"The Shoe" and the Children Who Lived in It

Last Sunday morning, Pastor Joe told our church that Thursday night, Christmas Eve, would be a real blessing because the Haley's would be together again, that it was like a family reunion each year, and that our kids were spread out all over the place now. And they are! Pastor Joe has seen all our kids grow up, get married, and raise families of their own. Not everyone would be there; in fact, we really didn’t want Emily’s family this year since they all have Covid. But that Christmas Eve service I was talking about last week is a family tradition most of us wouldn’t miss for anything. 

How came we to have so many kids in the first place? Well, here’s the scoop.

We never named our home in Burrows as we did that house in Maryland. But this old house could have been named “The Shoe,” and I was the old woman who lived in it (at least I got to be that way, eventually). Burrows even has its own cemetery, and Eric and I will probably take advantage of that someday.

This is the way “The Shoe” looks now.

When we began homeschooling in the fall of 1983, we closed our thriving singing telegram business...

Memorabilia from our singing telegram business.

…and I stopped going to Purdue. I was full-on committed to teaching our two children at home. It was just two little desks and a flag up against the wall of our two-bedroom house on 19th Street in Lafayette. 

I was sure that was all the kids we would ever have. In fact, I had told Dr. Wolfe that we had decided to only have two kids. So since I’d heard it was easier to get a tubal ligation right after giving birth, he should plan to do that after my second baby (Emily) was born. He asked my age, and when I told him I was 24, he said, “No, you’re too young for that, you’ll change your mind,” and threw some birth control pills in my lap.

I was somewhat annoyed, but we did use the pills. I was not kidding, and I was not going to change my mind! We were only going to have two! How could I manage more than that? Then, a single mom who went to our church and had to work to support her little family, needed to find a babysitter for her three-year-old girl until she and her fiancé got married. Suddenly we had three in our home school! 

Meagon was cute and smart, but she could not grasp the alphabet. As I worked with her, I finally realized she just needed to sing to learn, and I made up a song in the style of “Frances,” the children’s books, to go with our phonics flashcards. She was getting it! And all our kids learned “A is for apple pie, B is for bed” using those same flashcards. I also was able to teach her how to spell her name and say “please.” These were very great accomplishments!

And it was a revelation to me that I was actually able to take care of all three of them, and it wasn’t too bad! Instead of crossing Elmwood Avenue to go shopping at Payless with a child’s hand in each of mine, we learned to cross with a line of four, all holding hands.

And our two girls grew, and they were so cute and talented! When Lisa was six and Emily was four, they both were cast in Lafayette Civic Theatre’s production of The Sound of Music as two of the Von Trapp children. There had been hundreds of kids who’d tried out, and they double cast those parts to give more children a chance to be in the production, but the Haley kids made up a full seventh of the children in the show. I could not have been a more proud stage mom. 

In coordination with the production, we did a unit study in our home school on the War, Nazis, Catholicism, Austria, and Germany, singing (do-re-mi), and anything else we could think of, and memorized lines and songs. Our kids always knew their lines, putting some of the high school cast members to shame. And as great as the production was as a whole, the reviewer in the local paper said that Emily Haley stole the show as Gretl. (Sorry about that, Maria!)

So I kind of wanted another one, but I was firm – no more kids! 

Then a few things happened all at the same time. One was, we heard about Operation Rescue from a friend, and began to participate. And I was challenged by this. There was a list of all the reasons why women have abortions, including financial ones and concerns that they couldn’t handle more than the children they already had. The reasoning was, if you are using birth control to limit the size of your family for any of the reasons on this list, how can you tell an abortion-minded woman that she should just trust God when you can’t? 

We also had a court date coming up (for criminal trespassing, a Class A Misdemeanor), and the women in the group were told by our pro bono Operation Rescue attorneys that it would look better for our case if we went to court arguing that we had blocked the doors of the abortuary because they were killing babies, and we were pregnant ourselves.

Lastly, after Meagon's mom was married, she had a little baby boy who was the cutest child EVER. I would see this little toddler running around and “playing” the piano, and would attempt to pick him up and put him in my lap, but little Caleb would have none of it, and he ran away screaming.

I decided I wanted one of my own, so Eric and I went to work on the project, putting the pills aside with the decision to leave our family size in the Lord’s hands.

In June of 1987, Lawrence Christian (Chris) was born. His name means that he is a Victorious Christian and that is what I have always believed for him. At 19 months old, he could sing a song back to me in perfect pitch after hearing it while I rocked him “to sleep.”

When he was born, Eric was working at Lafayette Home Hospital again as a monitor technician, so we had hospital benefits, like we’d had with Emily, but he was really taken aback to hear that he had a son. We had to check Chris again, for the “right stuff” and sure enough, he had them!

Eric needed to do something about our living accommodations, so he eyed the back porch and finally built a small room in that area and took out much of the back “wall of separation” so that the new room was directly adjoining the second bedroom. We put a bunk bed in there and a small built-in closet, and that’s where we housed both girls. Chris’s baby bed was placed in the original second bedroom. The girls had to travel through Chris’s room to reach theirs.

Then I got pregnant again, and we had to move. How could we put four children in what started out as a two-bedroom house? If it was a girl, there was no way we could put three girls in the tiny bedroom. So we started looking. We needed a three- or four-bedroom house for our growing family, depending on whether this was a girl or a boy. But all the houses we checked out in Lafayette were either too expensive or the rooms were really tiny. We were not impressed. 

One day I saw a copy of a real estate newspaper at Payless and flipped through it. There was this beautiful large, brown two-story house, and the description said, “You won’t mind the drive when you see how nice I am.” We had never heard of Burrows and had no idea how far away it was. But since it was Thanksgiving Day, and the realtors were all not interested in showing us a house, Eric and I decided to find out, and yes, it was a pretty long drive! When we got to Burrows, we drove around awhile, but you couldn’t miss this house. Burrows is small, and there is no other house like it – probably no other house like it in the whole region. The price was right – $32,250.00. By early February of 1989, we had moved in.

Our house is made of hollow brown glazed sculptured clay tile, more commonly used for commercial purposes, and at the time we bought it, it sat upon about an acre-and-a-half of land. It was built in the 1880s from a pattern purchased from Sears & Roebuck, so it was over a hundred years old. The real estate ad listed a “carriage house” and a “smoke house,” as well as the matching outhouse, which is a three seater with a baby hole. The carriage house probably once was the home of a horse and carriage, but we just call it the yellow barn. 

This is the way the yellow barn looks now ‒ and the outhouse.

The smoke house was really just a summer kitchen that sat behind the main house. It had two doors leading to it, which corresponded to two back doors on the house. To keep the heat down in the summer during the canning season, all the food preservation happened in the summer kitchen.

Fortunately, a previous owner had installed indoor plumbing and turned part of the kitchen in the main house into a bathroom in the 50s, so we didn’t have to use the original facilities. On cold winter's nights, we were glad to not have to unbutton our long johns and expose our bare bottoms to the wood of the outhouse seat.

There were two smaller bedrooms and one, very large open bedroom across the front of the house on the second floor. Chris still remembers crawling around in that huge expanse when we first moved in.  And somehow, the previous owner had managed to put a pool table up there ‒ we couldn’t figure out how!

In September of 1989, Susanna Rose (Susie) was born. Her name is all about flowers. (A lily and a rose) and she was named after Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley. Mrs. Wesley had more than 20 children, and John and Charles were some of the youngest. This woman of faith believed that God would change the world through her children and He sure did!

Susie was born on Labor Day, which was a minor irritation to my obstetrician. Dr. Wickert didn’t think that was funny like I did – he wanted a day off! So when he didn’t see enough progress in my labor, he left the hospital to have lunch with his family and walk his dogs. A few minutes later, the one nurse who was left on the floor eating her lunch heard my breathing change, quickly checked me, and frantically called Dr. Wickert to tell him I was in transition and getting ready to push. He didn’t make it for the delivery, but the nurse was there, and she nervously but carefully freed the cord from around Susie’s neck. 

After that, I decided a doctor wasn’t so necessary. My grandpa decided to pay the bill for our hospital stay, which was good because we didn’t really have the means this time, and his gift meant we didn’t have to go into debt or hock any of our kids. And even better, Dr. Wickert gave us a refund on our pre-paid fees because he’d missed the birth.

We were still doing rescues (which were sorta like “sit-ins,” but that word is so 70s) for Operation Rescue at the time, and I was very surprised when I appeared before the judge on my court date. The attorney had asked me a lot of questions about our finances. I told him about gardening, canning, how many children we had, the bottom line on our tax returns, and how we got by as the Lord provided. So the first thing the attorney said to the judge was not about “The Necessity Defense,” which was the idea that we were trespassing and blocking the doors with our bodies to save lives out of necessity. 

Instead, the attorney questioned me about our kids and canning, and then he just said, “I would like to have her case dismissed for indigence” (or something like that, that sounded more like legalese), and he handed the judge my tax returns. The whole court hearing took about five minutes and my case was summarily dismissed, along with my court fees. The truth is, I didn’t even know what the word “indigence” meant and I had to look it up when I got home. It meant that I was “needy.”  And when I think of how I stand before my Lord Jesus, poor and needy, I can agree.

Bow down Your ear, O LORD, hear me; For I am poor and needy. ~Ps. 86:1

In September of 1991, on the first day of fall, Robyn Elaine was born. But she was born at home. I had met a beautiful midwife named Sharon, who calmed my fears and objections sufficiently, such as how we would keep the mess from childbirth from making our house gross, and whether she would break my water bag when it was time. The answer to the first question: Newspapers and towels. The second? No, she wouldn’t break the waters. I would go into labor without that, it would make the contractions easier, and she had never seen a baby delivered in the bag. It would break on its own.

The older kids had invented a game called, “Sharon, get the baby out!” and they played it upstairs while I was laboring downstairs. We usually had other people come over to assist the midwives any way they could, including some who watched over the kids.

Robyn’s name means the robin bird and Light. What better way to spread the Light of the World than to have a little blonde, blue-eyed girl with a passion for Jesus?

Valerie Grace was born in November of 1993. Her birth was more difficult. I was really large and Sharon thought she could be twins, or else one big baby and a lot of water, so she called in a second midwife, MaryAnn, who had a doppler instead of just a fetoscope. She said she could not hear a second heartbeat, so her guess was the one big baby and a lot of water, and she was right.

Things are much more laid back with a home birth – no hooking the mother up to machines. My midwives carried oxygen with them, but by and large, my attendants were far more in tune with me and the baby and our needs, instead of just focusing on the monitors. When Valerie was born, her shoulders were stuck, and Sharon and MaryAnn worked together to “get the baby out.” Valerie means “Valiant” or “Brave,” and she is here by God’s grace!

Lisa illustrated a cartoon book called “Cheaper By the Half-Dozen” as a project, and we produced copies for all our relatives for Christmas. In it, she describes the birth of her awesome baby sister Valerie, my #6, and just how much her siblings loved her.

By this time, Eric’s mother, Rejonnah, had said something to Eric about “crazy people who have too many kids and they can’t provide for them.” We were concerned about that because at the time, I was already pregnant again. How could we tell her about how irresponsible we’d been? This would be our  #7. 

Eric’s sister Elaine happened to be in town, and we were all together for Easter that year, at our house. We asked Elaine (Lainey) on the side about how she recommended telling her mom that I was pregnant again. She said, “I’ll tell her!” And after hinting around in several different ways, including an impromptu song and dance, she outright told her that I was pregnant, so we thought that was that.

A few weeks later, Eric mentioned the coming baby when he was over at her apartment, and it finally sank in with her that I was pregnant. She really hadn’t heard Lainey the first time! But she didn’t condemn. Her reaction was “Oh? Really? I was wondering what was taking so long. I figured it was about time for another one.” I guess she just thought we were crazy but she had grown to accept it. Not that she wasn’t careful to put things up on higher shelves when we came to visit, but she really did love her grandkids! And in the end, she became an advocate for us. She was very apt to tell people who were critical to mind their own business! – we were doing just fine!

Whatever we did, we did with a baby, whether it was attending a Purdue football game or directing a play. I even took a baby to my high school reunion in California – yeah, I was the only one who did that. I got used to the feel of a small, soft head under my chin, and it was comforting to me.  I also really love kissing a soft spot and feeling a little heartbeat there.

View over a baby head, but this one is a grandbaby. 

When I was 8 months pregnant with David, we had a wedding for Lisa out in the front yard with the yellow barn as a backdrop. The groom’s mother was also 8 months pregnant at the wedding, and it was rather different to see both the mother-of-the-bride and the mother-of-the-groom waddling around in maternity dresses.

David Spencer, named after King David, of course, was born in June of 1996. His middle name is a family name on Eric’s side, and it means someone who has the wherewithal to divide up property (dispense) fairly, rather like a steward. He and Lisa’s oldest boy, Jay, were the best of friends as they grew up, and for me it was a great time of bonding, nursing my baby boy side-by-side with my daughter and her baby boy.

Still, Lisa moved out, as married children do, so The Shoe was never overly full. We used bunk beds for the girls in the big bedroom, and Baby David’s bed was moved in with Chris.

Besides, Lisa had already moved to the attic so she could have some peace and quiet. Her attic room was really hot in the summer and cold in the winter, so her fiancé helped Eric install some insulation and siding up there. 

When I was pregnant with Vivian, we couldn’t think of a good name, so we took a trip to Michigan and brainstormed the whole way. At the time, Jack Kevorkian was killing people with his suicide machines. He provided the lethal drugs and the victims pushed the button to dispense the drugs into their own systems. Then he would drop off a body at the morgue. It was very gruesome, and law enforcement finally took care of the problem when an emboldened “Dr. Death” decided to show the whole procedure on national television. He is in prison for life now. 

But it was a deciding factor, as we headed to Michigan, Kevorkian’s home state, with our soon-coming #8. The baby girl name we chose was “Vivian,” which means “Alive” and “Belle,” which means “Beautiful.” I was very grateful for our large family, and for our #8 – the number, by the way, of “new beginnings.” Vivian was very much alive – I could feel her moving and kicking in the womb at 22 weeks, and her aliveness was the exact opposite of the death demon in Michigan. (Coincidentally, she lives in Michigan now.)

Vivian was my very last home birth, and when she was born in October of 1998, the midwife pronounced her “dangerously cute.” 

At this point in our family, photographers could only capture our family all together by piling them up. 

Everybody in Burrows knew where the “crazy family with all the kids” lived. And Lisa’s family had four of her six kids in it before she moved away from the little house adjoining our property in Burrows, so when all the siblings, along with their nieces and nephews were playing in the yard and climbing in the trees, or when they all rode bikes together, the neighbor kids thought that was wonderful! They really didn’t mind that our kids didn’t ride the school bus to Delphi with them every day.

And eventually, the community heard that we sang. So people thought of us and our seven kids as the Carroll County Von Trapp family and we started getting paid gigs at churches, women’s clubs, and Christmas parties. We were tough competition at talent shows.

I had a long talk with my high school friend about this time. She was considering having a child, but wasn’t sure, so she was doing her research by talking to me about why having children would be a good idea. I said she’d been living in a left-wing state too long. And I pointed to the Bible verses about children being a blessing from God. Finally, she made a decision to have children, and she had two. And she no longer lives in the left-wing state, so I’m proud of her!

Eric and I now have 8 children, 19 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren, along with 6 children-in-law and 2 grandchildren-in-law. There are more family members on the way, too, that you’ll hear about soon enough. But as Pastor Joe pointed out, our family is scattered. Several of them remain in Carroll County, but probably in only a few months’ time, only Eric and I will remain in The Shoe. This is as it should be...

"Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth.

Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.” ~Psalm 127:3-5

When you are a warrior with arrows, you shoot them. Or when you have candles, you spread them out so they can light up a greater area. Our children know Jesus, and God has spread them out to do the most good, to advance His kingdom on earth. Wherever one of our kids goes, they make us proud.

Here is a precept for building a good house, one that will last, even in times like these:

"But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?

Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like:

He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock.

But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great." ~Luke 6:46-49

 

Dear Father in Heaven, You are the Father of a very large family and You love each of its members, both great and small.  Your Word says that You have placed us in families, and it’s there that we can learn about love so that we can understand Your loving care for us.  You have built our house, the Haley House, upon Your Word, a sure, solid foundation in times of tumult and testing.  May we and all of our children and our children’s children, always know Your Word and be sure to do it. In the name of Jesus, Your Holy Son, Amen.

 

This is the 2020 Christmas Eve service I was telling you about.  And, here is the family picture we took afterwards.  Hint:  It’s not everybody, but it was the first time my dad was present for one of these.  After all, he started all this!

(Photo credit:  Pastor Joe Bell)

  

Christmas Memories

 When I was five, I believed in Santa. I know because I woke up on my fifth birthday thinking something magical had happened. As I walked into the kitchen of our trailer, my mom was up making breakfast, but apparently she didn’t see the sparkling aura around me that I inhaled at every breath, so I had to tell her. “MOM!” I said, quite in awe of the moment. “I’m FIVE!”

She didn’t realize how important that was, but I did. I must have been at least a foot taller than I was the day before, back when I was four. Our family was set to visit Santa’s Village, an attraction somewhere in California, but hey, I was five so I didn’t keep track of where it was. I only knew that I would see Santa and his elves that day, because of course his village was somewhere close to home and they were hard at work on the presents in October.

Occasionally I would also look hard at a total stranger because I thought they might be Santa incognito, but then I also thought a few strangers might be one of the Beatles.

I couldn’t have been more than eight before I discovered the truth about the man in the red costume. My parents’ ruse involved getting us kids out of the house on Christmas Eve by luring us into the car to “go look at Christmas lights.” Then one of them would watch us in the car and the other would remember that they’d “forgotten something” and go back into the house to get it, while what they were REALLY doing was putting presents under the tree. After the drive around town, they would come back to the house, and lo and behold! Santa would have already been there! Our custom was to tear into the presents immediately and impolitely.

But then one year, I caught my parents doing the positioning of the gifts, figured it out, and was very upset at the deceit. They begged me at that time to not tell my brother and sister, but to just try to go along with the fun. I did my best to comply.

But I never forgot that I had been lied to, so years later, when we had our own kids, we decided not to engage in that same deception. Once Lisa got in trouble for telling neighborhood kids there was no Santa Claus. And we had to explain to all of them that during Sunday School, we had to go along with whatever the parents had told their children. No setting them straight! Just nod and smile. Then there were the friendly cashiers who, maybe, still believed? They would ask our kids if Santa was coming to their house, and our kids would truthfully say, “No.” They left it to me to explain to the shocked cashier that “We don’t do Santa Claus.”

We did, however, engage in the theft of shed baby teeth. Eric left it to me to play Tooth Fairy because I could sneak into a room more quietly. Unfortunately, a few times I just plain forgot, and the kids had to do a Take Two. Occasionally, one of them would ask in all seriousness, “Mom, is there really a Tooth Fairy?” I would truthfully answer, “No.” But they puzzled over that for years and had fun leaving handwritten notes for whoever it was that was buying up their teeth. I wrote them replies in very tiny letters.

To confuse matters, we had a custom of leaving a Susan B. Anthony dollar in exchange for a tooth (nicknamed "tooth fairy dollar"), and then we started leaving those same Susan B. Anthony dollars at the bottom of the fuzzy red non-wearable stockings on the stair rail. Noticing the connection, some of our kids decided it was Santa who was taking the teeth. And some of them held to a theory that Susan B. Anthony might be the Tooth Fairy, and she filled their Christmas stockings too.

But we never told them a lie – we just let them figure it out themselves. All the presents under our Christmas tree were from real people who loved them.

Because we had a lot of kids in the house, we became everyone’s favorite Christmas charity – in addition to the hand-me-down clothes that regularly came our way.

Similarly, my mom told the story of one year the Protestant Women of the Chapel needed an idea for a Christmas project. I don’t remember where we were at the time, but Mom recommended a money tree. People could just hang money on the tree and then they would find someone who needed the money and present the tree to them. The idea took off really well – sure, put money on the tree for a needy family! Only, in the end, embarrassingly, they didn’t have a family, so they lamely decided to give the tree to … The Atanacio Family!! (Us.) The officers’ wives couldn’t think of anyone who could be more needy than an enlisted man’s family.

Well, when Eric and I started having kids, there were several years when we had long, long sessions opening presents. The kids themselves wanted to give something to everybody, so they would make little paper creations, like crayon drawings and stapled books, and then wrap them in wrapping paper scraps with lots of tape. They were very proud of their little paper things. But nine people (counting Mom and Dad) times eight presents each is 72 presents!! Some of the older kids had some money so they didn’t make little paper things, but it still made for a long morning.

And one friend had a ministry for Christmas and really wanted to bless our big family. She went to local businesses and solicited their leftovers, then carefully wrapped everything and labeled them “from Santa.” After church on Christmas Eve, upon our departure, we found our car stuffed with these Dollar Store presents that we took home and put under the tree. Not knowing who they were for or what was under the paper, we just passed them out. The kids got more than one of several of the little plastic games and toys, and we weren’t sure what to do with them all.

Another friend’s family made it a project to bless another family each year, and one year, they decided on us. They asked for wish lists from all the kids, and their sizes. That wasn’t hard, so we collected the data and sent it to them. We were stunned when this family brought presents for our kids – every single thing on every list! They delivered them to our house and carefully placed the huge stacks under and around the tree. You could not see much of the tree anymore.

One year, we were advised to visit the Salvation Army. There were some really nice toys there! Another year, the home of another homeschooling friend with a large family burned down and when people heard that, they decided these kids needed lots of toys! The mother begged us to take some of those toys off their hands so her kids would not be spoiled.

But when it was all said and done, I realize that those were not the times our kids remembered the most. Sometimes in the abundance of presents and the papercuts that ensued from all the unwrapping, their eyes would glaze over and they would become weary of the “stuff.” The abundance of “stuff” never brings happiness. (See VeggieTales’ Madame Blueberry for more information.)

Eventually, the 72 presents routine gave way to a reliance on a gift exchange idea. That way, the kids could concentrate their efforts on just one person, finding out what they really would treasure and being able to spend more money on it. This carried over to married couples, when they left home to become one with somebody else, and then married couples with kids when the cousins began to multiply. 

One year, one of the babies “picked out” an animal bath glove for an uncle. It seemed reasonable because that’s the relative the baby had in the draw and the baby actually reached for the glove when asked what they wanted to give to Uncle Matt, but for some reason, Uncle Matt was not as exuberant as he should have been. But … Why tell this story? Everybody has already heard it!

So if it wasn't stuff, what did make our kids happy at Christmas time?

Going caroling around the neighborhood. 

Sometimes we just showed up at a particular friend’s house because they loved to hear us sing, and then drove to another friend’s house – even in a different town. Other times, we made our rounds in Burrows and blessed our neighbors, or sang at Carroll Manor for the residents, who made their way to the common area with their walkers and wheelchairs just for our performance.

Sometimes we went with friends, and sometimes we just had our family. Sometimes we brought cookies with us and sometimes we were invited in for a treat. We always had hugs, and there were always smiles, except when we sang to people who didn’t have storm doors and they were freezing as they tried to keep the door open without inviting us inside.

Making the cookie church. 

It was a recipe in the Farm Journal Cookie Cookbook. We made the church according to the recipe every year once we started doing it. Some years, we had a sign for our own (real) church out front, with a tiny nativity set out in the “front yard.” We often had friends over to help, and one year, we made two churches side-by-side. One was for our Israeli Messianic Jewish friends – they made a synagogue. 

Last year, just about all our kids made cookie churches and I put pictures of them in a line down my Facebook post. They are always encrusted with various candies. Sometimes the happy pastor and his wife are greeting their congregants at the open doors, and other times, imaginative kids may make an entire crime scene with gingerbread fellas up on the rooftop rendering their mates unconscious by hurling snowballs.

There was always a Christmas program of some kind. 

As exemplified by our cookie church, we always celebrate Christmas by being in church, yea, even when Christmas is on a Sunday, or especially when Christmas is on a Sunday. There’s always a Sunday School program with children singing something like “I’m Gonna Wrap Up Myself For Christmas and Tie Me With a Big Red Bow,” or maybe “Christmas Is a Time to Love,” by Psalty the Singing Songbook. 

One year, our church did “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” about a normal church trying to do a business-as-usual Christmas Pageant with an angelic Mary and shepherds in their fathers’ bathrobes, when a rowdy welfare family decides to crash the party and get all the major parts. Emily played the teenager with the black eye who played Mary in the pageant. Chris played the goody-two-shoes son of the director, and Susie was Gladys, the Angel of the Lord who whacked the shepherds and yelled “Shazam!!”

Another year, when our church in Delphi was meeting in an auction barn, a talented church member built an entire set inside the auction barn, and we had a play on Christmas Day. 

Christmas plays, cantatas, children’s musicals, and the like, with sets that were left up from the dress rehearsal the night before so that the pastor and the worship band had to work around the manger at center stage – yes, some kind of program has always been on the agenda, from the time I sang the solo at Travis AFB when I was four.

The Christmas Eve service.

This is a service at Calvary Chapel of Lafayette, Indiana, that we haven’t missed since the inception of the church in 1982. In the early years, we had those messy white candles with the little sleeve to catch the drips. You were supposed to pass the flame from candle to candle till the whole place was lit up. It reminded you of this popular 70s song, Pass It On. But the sleeves didn’t always catch the drips. So, Pastor Joe tried using cigarette lighters one year – bad idea, since many of us were non-smokers. Most of us couldn’t get them lit and the rest burned their fingers. Now, we just have the LED kind that decorate the church without melted wax or open flames.

The first year, I really wanted to sing “O Holy Night” so I got together with Tom Camp, and he was able to accompany me on guitar with enough coaching. But it got even better. After a few years, we had a tiny church choir and I was sure we could sing “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” from Handel’s Messiah, if we practiced hard enough. But the eyes of the choir members exuded fear, just like those of the shepherds during the angelic invasion. Actually, they just didn’t want to do it and wouldn’t even try. 

So I said, “Fine, I’ll have my kids do it instead.” Lisa was ten and Emily was eight. We started in January, learning a measure or two at a time, singing a capella in our station wagon on the way to church. Over the course of the year, the four of us could sing a quartet. And we did! The next year, we added “The Hallelujah Chorus.” And each time we added another child, our choir grew.

The Christmas Eve service always has plenty of music, but since our family learned “The Hallelujah Chorus,” we have always used it as a finale to the program. One year, we did try something else, but we were dealt some reproach from Pastor Joe’s mother. She didn’t come to this service to hear variety – she came for The Hallelujah Chorus!

One year when our children were still small, a snowstorm made us very late to church, but we still pressed forward to get there.  When we opened the door of the church, Pastor Joe saw us and told us to come on up.  The kids kicked off their boot, assembled in front, and sang The Hallelujah Chorus.  Another year, we had every one of our kids singing with us, along with Chris’s wife Kayla, who was pregnant with Rori. That year, we sang 20 songs from the Messiah and sang several concerts.  Vivian knew all the songs by heart, but because she was so short, she sat perched upon a stool.

One year, our church met in a different church’s building, because a couple of arson-happy teenagers burned down our building. It would have been easy to say, “Well, since we don’t have a building this year, let’s just not have the service.” But the church needed that tradition. It is a victory shout to the Lord. It is saying, “Whatever satan throws at us, we are convinced that You are on the throne, and we will continue to lift up your Name.”

You guessed it! The Christmas Eve service this week speaks the same truth. Even though 2020 has been difficult for a lot of our church family, we will meet together Thursday evening. Our family will be assembled from several towns in Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois, and supplemented for the first time ever by Pastor Joe’s wife Peggy and their professional singer daughter, Julie. 

We will sing Christmas carols together and we’ll stand at the end to The Hallelujah Chorus. I will very likely close my eyes during parts of it (and try not to lose my place in the music, that most of our kids memorized years ago) and simply worship God. Some of our church family will come back after years of being separated from us, and we will love on them as if they had never been gone.

What can I say about The Hallelujah Chorus and what it means to us? It is The Song of the Church in Heaven, from the Book of Revelation. We will be there. It is Truth from God’s Word:

And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, "Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!” ~Rev. 19:6

Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!" ~Rev. 11:15

I can tell you that when it comes to Christmas traditions, Santa Claus is controversial. One “Mean Santa” recently denied a kid a Nerf gun and the video went viral. And Christmas trees, mistletoe, Yule logs, the Grinch, Mr. Scrooge, and even wassailing and eggnog have become controversial, questionable. Presents are often too materialistic.

For the Christian, the meaning and purpose of Christmas are clear. Christmas celebrates the First Advent. But the observance of Communion, which usually also happens during our Christmas Eve service, reminds us that there will be a Second Advent. Jesus will be the Ruler of the World, and there will finally be Peace on Earth. 

“…and He SHALL reign Forever and Ever and Ever…”

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread;

and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me."

In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. ~1 Cor. 11:23-26

Amen. Even so, Lord Jesus, Come Quickly!

Our Homeschooling Journey: Passing the Torch to the Next Generation

Our daughter Susie is making drums out of oatmeal boxes and cocoa boxes for her kids, that they can use on Sunday for our church’s Christmas service. This just makes me smile, since the first year we homeschooled, we also did “The Little Drummer Boy” ...

In December of 1980, Emily was born. We were living in a two-bedroom home in Lafayette, Indiana, and I was a regular caller on WASK Radio’s talk show, “Public Opinion.” I guess the listeners thought I was entertaining because I was young and said naïve things that made them laugh. One old guy who named himself “The Sage of the Wabash” was mad at something I’d said so he ranted about me randomly with words like “that lolly ... dolly …” when Jerry Collins, the host of the show, stopped him and said, “THAT’S IT! I’ve been trying to come up with a handle for her for weeks, and you just did it: Lolly Dolly!”

So the listeners enjoyed feeling like they had adopted me into their family as some sort of little sister, and when I called the show while I was in labor with Emily, they were all appropriately worried about me, and then relieved to the same extent when I called from the hospital the next day, announcing that everything had come out all right in the end. Now I had two kids, and I figured that was all I would ever need – one for each hand, one for each parent.

Lisa learns how to dress her baby sister 

Home Hospital, Dec. 12, 1980

We were also doing singing telegrams at the time – parodies to the tunes of familiar songs. I took the orders over the phone, wrote a song, and kept a schedule. Eric dressed in his outfit and delivered the songs, along with some optional gifts like candy or balloons. 

Eric departing for a balloon-gram gig

Haley & Haley Singing Telegrams

The day after Emily was born, Eric met me at the hospital with an order for a singing telegram that I wrote in my hospital bed. (Ah, self-employment!)

Two years later, whenever the kids were being noisy in the living room of the little house, behind my work desk while I was talking to a customer, the following script would invariably play out, and the kids had it memorized. 

Sample Script:

Phone rings. Margie picks up the phone.

Margie: “Haley & Haley Singing Telegrams.”

Noise from children in the background.

Margie: “Could you please excuse me for a moment? I’m going to put you on hold.”

Margie (pushing the hold button, and turning to the children with a menacing look): “KIDS! SHUT UP!!”

Margie pushes the hold button again.

Margie: “Okay, I’m back now. How may I help you?”

We decided that as soon as we could get Lisa into pre-school, we would. I needed some peace and quiet! So at age three (or a little before), Lisa was sent off to the preschool at the Nazarene church. We were very particular about what she would be taught there, but coloring and playing with toys is not usually too controversial. I didn’t really get that much of a break, though, because I had to shuffle her back and forth to the school.

When Lisa was almost-four, we started her at the Nazarene church, but took her out because we were (and are) very anti-Halloween and the children did something we thought was too close to trick-or-treating: They had cartoon spiders and other cutesy Halloween décor on the walls of the classrooms, and the kids, dressed up in costumes (several posing as The Count from Sesame Street), went from classroom to classroom to show off their costumes and get candy. So mid-semester, we moved her to Lafayette Christian School, where they did dress up, but everybody was a Clown, since C is for Clown, and that’s where they were in the alphabet by Halloween.

When Lisa was almost-five, we started looking at our finances more closely. Yes, she could go to kindergarten there at Lafayette Christian, but it would cost way more. And what of Emily? We couldn’t really afford this! And, it would be the same teacher for Lisa’s kindergarten that she had had for pre-school. While this teacher was a likable person, she also couldn’t spell very well. We had received a newsletter from her that talked about what they would do “tommorrow.” Considering I had already taught my very intelligent daughter how to read, it just wouldn’t do for her to have a kindergarten teacher who couldn’t spell!

Meanwhile, we had been listening to a radio show called “Focus on the Family,” which, amazingly, is still a guiding light in the world today. Dr. James Dobson was my generation’s “Dr. Spock.” When I was growing up, Dr. Benjamin Spock had a very popular child training book that taught parents that it was child abuse to spank your kids, and many kids ended up getting spoiled that way. (Not me!! I got spanked plenty of times!)

But Dr. Dobson began to have guests on his show, like Ray and Dorothy Moore, who talked about how great it was to homeschool your kids. I had never heard of such a thing, but listened with delight. They wrote books called "Better Late Than Early" and “Home Grown Kids” that were the premier books of their kind, that put forth the idea that children shouldn’t be institutionalized so early, but given time to investigate their world on their own first. Therefore, you could put your children in school if you wanted to, but at least not till they were in third grade. Even if they couldn’t read then, they could catch up very quickly because their brain would have had a chance to develop properly. 

There was even a warning of sorts, a la “The Cat’s in the Cradle”: If you institutionalize your child too early in order to get rid of them, what can you expect from them when you are old?

The idea of teaching my kids at home was thrilling, but I was just learning about it a few weeks before school started. I didn’t think I could do it that fast, even if kindergarten (I discovered) wasn’t even required. So we enrolled Lisa in the local school, and figured I would do homeschooling next year.

Meanwhile, I did some investigation. I mentioned it on Jerry Collins’ radio show and a school bus driver who had a nickname of “The Goat Lady” figured out who I was and contacted me off the air. She actually knew somebody who homeschooled (!), and she volunteered to take me to her house.

I felt like this was some kind of clandestine operation. We were driving down dusty gravel county roads far out in the country, and I knew I could never find my way again without The Goat Lady. I might as well have been blindfolded. On a farm hidden out in the middle of nowhere in Carroll County, we finally met Jeri, probably the only person in a three or four county area to do this weird thing called homeschooling. 

Jeri had about a dozen kids running around and playing in the dirt. My kids were fascinated and quickly dug in too. Jeri grilled me about why I wanted to homeschool and when I explained my relationship with Jesus and my desire to teach my kids what I believed, she decided I would do well. That was the first hurdle! Then she told me where I could buy a good curriculum and we exchanged contact information.

Before the school year started, I took the one-mile hike with the two kids to the school yard. I wanted to acquaint Lisa with the school so she could be prepared for what lay ahead. We let ourselves into the school playground and the children played on the swings and slides while I rested underneath the playset. To my chagrin, I read what other children had written under the playset, similar words to those which can be found in gas station restrooms. My mommy instincts were screaming out, HOW could I protect the mind of my four-almost-five-year-old if she would be playing here during the day, five days a week? And she could read this!

I could only tell her, “Lisa, if you play on this playground when you go to this school, don’t read what’s written under the playset!” How’s that for Kindergarten Orientation?

Then it was time for school to start. By that time, we had taken down our singing telegram sign and Eric was working a different job as a textbook buyer. He would take the one-and-only car away for several days, visiting college campuses and harvesting a crop of sample copies from the professors, to be sold to a place that would channel them into the used market, making them available to students for purchase. This left me without a car, and for some reason, the school didn’t send a bus around for the kindergarteners. The first day, I walked the mile with my four-year-old and two-year-old, walked the mile back home, and walked back again to pick her up. But four miles a day for a two-year-old was not practical.

Then we did the same thing but took the City Bus. That didn’t work very well either, as Emily and I had to disembark from the bus to take Lisa where she needed to be and then wait for the next bus to get home. 

I heard about some people who wanted to carpool, and I could just contribute gas money. That seemed like a good solution, until I found out these people smoked in their car! That didn’t last long.

During that first week of school, Lisa brought home several papers. Here was a coloring page with a fire engine! Why was it all scribbled up with a red crayon? Lisa explained that it was supposed to be red. I asked why she didn’t stay in the lines. She explained that they just wanted it red … so she made it red. 

I said, “Lisa, you know how to color. Do NOT bring home any papers like this again.” 

She said, “Well, the teacher liked it!” 

I made a mental note to talk to that teacher. Lisa had just won an animal art contest at the zoo. She definitely knew how to color.

“Lisa,” I said, testing the waters, “How would you like to have school at home?” When she understood what I was asking, Lisa burst into tears. I tried to get to the bottom of why she did.

“Are you going to miss your friends you made at school?”

“No, I don’t have any friends!”

“Are you going to miss your teacher?”

“No, I don’t like the teacher.”

I remembered seeing toys along the edges of the classroom on shelves. “Will you miss playing with the toys?”

“No, she never lets us play with the toys.”

“Then, Lisa,” I prodded the weeping child, “tell me, why are you crying?” Why don’t you want to have school at home?”

The answer burst forth with another round of tears. “I want to ride the BUUUUS!”

By the end of the week, I had decided I had had enough. I had gathered enough information so that I was feeling confident I could actually do this homeschooling thing ... if the school system didn’t mind too much …

So I approached the administration with a bit of fear and trepidation. I told them I would like to teach Lisa kindergarten at home. They agreed that it was my prerogative. But I had a question. What would happen if I decided to put her back in school next year? The answer:

“Well, we generally would need to have her repeat kindergarten.” Repeat kindergarten? Coloring and cutting? Really?

I showed up on Friday to take her home. We got all the consumables we’d paid for in a stack, and the school supplies that pertained to Lisa. On the way out, I spied something on the teacher’s desk and asked, “What’s this?” The teacher responded that it was a show-and-tell item one of the students had brought in. 

“It’s a record – a kids record – of “Gremlins?” I was incredulous! That was an R-rated horror movie! Why would little kids need to hear that story? I certainly would never have shown that movie in my home! Why would they need to hear about it in school? The teacher had an answer for that: 

“Well, children have to get used to the real world eventually.”

It was beyond me how furry demonic creatures represented the “real world” but that was one more real good reason for me to protect my child’s impressionable mind by bringing her home.

When we got home with the consumables, I found one that was just a psychology coloring book. Like: Color the face that shows how I feel when I have to go into the restroom. The coloring book would have been completed there at school and then sent home for the parents to see. There was a note to the parents in the front. Remember, this was kindergarten! It read, “Parents, if your child has a question about their schoolwork, certainly you can answer it, but do not try to take over – parents rarely make good tutors for their own children.” Well, with that insult … I took over.

On the first day of homeschool, Lisa, Emily, and I boarded the City Bus, with a lunch for each of our students. We rode the entire route of the bus, finally disembarking at our home again. Lisa was happy as could be, and we were all set. 

First day of Home School

Eventually we found little school desks to shove up against the living room wall and a flag to pledge allegiance to. We taught Bible lessons from the Egermeier Bible Story Book, and the children received Jesus into their hearts. And we had an open house around Christmas time for the skeptical grandparents, in a living room decorated with the children’s artwork. The children sang “The Little Drummer Boy” complete with homemade drums made of decorated oatmeal boxes, and competed in a spelling bee with their grandfather, who lost.

Carroll County REMC Calendar Art Contest entry, 2007

The song “The Little Drummer Boy” has a depth to it that many people miss, distracted by thinking that the song isn’t really Scriptural. After all, where in the Bible is there mention of a drummer in Bethlehem? But far more than simply the playing of a percussion instrument (which I love!), the song is about gifts. Ponder this:

It was a gift from God to have the opportunity to teach my own kids and instill in them my passion for Christ. I knew they could excel, and the more I researched it, the less I wanted to entrust that responsibility to anyone else. That year was only the beginning. I found out that it all boiled down to one important concept: I can do better than that! 

Thank you for the opportunity, Lord Jesus – it’s one my own parents didn’t have!

But in addition, we as parents have a special custom talent, entrusted to our stewardship by God Himself – an ability to relate to our own children in a way no one else can. Using that talent in a way that glorifies Him is our gift back to Him. Like playing a drum solo in a stable, it may not seem to be a very significant gift for a King, but it’s exactly what He needs – willing teachers for His little lambs. We only need to offer our gift without reservation, and He will accept it.