Guiding children through Clean Week...

A lovely Facebook friend St. Seraphim Cathedral asked if I would write a couple of pieces for the church school families. I thought that it might help your families. This is the second of two pieces, the other may be found by clicking HERE.

We have been slowing stepping up towards its but it is nonetheless something of a shock when Great Lent finally arrives. The Church in her infinite wisdom slowly leads us into the most challenging of Fasts with a fast free week, a normal week, Cheesefare week, and then finally Clean Week. We should be ready but often we are like small children who have been warned that it is almost time to leave the playground and instead of being grateful for the time we have had, we start to feel just a little resentful that it is coming to an end. Clean Week is hard, there is no debating it. Not only is the spirit less than willing the body is more than weak. When we have children, we have to contend with their physical, psychological, and spiritual needs at this time and not only our own. Clean Week is the time to follow the Church’s advice and lead gently.

Show your children what is coming…

In our family, we will spend Sunday afternoon cleaning out our refrigerator, just like we always do. Things that can be frozen for Pascha will be and things that cannot will be eaten. When we move all the rich foods from the fridge and stock it with Lenten foods, it sets a tone. We wash all the shelves and drawers and even the outside so that we will be ready. Having a clean fridge filled a completely different set of contents is a physical reminder of what will begin.

Have a record keeping system for the weeks…

This is especially true for smaller children who don’t really understand calendars. My children have always liked the Lady Lent picture, the one with seven legs. We don’t do the salt dough or cookie one but that is because we have pets who might find them delicious. We stick with one printed out from an image on the internet and that is colored by the children. My children take turns taking the scissors and cutting off a leg at a time while they watch and wait for Pascha.

Give them something to look forward to…

Like I said before when I told you that you need a basic meal plan, you need to have a weekend plan. When the first weekend of Lent comes and it is more relaxed, then make it more relaxed. If you are pouring a glass of wine for dinner, make sure that the children have something special. In our family, we add seltzer water to juice for the children and let them sip from martini glasses. I have a large collection from the thrift store and a couple of plastic ones for the youngest. It’s special, and the children don’t get to do this very often so it gives them something to look forward to each week. We also make sure that we do a Sunday evening popcorn and movie night and we never forget to use lots and lots of olive oil and nutritional yeast. Your children need to a sense of relief from Lent, especially that first week, so make a plan for next week.

Build in some gentle dietary choices…

I know a lovely nun who jokingly refers to Clean Week as the “Insta-Cleanse” because the rapid and sudden shift from the diet of Cheesefare causes a little digestive upset. If your children are miserable from the diet of Clean Week, they will transfer their frustrations onto other elements of the Church and her practices. This is a dangerous practice. We have to find small ways of building in comfort, especially this week. Swap out whole grains for refined and polished grains and do not feel guilty. Believe you me, you are getting plenty of fiber this week already. A little less will be good for you! Provide white Lenten crackers, bagels, breads, and rice to have with our beans and lentils based dishes to make things a little easier. Also make sure that we have low fiber fruits like bananas, grapes, and melons. These make good snacks and help slow down the digestive system. You might want to avoid dried fruit this week and stick to fresh to reduce the fiber in your diet, reevaluate next week and see if your body is feeling ready for a little more fiber but go slowly, especially with small children.

Looking for other practical ideas?

• Jennifer at Illuminated Learning has a great poster that you can download and print, just warning you that it is a larger poster and will need to be printed at a shop. Find it HERE.
• Sylvia at OrthodoxMom wrote a wonderful Lenten study guide for mothers that I use and love. You can download and print the pages or you can load them onto a Kindle. Find it HERE.
• Jane, the children’s book editor at Ancient Faith, put together a wonderful list of books to use with your children over great Lent. Find it HERE.
• If you feel like you want something a little more in depth and you have the time and energy for it, this program by Annalisa is one my children have loved. I use it every summer as a substitute for Protestant Vacation Bible School for my own children. Find the book HERE.

Getting the kitchen ready for Great Lent...

A lovely Facebook friend from St. Seraphim Cathedral asked if I would write a couple of pieces for the church school families. I thought that it might help your families. This is the first of two pieces, the second can be found HERE.

Cheesefare is coming to a close and Clean Week is rapidly approaching. The trepidation, and perhaps even dread, that parents feel is palpable to their children. To help our children enter the fast with the right attitude and to help them learn to properly fast is especially challenging when we ourselves don’t know how to fast properly. I won’t talk about the spiritual aspects of fasting today because there is certainly no lack of books, articles, and resources out there. Today I want to briefly discuss how to fast in a practical and tangible sense.

Our goal in parenthood is to raise well adjusted, moral, happily Orthodox adults. This might sound strange at first but our goal needs to be on the end, not where we are now. Raising children who stay in the Church as adults is a high challenge and there are things we do that make it easier and things that make it harder. Orthodox Christian fasting is so rigorous and so opposed to the message of the modern world that all of us get a little worried as Great Lent approaches. How we act as adults and the behavior that we model sets the tone for our children’s expectations. The more we complain and stomp our feet or get overwhelmed and cry, the more our children hear that this is not a life worth living. We can and should do better than that.

Some is Better than None

This is basically my mantra and I should have it printed on shirts. If you can’t do it all, do what you can, as much as you can. At least this way, something is done and that is better than nothing at all. If your child is supposed to finish the kitchen after school but has a lot of homework, wouldn’t you rather they do part of the task (say, load the dishwasher) than nothing? Absolutely. Some is always better than none. When you must make compromises or you just can’t fast in the way you would like, don’t beat yourself up. Do what you can and start over again tomorrow with a clean slate and a fresh attitude.

Have a Plan

One of the most stressful parts of fasting is just figuring out what you are going to eat at every meal. One of the ways to limit your stress is to make a list of ideas for every meal. Try to come up with a few breakfast items, a few lunch box ideas, a few snack ideas, and a few dinner ideas. If you put a list up with at least two ideas for each, then when you panic, make something from the list. Monotony is boring but boring is better than stressed.

Involve the Children

Children are in control of precious little in their lives and sometimes their frustration can bubble over. Avoiding meal time melt down is critical in helping you maintain your sanity. Get the children involved by tasking them what they want to eat and make it, even if it seems strange. It will reduce meal time fights and it helps take the pressure off you in deciding what to eat. Less stress is worth it, I promise.

Gather Your Supplies

Once you have a basic list of go-to meals and your kids’ menu ideas, make sure you have the ingredients. If you feel like your back is to the wall, you can recycle that same grocery list again and again and you won’t have to put your brain to work.

Stop Looking for Perfection and Start Practicing Patience

Don’t carefully study labels looking for any trace of whey or butter oil or any other item. You will drive yourself crazy and end up feeling worn thin and bitter. Do what you can but don’t make yourself crazy. Being overwhelmed and feeling small isn’t healthy for anyone and it sets a bad example for your children.

If you are looking for more detailed help such as shopping lists, menu planning advice, and loads of recipes, check out my book. You can find it in church stores, major retailers, and from the publisher by clicking the links in my sidebar or clicking HERE.

Say peep...

Next week I will have a review up on a book to help children process death and the Orthodox services surrounding it. When I am thinking about such things because it is coming up on the second anniversary of my father's death. My father had a genetic blood clotting condition, which I inherited. It is the sort of thing that is not always a problem but decided to randomly rear its ugly head. It is a capricious little condition. Because of this when he developed cancer, it was not discovered immediately. The blood clots in his lungs just appeared to the kind that we are more susceptible to developing. But after a few months of developing more and more clots despite being on thinners, they discovered he had non-smoker's lung cancer. We children and he himself were almost grateful that it was cancer because we no longer had to worry so much about ourselves. I was pregnant at the time and my oncologist (because they are blood specialists not because I had cancer) was flipping out about keeping my blood very thin and doing constant checks. The day that my youngest daughter had her ten day well baby check up, my father discovered he had cancer. He did not want to tell me right away and I practically had to pry it out. But I knew. I could feel when I heard his voice. I just wanted to know that I was right. I knew I was, but I needed to hear it.

That said, while I miss my father a great deal, I have tremendous hope in God so I am not too sad at this anniversary. We plan to talk about the good times and the funny events like the time he tried to trick my Tita Rosa (my dear aunt Rose) in to eating a Gaines Burger. When my grandfather found out, he made my father eat it and more. There is a lot of good to remember and we have to keep it at the surface so that we don't only see the bad memories.

I realized that in our family, we like to tell stories. I think we get that from my mother's side. My mother is Cherokee. Legit. Like Indian basketball league, legit. They tell stories. They sit around and tell children stories that go backwards. They start with stories about when the child was a baby, and the when the parents were babies, and the back and and back and ever deeper. Some of the best times of my entire adult life were when my mother's parents stayed with us while my grandmother recovered from surgery for an infection in her bones. She needed to stay close the hospital and be cared for and I did it gratefully. At night while everyone else slept, my grandfather told stories I had never heard before. My husband and I and even my oldest son sat in rapt attention, barely breathing and certainly never interrupting. Those nights were golden.

In his late teens, he had hitchhiked across the country from Oklahoma to San Diego and was picked up by an ex-con and an AWOL sailor. At some point along the journey, my grandfather thought he was in over his head, took a powder, and ended up alone and stranded in the desert only to be rescued by this same duo again later. Along this trip, my grandfather learned from the ex-con how to use a string mop and janitorial chemicals to blow a safe. For reals. I will never forget those nights. I saw my grandfather in a new way. He is a tower of reliability and fortitude but he was once a crazy kid. Having been a dumb kid, I could relate. There is a book there, I know it. I want to write it. I have to find a way to string it all together and find the right narrative style. I need to do it before he leaves this place and goes where I can't hear his stories for a while. Ask me how it is going sometime. Keep me honest,

Anyway, my father's birthday was around Western Easter. He had this thing for Peeps. You know, the nasty little marshmallow things? He loved them. It is so weird and so not like him. My father was a foodie and a healthy freak. He was doing spirulina and chia cleanses before it was cool. They were his dirty secret and not many people knew. That and Slim Jims, which I have NEVER tried out of the fear that I have a genetic weakness for them, God forbid. My father would have one Slim Jim a year and then he would have a package of Peeps with cheap white wine, because how better to cut the cloying sweetness than with the aggressive acidity of flowery smelling Chardonnay? This was his birthday treat, eaten in secret. As he was dying, I gave him a case of Peeps and Slim Jims. Why not eat them now? He didn't finish them all and they were thrown away after he died but they were there when he needed them.

This Pascha, I started a new tradition. I want to keep the stories alive. I had a pretty pink peep and a glass of wine. It was good even though it wasn't really. I told the kids about my father's birthday treat. Every year I am going to do this and I am going to tell this story. This is how one's memory is eternal. That is really what it means. Memory eternal, Daddy.

Eating through the pain...

We had the usual things in our Pascha basket. You know, bacon, red eggs, salt, cheese, hrutka cheese, Pascha bread, wine, a butter lamb, and chocolate. Then we had some Colorado love. Well, actually New Mexico, but still like back home--so close enough. Abouna Moses from Holy Resurrection in Wisconsin had driven through New Mexico late last year and loaded up on a ridiculous amount of New Mexico green chile, something I miss profoundly since moving to the hinterlands of the north. Abouna is one of those people who instantly becomes everyone's friend and knows how to make them at home. He had me pegged from the first time that I met him. The way to my heart is always food and cooking. We saw him and Jessica from Every Home a Monastery in the last week of March, right after Western Easter, because our kids' school was on break. Since Ben teaches, we have to take advantage of these days off. God bless Abouna! When we went back home, we brought with us his homemade bacon, European butter, and chiles he had roasted himself.

I have a love affair with green chiles. When we first moved here, I was shopping and sending kids in all directions to fetch things in different parts of the store. I sent the oldest, then nineteen, to get green chiles, which is properly pronounced "chee-LAYS". When he couldn't find them, he asked a clerk. Three times Joseph tried to tell him what he wanted. Finally he took Joey to the shoe department, which kind of freaked him out a little bit. Once there, he showed Joey some green shoelaces. I am not even kidding! Joey laughed and thanked him and then found me. I didn't laugh long. No chiles. Like none. Now real, whole, raosted green chiles from home make me cry.

Growing up in Denver, I love the smell of chiles. The whole west side of the city smells like roasting chiles all August. the trucks come up from southern Colorado or New Mexico, full of glossy green chiles. The Mexicans and Mexican-Americans sell them all along Federal Boulevard. They have blow torches and giant metal spinning baskets that like the ones from the Bingo halls also all up and down Federal Boulevard. They ask how many bushels you want and then they are dropped into the basket and while it is spinning, they are roasted by the fire from a blow torch. I love this. I love the heat and the smell of chiles and sound of the skin crackling. I miss it so much that I literally weep for it in August. I miss it so much it is a painful stabbing feeling in my throat when I think about it.

I am so blessed to have so many beautiful friends that every fall, someone buys a large box and fills it with unroasted chiles (so they can be shipped). Getting a box like this makes home feel a little less far away. So I take my chiles outside and we fire up the grill with hardwoods from the trees here at the farm and we roast them over oak or maple. It is the strange fusion of here and there, of now and then, of my husband and of me.

At Pascha, we had chiles in the basket which confused the priest. I told him that even though these were Lenten, it represented something I missed profoundly, something my children miss profoundly, something that we needed. Last night I made deep fried chiles rellenos and a green chile sauce. Since one of my kids is allergic to tomatoes, I used whiskey soaked raisins instead and it was amazing. I will totally do that going forward. Father Alexander and Brother Anthony came over and we had plates piled high with rice, rellenos (plain cheese ones for the little people), green chile sauce, and sour cream. Father brought wine and we talked and laughed. These chiles were so hot that our faces were red, we were sweating, and our eyes were watering and had to pause between bites. It hurt a bit but in a good way. The best way, really. I was completely in the moment. I did not take even one picture, I did not even knit a single stitch. It was nice to put aside everything for a little while and just enjoy the food and the wine and the company while the little children ran in and out of the big farm kitchen.

 I think that is the Christian journey.

Eat through the pain.

Yesterday, some friends were chatting over Facebook about needing to introduce some veggies and fruits back in after a few days of feasting. One of them said the other option was to eat through the pain. That is pretty much what we did last night. We ate through the pain both literally and figuratively. I am not sure that the place I live could ever really be home to me but it certainly is the place God had put me. When I miss home, I bring it out in my kitchen, but in this kitchen here on the farm. Eating chiles for me is eating through the pain and I come out on the other side happier even if I cry up until that moment. In the end, I think that is the Christian journey. Eat through the pain. The other side is there, waiting, and it will be bliss even if every moment between then and now is bound up in the physical, a mixture of tears and joy.

And if you are experiencing any, um, slowed digestion because of all the cheese you have been eating, drop on by  my house. I have some leftover chile sauce. That'll clear that right up for you, Compadre.