or right. They’re not good or bad. They’re just different, and there’s nothing wrong with different. It’s hard to pull culture out our way of thinking and look at things objectively. It’s hard to compartmentalize when our cultural ideas are so much a part of our subconscious. It takes time and adjustment. And patience and understanding. And very widely open lines of communication.

Now, if only I could get my in-laws to believe that a grandparent’s biggest duty is to get up with the kids at night… Well, that and change dirty diapers… And maybe even potty train my now 2-year old.

Today Little Man’s preschool class had their Christmas party. We kind of missed the boat on sign-ups for what to bring, so I got stuck with a kids’ dessert. The plan was to buy a cute little pull-apart cupcake thing from the grocery store, until I found that it would cost me an arm and a leg. So then, I found an idea online for this:

It came out really well - tasted great and looked gorgeous. In fact, I only used as many cupcakes as there were kids in the class. In my experience, the most successful ‘kids’ dessert’ is cupcakes, and adults tend to stay away from them. But apparently mine were different - parents devoured them before even offering them to their kids. They were just that good. It wasn’t difficult - just cupcakes in the shape of a candy cane with M&Ms forming the stripes.

It was a big hit, but at one point I did hear another mom commenting, “sure, you can do things like that when it’s your only child. But those of us with more than one - heh! - we just buy our cakes at the supermarket. (rolling of the eyes) Must be a first time mom. She’ll learn one day that she doesn’t have to overdo it…” That was the point where I walked away and stopped listening. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I have 2 kids and I’m in my 2nd trimester with our 3rd. Or that I’ve spent the last 2 1/2 months carting my kids from doctor to doctor, wondering if they’d just let me rent space at the doctor’s office - it’d probably be cheaper than the co-pays, and at least I wouldn’t waste so much time driving and sitting in waiting rooms. Or that I used the $24 I saved on this particular cake to buy enough food for at least 3 full meals for the 6 adults currently living in my house. And frankly, it’s because we’re on baby #3 with 6 adults living in the house that I can’t afford to pick up cakes for all the kids’ parties at the grocery store. If I had, it’d have cost me over $100 just this month. And I certainly have better things to do with that money.

So, snooty mom of more than one, I thoroughly enjoyed baking the cupcakes with my older daughter’s help. We had fun sitting together and licking the beaters. I had even more fun setting up the candy cane and decorating it. And it was all worth the extra time (and saved cash) when Little Man saw (and tasted) the finished product. It was even better because my (very large extended) family got to eat some of the extra cupcakes after dinner last night - right after my kids ‘decorated’ them together.

Note: The instructions for this cake and many other Christmas goodies can be found at Bright Ideas.

I think it’s the curse of being female. I’m sure guys struggle with it too and need to be taught similar lessons, but our daughters need to be taught about their value. They need to know that their value doesn’t lie in how much they weigh, or how well they can please everyone around them. It doesn’t lie in how well they clean their rooms or whether or not they color inside the lines. Or how much or how little other girls gossip about them. Or if a bully picks on them.

And I’ve always wondered how to give girls that confidence. I found the answer - or at least a strong lesson to teach - over at 4 Reluctant Entertainers. She used this lesson with a group of early teenage girls (or maybe preteens?). She offered them a $10 bill. Then she wadded it up, tossed it on the floor, stepped on it, threw it around the room a bit. When she picks it up again and straightens it out, has the value changed? No. It’s still worth $10. Nothing has changed. Then she had the girls imagine themselves as the money. And she told them, others are leaving you out; bullying you; snickering at you; gossiping about you; spreading rumors. Did your value change? No. It’s still the same. Our value is the same because of the One who created us in His own image. Because of His love.

What an important lesson to learn! I wish someone had taught me that at a young age.  If you have girls, or if you have any influence over girls, head over and read it. It’s a pretty awesome lesson, for girls of any age to learn.

If you’ve been reading this, then you know I’ve been struggling with a dilemma about whether or not to serve in the church nursery. Well God is just so good.

I came clean with the person in charge of volunteers. I told her that I’m burned out from the difficulties of serving in the new walkers room this year. But that I truly want to submit to the authority of the church and take responsibility for the children of the covenant. So you know what she did for me? She put me on one month on, one month off rotation - serving at the concierge desk! I’m a greeter between services! I get to help new people figure out what room to go to, and then I can attend the church service!

It pays to be honest. Dilemma solved!

In all the time I’ve been blogging, I haven’t written a single post about Moldova, the country where I spent 3 years as an English teacher, missionary, friend, church member, and wife. I met my husband there. I learned more about life and who I am in those 3 years than I did in 5 years of college and grad school. I started my professional career there. I made some of my closest friends. My in-laws are still there. Cousins, friends, and oodles of people I care deeply about.

A post over at Untangling Tales brought me out of the closet. In her Tuesday Tales she wrote a Belorussian folk tale about a prince’s love for a common girl. After writing it she was talking about it with someone who insisted on calling it “Russian,” and then said that Amy was being pedantic for insisting on it being Belorussian. (My thought: the person using the word pedantic is much more pedantic than the person insisting that a country independent for 15+ years is, in fact, distinct from its former colonial oppressor.)

With the connections I have to Moldova, and with a husband who was born and raised there, it’s infuriating when people refuse to acknowledge that Moldova is different from Russia. Let’s see. The national language is Romanian (de fapt este “limba noastra”, dar cu parere de rau asta este prea complicata pentru americanii care de obicei citesc blog-ul acesta), which is a romance language (like Spanish, Italian, French) - not Slavic. Moldova does not border Russia. Formerly it was a part of Romania. Romania is not slavic, nor is it Russian. So just because Moldova was a part of the Soviet Union (and not by choice either), people insist on calling it Russia?

Let’s get a few things straight. The Soviet Union was not Russian. The Soviet Union was a collection of 15 republics (formerly independent nations), one of which being Russia, consolidated under a single constitution and governing body. Those 15 republics (all of which are now independent nations - again) were: Belarus, Ukraine (which should not be called”The Ukraine”), Russia, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Soviet Union imposed both Communism and the Russian language on the countries (republics) it controlled, and did everything it could to mix up and confuse the very distinct nationalities, cultures, and heritages - all the while creating legislation and policies that pretended to protect those very same entities.

With that straightened out, let’s get to the source of my frustration. Here’s how a typical conversation goes these days: “So, is your family still in Russia?” “No. They never were. They’re in Moldova - it doesn’t even border Russia. Different country.” “Oh, and do you ever go back to Russia to visit them?” “Well, we go to Moldova to visit them, since we wouldn’t see them in Russia - it’s a different country.” “Oh. So is it a long flight to Russia?” “Well I suppose it would be. But we don’t fly there. We fly to Moldova.” “Oh, and Moldovia is, what, like a state in Russia?” You get it. Right? You’re smart enough to see what’s happening. You can see why it’s infuriating. Add to the frustration that Russia was the fear-inspiring oppressor (really the Soviet Union was, but the power of the Soviet Union was within the Russian Republic and the Russian ethnicity was staunchly protected), and since independence Russia has not ceased its meddling in Moldovan affairs.

Also let me note that we have many, many friends who are Russians. From Russia. Who speak Russian. They are dear friends and wonderful people. We hold nothing against them, seeing as how they were not the ones causing problems in Moldova. They were subject to the same oppressive regime Moldovans or Belorussians or Tajiks were. They just happened to be born in the most powerful of the republics. We won’t hold it against them.

I believe that the stubborn insistence on calling everything east of the Iron Curtain “Russia” comes from two things: stereotypes and lack of interest. There’s a stereotype that anything east of, say, Germany (or any part of Europe that’s not a major tourist destination) is communist. They’re the enemy and they probably have missiles pointed at us. They despise freedom, drink vodka, and don’t have heat in the winter. (In case you’re wondering, that isn’t any more true than the uninformed stereotype that everyone in Africa is a cannibal.) It’s that typical “them” and “us” distinction that gets us into trouble, especially when combine with the next problem.

The second issue is a lack of interest. Surprisingly though, even people we consider to be friends (or sometimes even family) have a shocking lack of interest. Every day we (we meaning all of us, as part of the human race) make a conscious choice about what information we’ll internalize. We prioritize informational input and choose what’s important enough to keep, and what’s superfluous. Unfortunately, the independence of our former cold-war enemy often falls under the category of superfluous information. And therefore, no matter how often we correct someone that Moldova (or Belarus or Georgia, or any other independent nation, including Bosnia, Slovakia, etc.) is independent, working for democracy (nu vreau sa le spun ca moldovenii au ales un partid comunist in alegeri democratice). It’s easier for people to stick with their uninformed stereotypes (and, in fact, the geopolitical information they learned in grade school) than it is to keep up with current events in a region they believe to have no direct impact on them. There’s a reluctance to accept change, and that translates over time to stubbornness and ignorance about the rest of the world.

The fact is that as time goes on the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place because of technology and the very same people who put information about the rest of the world in “superfluous information” category will be the same people who are left behind as the world moves forward. So why should I be concerned? They’re the ones who will be made ’superfluous’ in their careers, they’re the ones who will be forced to catch up or get out of the race. And I won’t let them bother me. But I will continue - daily - to correct their misassumptions and biases.

So here’s my challenge to you. When you get dressed tomorrow morning, look on the tag of your clothes and see where they were made. It might say China, or it might name some country you’ve never heard of. Whatever it is, google it. Find it on a map. And learn at least 3 things about that country. Keep up with where the world is going. When you flip through your newspaper, don’t chunk the “world” section because it has nothing to do with you (the “world” section consisting of no more than Afghanistan and Iraq is the topic of another rant, another day).

Thanks for bringing this up Amy. Maybe one day soon I’ll come even further out of the closet and share some of my experiences from Moldova, and introduce you all (all 4 of you) to a country you might otherwise know very little about.

Please remember to pray for a soldier this weekend. Without getting all political on you, I just have to say that we - here in the US - sleep soundly at night without fear of attack because soldiers are standing guard in countries around the world. They make enormous sacrifices - time with their family, holidays away from home, rotten pay, loss of life and limb - to protect us.

And to brag for a brief moment, check out this article to see what a great job our soldiers (my brother is mentioned in this article, but I’m not biased, really!) are doing in Afghanistan catching the top ranking leadership of the Taliban. We’ll never know the details of it, but our men and women in uniform have done a fantastic job of stopping terrorist plots in time and removing key members of terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. What they’re doing there is largely forgotten, so please take a moment this weekend and pray for them.

I was at a parenting seminar on discipline, and I promised to share some of what I learned there. I’ll write up a post soon about some of the great ideas I came away with for creative discipline, but in the meantime I’ve had this on my mind. It’s been about a week, so I’ve had some time to process it. One of the major topics was ’self esteem.’ Not so much how to build self esteem, but simply the fact that we’ve been deluded into thinking that good parenting means building self esteem in children, and worse - that self esteem is built by positive talk. Self esteem isn’t what makes a child happy and successful. It doesn’t build them into good adults and contributing citizens. Great self esteem builds egotists and people who think too highly of themselves. It gives a skewed sense of reality. What we should focus on - according to the seminar - is building Responsibility, Respect, and Resourcefulness. And that’s a very different issue.

I think one of the things that bothers me about a lot of schools today is the awards they give and the attitude that everyone is a winner. You can get trophies in some places for good attendance. Not perfect attendance, but just ‘good’ attendance. A trophy. And honestly, I don’t know that positive self esteem is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should teach our children to think poorly of themselves, but guiding their thought processes simply to think highly of themselves seems misguided. I think we should look to a couple of things related to self esteem - confidence and self-understanding.

Miriam-Webster defines confidence this way:

1 a : a feeling or consciousness of one’s powers or of reliance on one’s circumstances b : faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way.

Too frequently we try to give our children confidence by telling them how good they are or how well they performed. I, on the other hand, have a great deal of confidence but I was raised by parents who didn’t hesitate to point out my faults, and rarely spoke very positively of me. They built confidence in me by giving me difficult, yet manageable tasks to perform. And letting me fail and then figure it out. For example, when I was 6 I wanted a milkshake from whatever fast-food joint we were in. Now, you have to understand, I was a very short 6-year old. So my mom sent me with a dollar bill up to the counter. People nearly trampled me. I wasn’t assertive. I couldn’t see over the counter. No one realized I was in line. So I stood there for ages as adults pushed their way in front of me. Finally, I stood up for myself, went up to the counter, raised my hand to get the attention of the cashier, and barely able to see her peering down at me, I ordered my shake and paid for it. That built more confidence than any words could have.

Telling your kids they’re good at everything does nothing for them, long-term. It’s more important to help them know themselves - their strengths and weaknesses. I’m not proposing that you tell your kids all their faults. But at least help them to understand who they are. For instance, is there anything wrong with pointing out to a grade-schooler that he shows great compassion, but really needs to learn how to forgive others?  Or that he learns better with his eyes than his ears (visual as opposed to auditory)? I think one of the biggest struggles as we move from childhood into adulthood is figuring out who we are. We get to college and have to pick a major - but most of us get to college with very little idea of what we excel at or what we want to do. Take the example of someone who has little compassion but wants to be a nurse. Sure, he or she could probably learn and eventually become a decent nurse. But maybe if that person understood who she is, she’d have realized that she’d be a better hospital administrator than a nurse.

Parenting isn’t about telling my kids that every painting they paint is beautiful. It’s noticing the details. It’s seeing that Bean chose only to paint one corner of the picture, and learning why.  It’s hearing that when she doesn’t want to come to the table it’s because she’s in the middle of the book, and she. can’t. stop. in. the. middle.  And getting her through that.

I don’t know what this fuzzy self-esteem thing is. But I do know that it’s a whole industry now, full of self-help books, speakers, seminars, and the same people who spend their every moment chasing after it often end up sorely disappointed. Teaching a child that she’s the best at everything she attempts is misleading. One day she’ll see reality. Isn’t it better if her parents clue her in to what the reality is, in a loving and accepting place?

Bean turned 3 a few weeks ago. I struggled with what to do for her birthday, and all she wanted was a purple dinosaur cake. So we did the cake, hubby and I got her a new trike, and at the last minute we invited over 2 of her closest friends. That’s right, just 2. And we asked them not to bring gifts. (Oh! the scandal!)

One of the guests did as I asked. No gifts. But her kids (all 4 of them) colored pictures for Bean - and that meant the world to her. The other mom felt the need to buy a gift, and I can understand that. But Bean loved her birthday - she got some books and a few toys from family members, she had her purple dinosaur cake, and most importantly, she had a blast playing with her closest friends. And for some reason, when I talk to other moms, I always feel the need to justify the fact that we did a small party. And I don’t even tell people that we asked for no gifts… what would they think?!

Today we went to the 3rd birthday party of one of Bean’s classmates. For her 3rd birthday there were about 15 kids, and double that number of adults. There were so many kids that we never really saw the birthday girl. They rented a bounce house, had a kitchen full of pizza delivered, and then brought the kids inside to open presents. And let me tell you, there were more presents than I could have imagined. A whole room full of presents. And that 3 year old went through them like wild fire. Opened one, looked at it, said “oooh, wow!” and then was ready to move on. There was one moment as she was opening her gifts when I thought that my kids were missing out. I mean, this little girl was getting oodles of dresses and princess costumes and pajamas and games and toys - there was nothing she didn’t have. And my kids’ lives will never be like that. So for a brief moment I thought that I should be proving more for my kids.

And then I realized that as I watched the birthday girl, she had no interest in most of it. She wasn’t very thankful. Sure, her mom was modeling the perfect amount of excitement over every gift. Mom was telling her to say thank you to the proper people at the proper time. But the birthday girl couldn’t care less. In fact, she kept trying to escape from the onslaught of toys and gifts to go back outside and play.

Gifts and toys aren’t what my kids need. I’m glad those parents gave their little girl a memorable third birthday - and got it all on film. I’m glad they did the bounce house - all the kids loved it. But I’m quite happy with Bean’s 2-invitee party. And I’m still happy that I asked people not to bring gifts. She doesn’t need them. She didn’t miss them. And sitting at this party today, she didn’t even notice that there was a whole room full of gifts. There was no jealous green monster wondering why some kids have more ’stuff’ than others. That’s not what she needs. She needs time. That’s her love language. Quality time. Attention. To be listened to and have her opinions and thoughts validated. She needs a safe place to explore who she is and what’s important to her. And to know that she’s loved, even when her behavior isn’t at its most lovable.

I don’t know what we’ll do next year. I don’t know if her parties will continue to be this small. I don’t know if I’ll ask people again not to bring gifts. I think that might get harder as she gets older. There will things that she wants. She’s an awfully observant kid. But one of the values I want my kids to have is longing. Not wanting everythin, or being jealous about what others have. But knowing what you truly want, and being willing to hold out for it. I don’t want them to have instant gratification - to get everything they want. It’s more important for them to always be reaching for something. Is that so terrible? I think it will serve them better in the long term than tens of their friends bringing truckloads of toys. There’s something special about a celebration, and gift-giving is an important thing in any child’s life, as is learning to receive gifts with thankfulness. But there’s something about a hopeful expectation, and being able to discern between things of value and just plain ’stuff.’ That’s what I want my kids to know.

It seems, on days like today, that mass shootings define this country. Why are there so many? It’s overwhelming and mind-boggling. My prayers and heart-felt sympathies go out to the community at Virginia Tech. I came across this blog from a VT student. I’m sure there are similar ones out there. But to read what someone from the community has to say about it is staggering. I don’t know why things like this happen. But I sure am glad I have a Firm Foundation to stand on. I don’t know how the rest of the world lives through pain and sorrow without a strong and abiding faith in the One who dries all tears.