Moved with unexpected sympathy

A recent inadvertent journey to the past has offered me a deeper level of understanding about my marriage, an understanding that has liberated me.

Very early on, I realized Edgar had deep wounds. He didn't allow these wounds to surface and didn't even admit they were there. I think he had submerged them for so long that they just became part of who he was.

His wounds caused him to be paralyzed by fear. I didn't understand why my encouraging love couldn't help him. I knew he needed God to heal him, but he wouldn't even let me speak to his heart issues to help usher him to God.

If you don't know me, then you'll need a little help understanding. I demand intimacy of my relationships. So people either are drawn to me, or they despise me. Sometimes they're drawn to me then despise me. That's what happened with Edgar.

In order to have a true, intimate relationship with someone, you must be willing to visit your own heart issues, and share them. Those who have the most fear in life are those with deep, unhealed wounds. I'm now understanding this for the first time.

Edgar was drawn to me because I offered what he had always lacked: deep intimacy. But when it began to cost him, to uncover his wounds, his attraction changed to repulsion. He started harboring resentment, and he didn't even know why. In the end, he hated me.


WHAT GAVE ME THIS INSIGHT?
I started reading Wild at Heart, not knowing it was a "man book." Once it became clear, I thought I'd read it so I could better understand the men in my life. It did not occur to me to think of Edgar.

About a year into our marriage, I began to see glimpses of Edgar's belief that he was "worthless." Because he believed this about himself, his fear of failure overwhelmed him. I quickly recognized a pattern: When Edgar faced a challenge, he retreated. Always.

Because I'm a naturally encouraging person, I thought Edgar simply needed a cheerleader, someone telling him, "You can do it." And so I began to fulfill that role. When I knew he needed deeper help than I could offer, I thought I could get him to a place where he was comfortable admitting he needed help. But that power wasn't in me.

Around year two, I started believing that Edgar didn't truly know God's love. Because if he did, Edgar could never believe he was worthless. So I started praying, asking God to reveal himself to Edgar, asking God to open Edgar's heart to the deep, intimate, spiritual love God has for us all. (I still sometimes pray this for him.)

I tried to delve into Edgar's psyche, to figure out where the paralyzing fear originated. He had a happy childhood. His parents are both still living, and they love him.

In Wild at Heart, John Eldredge discusses the role a father plays by ushering his son into manhood, and the debilitating wound caused when the father doesn't:

"The boy makes a vow, chooses a way of life that gives rise to the false self. At the core of it all is a deep uncertainty. The man doesn't live from a center. So many men feel stuck--either paralyzed and unable to move, or unable to stop moving."

Eldredge says that a woman can arouse masculinity, but can never bestow masculinity.

And that is precisely what I was trying to do: make up for what Edgar had never received from his father. His father never validated him as a man.

Once, Edgar caused $700 worth of damage to a truck I bought him by pouring transmission fluid into the brake system. See, his father never let him work on the family vehicle. It was easier for his father to just do it himself than to have a boy buzzing around making the job harder. But Edgar's dad missed an opportunity to confer manhood on his son.

Eldredge says a man's search for validation lives in his soul like a "famished craving."

Edgar's entire childhood was a missed opportunity. His father never taught him to be a man. And he never validated his son.

Eldredge discusses the painful process of men allowing God to initiate them into manhood. See, God is the ultimate father, the only perfect father, but for God to initiate a man, he must be willing to visit his deepest wounds, and it's painful.

"The way in which God heals our wound is a deeply personal process... healing never happens outside of intimacy with Christ. The healing of our wound flows out of our union with him."

For the years of our marriage, I always carried a brokenness for Edgar. I knew he was scarred deeply, but I had no idea the true depth of the abyss in which he lived. I often saw a desperation in him that I could not understand because I've never experienced it.

I forgave Edgar long ago. And I've pitied him always. But now I hurt for him again, and I pray that God will expose his heart in order to heal it.





How long the train of the past that haunts us. How fierce its sound and uncrossable its tracks.

Picking up women is a cinch with Pepsi's new iPhone app

I've been absent for far too long on this blog, haven't I? Ran into something today that made me miss writing in the blogosphere.

Pepsi, it seems, has jumped into the women-objectification game with a new iPhone app that helps users "score" with women, rate them afterward, and post the names and dates of their conquests.

Ad text from the campaign follows...

AMP UP BEFORE YOU SCORE is a roadmap to success with your favorite kinds of women—24, in all.

Is she an Artist? Quote some Picasso. Indie Rocker? Here are her favorite songs. Sorority Girl? Good thing you know the Greek alphabet. Know what makes her tick before you open your mouth, so she'll like what she hears when you do.
Here's how it works:

1. Identify Her Type
Got your eye on a girl, and aren't sure how to get started? Pick out her profile, flip the card, and study up quick with a cheatsheet on the stuff she's into, with lists, links and some surefire opening lines. (Surefire to what, we won't say.)

2. Keep a List
Get lucky? Add her to your Brag List. You can include a name, date and whatever details you remember.

3. Brag
You got it? Flaunt it. Keep your buddies in the loop on email, Facebook or Twitter.

Random cell-phone images from the past couple of months

From a shop in Brenham, Texas, where we took our annual mother/daughter getaway in June.



















From our living room table.


















From a paid-parking lot in downtown Austin.


















From the side of a bridge also in downtown Austin.

Math update: summer success!

Please forgive my long absence. When I resigned from my job, I just stopped using the computer for a while. I have a lot to write about though, starting with math.

At least half of the students in 7th grade math from Zee's school are retaking math over the summer. They don't all have the same teacher, but they do all use the same curriculum. I'm convinced the curriculum is the problem.

Zee just finished Unit 1 on our summer math program. She made a 96 after averaging 15 daily worksheets, three honors lessons, three tests, and a final exam.

I'm already seeing her attitude change. The first day of our summer lessons, she said, "I'm so excited about this, Mom."

She actually did extra math worksheets the other day "for fun." She asked me to take a picture of her first honors lesson and send it to Jake because she made a 100. She's completing the standard worksheets and the honors worksheet in each lesson now.

I compared the Math-U-See curriculum I'm using with the Saxon curriculum Zee's school used, and they cover the same concepts. Only now Zee is starting to understand the concepts. I'm excited that she isn't calling herself stupid anymore and saying that she's just bad at math.

Reteaching math over the summer

So my first order of business after resigning my job is to teach Zee 7th grade math over the summer. What's that you ask? Why am I paying $600/month to send her to a fancy college-prep school, and now I need to reteach her math?

I've recently discovered that two theories exist behind math instruction: spiral vs. mastery.

The spiral teaching method touches lightly on a broad range of topics, not expecting a student to completely "get it" the first time around, rather using numerous frequent reviews to reinforce deeper understanding. The spiral method covers a different topic each day.

Conversely, the mastery teaching method delves deeply into one topic at a time, expecting a student to master that topic before moving on the next, using reviews only after a few topics have been introduced. The mastery method covers one topic for several days.

To me, one teaching method seems vastly superior even just reading the descriptions. Math builds on itself. Each concept depends on understanding the previous concept. You can't add fractions if you can't first add. Well, the spiral method becomes increasingly problematic in the upper grades as students begin to learn algebra and geometry.

PUZZLING CURRICULUM CHOICE
Zee's school uses the spiral method. Zee can't learn this way. Her school has adopted the Saxon curriculum, which introduces new topics each class but only gives between two and four problems on the new topic, never giving the students a chance to grasp what's been introduced.

For example, when introducing geometry, Saxon Math 87 begins by discussing lines and angles in chapter 7. Then the text touches on fractions, percents, division, elapsed-time problems, parts of a whole, and customary systems.

Then in chapter 17 students get back to geometry and learn about measuring angles. No geometry for 23 chapters, then back to measuring the angles of a triangle and recognizing angle pairs. Skip to chapter 104 and 118 for geometry again.

After working only a few new problems, the students complete 25 review problems. But for Zee what should be "review" ends up being "relearn" because she never grasped the concepts in the first place.

So for those 25 review problems, we have to go back to the original chapter to relearn the original lesson.

And Saxon doesn't teach concepts, it teaches rote memorization, never answering the "why" behind the math, thereby severely limiting a student's ability to think critically about math or apply it to everyday life. Teaching math without the "why" inhibits students as they move into upper-level math, especially college courses.

FRUSTRATIONS FOR ME AND ZEE
Right now, Zee has a 66 for the semester and she's trying her hardest. She often says, "Mom I'm so stupid. Why can't I get this?"

When I started talking to her about the different philosophies behind the instruction of math, Zee began to get encouraged. Then I read her some of the comments other parents and students wrote in their reviews of the Saxon math curriculum:

"My son officially now HATES math. He cries over his assignments."

"She is now failing math and hates it."

"He used to love math and now he hates it."

"I hated math with a passion when I did these books, and I got consistently low grades because I would make a careless arithmetic error somewhere in the long string of calculations and thus get the entire problem wrong."

"It took her over 2 hours per day to do it and she never felt as if she accomplished anything."

Zee said in astonishment, "Mom, that's exactly what's happening to me. I don't feel so dumb anymore."

I met with her math teacher and her principal yesterday. Her math teacher agrees; he's not fond of the Saxon curriculum or the spiral method, but he said the school isn't interested in changing the math curriculum.

When I met with the principal, she verified that the school is happy with the Saxon curriculum. Why are they so happy with Saxon? Well Saxon students test well at secondary grade levels if they're good at rote memorization. For a college-prep school though, you'd think they'd be more interested in what happens after high school.

Even the principal mentioned that her own son had gone through the Saxon curriculum at the school and was now having problems in college. She did not, however, see the connection between the Saxon curriculum and his current college struggle. She instead attributed it to him "always trying to do it his own way." The problem is, he never learned to think critically, and that's a required component of college-level math.

Zee's school only reviews curriculum every four years, and math was reviewed two years ago. If I'm still around in two years, I will petition for inclusion in that board meeting.

But for now, I must decide what to do. Other than math, we love love love Zee's school. But I'm sending her into a daily barrage of frustrations in math and watching her grades slip lower and lower. I can't reteach her math every year. (My math skills only go up to a certain level after all.)

What do I do?