It’s been a glorious summer of splash parks and iced coffee and ice cream with every meal and book deadlines for both me and the other Dr. Williams at this address, and it’s suddenly practically over, which is really sad.
But I must say, I adore this stage of life with the kids. Although, to be honest, I’ve adored every stage with them. Also, parental amnesia sets in—I guess I vaguely remember how little sleep we got once upon a time, but I mostly don’t remember.
This week, the above photo from four years ago—2020 lockdown summer!—popped up in my memories, reminding me how tiny these two people were then. That was the summer I started writing. And now, here we are—four years and three completed books later. And that little guy holding the garden hose, who learned to read that spring, is now reading thick history books for fun and is a walking encyclopedia. He also has two years of Greek under his belt and is about to embark on year three.
Speaking of that, highly recommend this three-year koine Greek curriculum for elementary school age (year 1, year 2, year 3)—it is fantastic. Alas, it appears to be out of print, but we’ve found it used. For each year, there is a textbook and a workbook. Both are excellent. The digestible tiny bites for each lesson are perfection—but also, tiny things add up to big things over the course of years!
This summer’s best Aldi find, by the way, has been a little bistro table and two chairs, which we put in the flower garden area behind our house. That area is always in the shade! I was thinking this would make for a nice outdoor office spot for me to read and write. Instead, the kids have commandeered it. They have spent hours and hours at that table this summer, reading and coloring, occasionally yelling for more snacks and drink refills.
Parenting sometimes feels remarkably like waiting tables at a saloon in the Wild West. Except louder.
My Fun Reading Pile for Summer’s End
Now that I’ve turned in book #3, Christians Reading Pagans (which will be out with Zondervan in 2025), I’m planning some fun reading for the next couple of weeks, before we get back into homeschool mode. So, here is the official Fun Pile (and a shoutout and thanks to
who first alerted me to Sertillanges—and I’ll keep recommending over and over Laura Fabrycky’s stunning essay on Sertillanges)!Okay, it’s more than just a fun reading pile, to be honest. I am itching to start thinking more about my idea for a book on the pink scandal of the evangelical mind: God calls all of us to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Still, women often face different barriers to pursuing God with all their mind too.
I test-drove some of the ideas for this book in an essay for Christianity Today last fall:
What I have not seen acknowledged sufficiently to date is this important reality: Women, whether married or not, mothers or not, face a different intellectual scandal than men. Yes, God commands all of us to love him with our minds as well as our hearts, souls, and strengths (Luke 10:27). But this can mean something different for women than it does for men.
…discussions of the “scandal of the evangelical mind” have been decidedly masculine, as have the suggested solutions.
Ultimately, we are all theologians, still called to do what the women at the tomb were called to do in Mark 16: Go forth and proclaim the risen Messiah to all who have ears to hear.
And so, I envision this book as a series of encouraging stories—from the Bible but also from history, ancient and more recent—of women who found ways to pursue God with all their mind and could serve as examples or inspirations for us today to do the same, even in the midst of all the exhausting responsibilities to which we are called.
But for now, it’s time for some R&R (read and rest).
Oh man, I've had that Elshtain book on my shelf waiting to be read since I took a class with her on the City of God as an undergrad. One of these days...
Sertillanges book has become one that I will re-read for many, many years. I love it so much!