Help for Sibling Relationships

Social distancing plus shelter in place plus kids and family dynamics and stress and upheaval and PHEW! How are you doing?

I’m a mom of 8 over here, and while that gives me heaps of experience, it doesn’t mean I’m not thrown for a loop every now and again. I maintain that one of the best things we ever did for our kids was to give them lots of siblings and lots of practice in relationship navigation and negotiation, but still, they can manufacture upheaval faster than it took us to conceive them. Ahem.

My friend Lynna has a helpful site and podcast that addresses sibling rivalry and relationships. If you’re finding you need a little help, go check out her resources, written with the gospel front and center.

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4 Books to Read After Little Women

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2019’s gorgeous retelling on film of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women has so many of us who grew up with the story of the March family giddy for her novels all over again. One long winter’s reading of Little Women satisfies us just as it did the first time, but if you are at the end of the book and hoping for more, you’re in good company.

4 Books to Read After Little Women

Little Men and Jo’s Boys, Louisa May Alcott

Thankfully, Louisa May Alcott had so many contemporary fans pressing her to keep writing about the Marches that she actually produced two more novels that followed their lives. I’m not sure if it’s because I have more sons than daughters or was the only girl in a family of boys, but I’ve actually enjoyed Little Men slightly (ever so slightly) more than Little Women.

Little Men continues the histories of the March sisters, and in particular follows the lives of Jo and her husband, Professor Bhaer. The Bhaers run Plumfield Estate School, an unconventional, hands-on, unschool sort of school environment, where the children are encouraged to be individuals and to better themselves. There is plenty of fun and nurturing (and weekly pillow fights!), and readers should feel satisfied to read the continuing events in the lives of their favorite characters.

Jo’s Boys follows suit and was actually published as a sequel to Little Men.

One of the most compelling reasons to read more of Alcott’s writings is that she brings an accurate historical perspective on the lives of women in the 19th Century. Any time we can wrap our heads around how a society was operating in the centuries before ours, we gain an understanding that transcends and lends insight into our own. How equal are women to men really in our world today? How do the attitudes about and opportunities afforded to women during eras that preceded our own show our progress, or lack thereof? Does it matter?

To that end, there are two more books that are excellent adjuncts to Alcott’s writing:

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Another 19th Century female writer published in 1847 what became her most beloved novel. Jane Eyre follows the life of orphaned Jane from childhood to young adulthood, with twists and turns befitting a classic gothic novel of the Romantic and Victorian periods.

What seems to be a tale of woe at the outset becomes a triumphant account of a young life taking wing, and as such, Bronte was illustrating a female existence that would have been scandalous for its time.

If you read only one Bronte work in your lifetime, let it be the spirited Jane Eyre.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Out of the 19th Century comes yet another female force, Mary Shelley. If you are tempted to equate a book called Frankenstein with the green monster of silly 20th Century movies and cereal boxes, please note that Shelley’s work is nothing resembling those renditions.

Frankenstein is far more about relationships (and yes, even romantic love), the balance of good and evil in the world, and the greater question of whether or not we should create or develop technology just because we can.

When both my oldest son and oldest daughter (now in their 20’s) told me individually that Frankenstein was their favorite high school read, I decided I needed to read it for myself. I am not a huge fan of science fiction, and on that association alone, I was skeptical that my kids could convince me I’d end up loving it as much as they did. I stand overwhelmingly corrected, and I can tell you that Frankenstein is not only one of my favorite novels, too, it has become an absolute joy for me to teach through the text with my high school students.

Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Jane Eyre, Frankenstein—each is a testament to its brave and capable author, and all are worth a read in this century and centuries to come. I hope you’ll jump in and see for yourself!

If you’re interested in reading and studying any of these books with others, I teach live literature classes like Little Women, Jane Eyre, and Frankenstein, and I love to give a hand to learners around the world by doing so. Find out more about my courses here.

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If I Did Not Have the Hope of Heaven, I Could Not Go On One More Day

The skeptic in me says, “Hope of heaven? Yeah, you hope.”

Last Sunday our son Nate and his wife Jayne canceled dinner with us because he had a migraine. Or maybe the flu.

On Monday he went to the doctor and was given migraine meds.

On Tuesday he went to urgent care, who told him to go straight to the ER. They did a CT and sent him home.

On Wednesday morning he returned to the ER. The doctor casually inquired, “So, how long have you had this tumor?”

On Wednesday afternoon he was flown to UC SanFrancisco with a definitive diagnosis of a brain tumor. He couldn’t see anymore. His vitals were so wonky, he was struggling to even keep his eyes open.

On Thursday his family filled the Neuro ICU and prayed and hoped and wished and cried.

On Friday he had surgery. They pulled that nasty tumor right through his nose.

On Saturday and Sunday he was cared for and given an eye patch and reminded how to stand up and walk, and on Monday—this afternoon—he was home.

We’re all feeling a little sucker-punched. We’ve got your standard panic attacks, stress eating, and anger. Everything hurts.

Hope of heaven.

Yeah. Because we’ve been this road once, twice, three, four times before already. It’s a bad family joke when you’re wondering which Fletcher kid is next.

We’ve weathered a deadly virus and permanent brain damage, a car accident in which I ran over a child, a ruptured appendix and sepsis, and crippling mental illness. And those are just our children. In the past three years, we’ve had our own cancer scare and tumor removal and wept for two precious family members fighting their particular cancer battles.

It’s rough, folks. I’m sick of sitting in ICU waiting rooms. I give up.

Hope of heaven.

I woke up one night in a hotel room in San Francisco last week and heard the words of a John Mark McMillan song we sing sometimes at church:

I could lay my head in Sheol
I could make my bed at the bottom of the darkness deep
Oh but there is not a place I could escape you
Your heart won't stop coming after me

I felt as if my head was lain in Sheol. In hell. I felt hopeless. That last line, though, is the truth of the gospel and the hope that flickers a tiny, tiny atom of light: His heart won’t stop coming after me.

I decide to rest there. It’s all I have.

Some days my theology is rock-solid but most days it isn’t. Most days I’m a skeptic and I question the Bible and I push the cute Christian sayings off the cliff and I cover my ears and chant, “LA LA LA LA LA!” I stamp my foot and put my hands on my hips and square off with God. And still, his heart won’t stop coming after me. His heart. I can sit here in my skepticism and still understand that he loves me.

It’s all I have, folks. The hope of heaven.

If we’re being honest, it’s all any of us have. We just have to ask him to help us believe it. If we can’t, then what hope is there?

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