The discussion of “the right way to use AI at school” is a hot topic at my house this summer. My kids asked me to write some thoughts down, as well as some tips for ways they might actually use AI in school. Since I’ve talked about AI here before, I thought I’d share it with all the teachers, parents, and anyone who talks to the next generation. In my experience, kids mostly want to do the right thing. Talking to them like we assume the best of them is a great way to build confidence and start a conversation off on the right foot.

A recent report revealed that at least 50% of students admit to using AI for schoolwork at least once a week. For undergrads, that number goes up to 75%. Clearly, “everybody is doing it.” It’s past time we talked about how to use AI as a student and hang onto your integrity while you’re at it.

Is using AI to do schoolwork always cheating? When are the times it might not be? How do you know the difference?

The simplest way to think about it is this: Would I ask AI to do this with my instructor looking over my shoulder? If the answer is “no,” then you probably shouldn’t use AI. If, however, you can come up with a way to use AI that might mimic something your teacher would do for you, then perhaps AI is ok.

There’s more to this question than just “What can I get away with?” So, let’s discuss whether or not AI involves cheating, and then I’ll give you some of my best tips for using AI with integrity in your schoolwork.

What’s at Stake?

When thinking about AI use at school, we must first define some terms. Let’s start with the big one:

Cheat: v. 1. to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud, 2. to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting (emphasis mine)

Look at the first definition. What is the “something valuable” that you are deprived of by cheating? Answer: Learning.

One day, when you work in an office, your goal may become efficiency. In this case, AI will be your best friend. But currently, your office is “School,” and the goal here is different. Your goal is to gain something valuable – knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

There’s something you need to remember about this particular goal of gaining knowledge: Learning is hard on purpose. The struggle is part of the process to attain your goal. If you’re looking to bulk up, you don’t just reach for 1-pound weights at the gym. No, you work your way up to the 30-pounders over time and with a lot of effort. If you want to sing opera, you have to do some training before they cut you loose with an aria. Learning requires effort. There aren’t a lot of shortcuts to wisdom and knowledge.

The second definition of cheating uses the term “outwitting.” This means “to get the better of” by finding a loophole. I suspect that many, many times, AI will offer you a loophole. “It’s not strictly forbidden,” your friend whispers, or you’ve found this new app the teachers can’t detect, etc. Whatever the loophole is, you’re bound to find ways to bend the rules.

Here’s the problem with a loophole – it’s not just technically cheating. It is cheating. It’s dishonest. And it unnecessarily wastes your time. How so?

Maybe you’ll spend less time on homework, but if you’re not learning anything and, consequently, you bomb an exam because you never really learned the thing you used AI for, then you just wasted your time in school. Put another way, you brought your tiny wrist weights to a Crossfit gym. You did not achieve your goal of gaining knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

One day, you’ll graduate and be responsible for the knowledge you never really gained in your chosen field. When the boss expects you to “deliver an amazing solo” and all you can offer is an off-key version of “Baby Shark,” how embarrassing will that be for you?

The only person you cheat when you choose to take the easy way out is yourself. Your teachers will go on with their lives, secure in their integrity and actually Knowing Things of Value. Your odds of Knowing will be proportionately less every time you cheat.

So, is AI the devil? Probably not. Should you never use it? Meh. You’ll probably need to understand it and know how to operate within an AI world at some point. But now may not be your moment.

So How Do You Know?

Here are some questions to help you think through this in detail. Stay with me; I’ll give you a simple way to remember all of this when we’re done.

You’ve got an assignment. You’re thinking about using AI to get it done. 

Think about it this way:

1. What are your boundaries? Have you been given explicit instructions not to use AI in any form? If yes, step away from the pretty little chat box.

2. Determine the end goal of any assignment. Is it to create new content? Explore an idea? Solve an equation? What are you being asked to learn within this assignment? If you don’t know, ask your teacher. I guarantee you they have a goal for every assignment.

3. Based on this goal, is there any good reason you need a tool to help you?

“I procrastinated and only have 30 minutes to write a 10-page paper” is not a good reason.

4. Think about the best method to use AI tools in order to gain knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. What can AI do for you that no other tool or person is available to do? Notice how all of my examples are a bit complex. They involve you asking the right question of AI. None of these are simple uses for a tool where you plug in a question, and the answer magically appears. You’re better than that.

5. Ask the right question of your tools. Now that you know what you need it to do, how you pose the question is key. Talk to the AI like you would your teacher. You know that if you ask your teacher to help you solve a math problem, they will never just tell you the answer.So don’t even ask for that. Instead, you say, “Can you help me get started on this?”

Pro Tip: Be super clear with AI. The robots are a bit like toddlers, all hopped up on caffeine and trivia. You’ve gotta spell stuff out. Say, “Don’t tell me the answer. Just help me get started. How should I think about my first step?” The AI can take it from there.

6. Now, question everything you get from the ‘bots. AI hallucinates, makes bad choices, and gets stuff wrong. Not all of the time, but enough of the time that you should be suspicious. It’s like asking a B- student if you can copy their homework: Results may vary.

tl;dr

And, because I know you won’t read half of those words, I summarized it for you…  all with my little own brain. No robots used. I really wish it spelled an actual word, but maybe having a little acronym will help you remember.

My AI Crash Course

Unfortunately, in my industry of content marketing, we couldn’t shut our eyes tight and pretend ChatGPT hadn’t changed everything. As an editor, I started my AI spiral by learning how to detect it in our freelance community. And the tl/dr of that journey is: We can only identify writing that sounds like AI. We can never be sure. 

But if there was an AI detection software, I dabbled in it. Eventually, we did enough testing to develop our in-house standard for what makes content “AI-adjacent.” If writing looks like AI and smells like AI, we send it back to a freelancer to make it sound more human. We’ve developed several guides and tutorials to help writers and editors imbue life back into their writing. And here’s what I’ll say to the content creators out there: AI is pretty good. But it can only regurgitate ideas that already exist. The magic is in the innovation and the humanity you bring to your craft. Your work is still worthy. (Sidenote: You should pay attention to this lawsuit for how AI might impact your copyright protections.) 

I was also asked to help edit AI-assisted content. This spiraled into research and development of an AI-assisted product for our company to market. This fully launched product now means that I build a GPT for a specific client and then use that to craft content, including web pages, blogs, social media, white pages, or ebooks. Then, at least two of our editorial staff give it a good massage to add in the human element. We fact-check, add links, and rephrase things that sound distinctly “robotic.” 

I do a lot of reading and researching on AI, staying up to date by reading little-known substacks on LLMs and machine learning, googling words and concepts I don’t understand until I know just enough to be dangerous.

I tell you all of this to establish the parameters of my “credentials.” I understand the impact of AI as it relates to me and to my industry. I’m not an ethicist, and I’m not a computer science nerd. (Not throwing shade; I happen to be married to one of those. He’s the best.) I’ve thought about AI as an editor, as a writer, as a former teacher, as an employee who wants to keep her job, and as a parent raising kids who are trying to hold onto their integrity in a world that makes it easier to cheat than to do the right thing. I don’t pretend to have answers or to grasp the scope of this new advancement fully, but the following are ways of framing the big ideas so I can sleep at night. 

Things Every Person Should Know About AI

If we were sitting at a dinner table and you asked me, this is the cliff’s notes version of what I think everybody needs to understand about this new technology.

1. AI won’t take everybody’s jobs. But it will change them. Remember when the iPhone came out? It was just a nifty toy at first. Now, we literally can’t function without them. AI is still in its “nifty toy” stage. But change, it is a’comin’. Don’t be scared. You’re still integral to the process. But you’ll need to adapt quickly. Pay attention to your industry and how AI gets integrated. Jobs may go away, but there will be new types of jobs to manage the non-human replacements. Be ready to pivot. 
2. AI is only as scary as the people who get to use it. Just like our iPhones are both the most useful and dangerous tools, AI comes with good and bad. The laws and ethics are already up for debate in the highest global echelon, but if history has taught us anything, it’s that the bad guys don’t really care about laws designed to stop them from doing bad guy things. This is just another potential weapon in their arsenal. Combat the bad guys by learning how to use AI for good stuff.
3. AI is not a replacement for our humanness. In his presentation about AI in 2023, tech consultant Ben Evans talks about the difference between artificial intelligence and general intelligence. Before 2023, most of our machines could only do the thing they were built to do. My “intelligent dishwasher” will still only run the wash and rinse cycle, even if I fill it with clothes and use laundry detergent instead of Cascade. It isn’t “intelligent” enough to adapt to a totally new situation. In contrast, a dog or an octopus, when given a new toy, will find a way to interact with it that might be totally different from something it’s done before. That’s “general intelligence.” 

The thing is, there’s something that makes humans even more different. We aren’t sure exactly how to quantify human intelligence (although I’ve seen lots of attempts that involve math that are impressive but still lacking), but the general agreement is that humans have an X factor that we don’t know how to replicate in a machine. Or, at least, we don’t know how to measure if we’ve replicated it.

I’ll tell you my theory: Our X factor is our soul.¹ We have an internal moral compass, whether we choose to use it or not. A dog can’t tell you whether it’s right to tear up the couch cushions; he just knows he can. A human has the ability to assess the situation and make a moral choice. As far as we know, AI can recognize patterns, analyze data, and even recommend a “best” choice, but it lacks a soul and a moral code (other than what it’s been trained on) to make decisions for itself. It can advise, but it cannot (or should not) decide. That’s on you.

How To Use AI In Real Life

It’s not enough to just read the news and wring our hands. Here are my tips for daily life in a world where AI exists:

Do not trust. Always verify. 

Learning how to use AI to make your life easier is a worthwhile investment of time. But since you’re the one with a soul, you can’t just blindly trust it. The robots hallucinate, yo. They make stuff up. And they make it sound like it’s totally true. When asked to discuss news articles about the cancer-causing agents in orange juice, AI fabricated an entire New York Times article about a non-existent study.² We can’t blindly believe everything we read on the internet, and we can’t blindly trust that AI can do it better than us. No matter how you get your internet, you should be a savvy BS-detector when it comes to ads, spam, linkbait, hallucinations, and marketing ploys. Learn to fact-check. Learn what a reliable source is. Build your critical thinking muscles. And be thorough enough that you don’t miss when a chatbot tries to get away with lies, damn lies, and hallucinations.

Learn how to talk to the robots. 

The quality of the question you ask will determine the quality of the answer. In the example above about the false New York Times article, part of the problem was how the question was phrased to the AI. Because the prompter asked for articles about how orange juice causes cancer, in the absence of any known facts, the robot assumed it was true and crafted the requested article in the style of the New York Times. A better prompt would be, “Identify sources about the impact of orange juice on health.” There are plenty of real studies about orange juice and health. No need to make any up. I’ve spent months learning how to talk/argue with “the robots,” and it takes a bit of finesse.

A few tips:

• Give it a persona: “You’re an expert travel agent. Recommend three must-see non-touristy places to visit in Paris.” “You’re a short-order chef. Recommend three potential dinners I can cook in under thirty minutes with only five ingredients.”
• Try, try again. Don’t be afraid to demand another attempt. Rephrase your command and take a different approach. Be more specific about what you want.
• Ask questions in small pieces and in a logical order. Remember Geometry proofs? Yea, it’s like that, but without a protractor.

Teach your kids how to use AI with integrity. 

This starts with YOU learning how to use it with integrity. Just like we had to stay up on the latest smartphone technology so we could parent, now it’s time to add AI-aficionado to your resume. This is a good look at the conversation as it stands in academics. Just like with smartphones, machine learning and LLM technology are ever-evolving, and the conversation with your kids should be open and ongoing. “There’s good stuff here, and there’s bad stuff. How do we learn to use our powers for good?” 

Here’s my cheat sheet for stuff kids can learn to do with AI:

• Ask it to explain math problems or other tough concepts. (Do this with your kids so you learn together.) This is better than a YouTube video because you can ask clarifying questions and “talk” to the machine. Kids love this, and they’re learning more than just math: They’re learning how to converse and think critically about the answers they receive.
• If your child is working on a paper, have them do their research the old-fashioned way. Once they have their own ideas, they can talk to AI. They can ask it to:
  • Organize their ideas into an outline. (I don’t think this is cheating if the ideas are already theirs. I can’t tell you how often I did this for my students. It’s a complex skill. It’s fine if the computer shows them how. They’ll learn to do it on their own eventually. Or maybe they’ll learn how to use AI to do it well. I’d rather them know how to critically evaluate any outline, whether they wrote or not.)
  • Evaluate writing and tell them how to make it better. This is a great use of technology. Let them copy and paste their writing into the chat box and then ask it to “Make recommendations to improve my paper.” Even better – have them do this paragraph by paragraph so they get more detailed feedback. 
  • Provide synonyms or rephrasing for words or sentences that they don’t like or feel like they aren’t saying right. I do this all of the time in my own work. I don’t usually use what the AI gives me verbatim, but it gives me a starting point. Kids are terrified by a blank page or a blinking cursor. So, let them get a jumping-off point and then teach them how to play with words and structure.

Example of a prompt for book report writing

• Practice editing skills. Let the child generate a book report on the AI (after a frank discussion about integrity and how they should not claim responsibility for the work, obvi). Then, have them edit the robot’s work, looking for areas that are repetitive or factually incorrect. Point out to them that in order for them to catch a robot in a lie, they have to be smarter than the robot, i.e., they need to know the subject they asked the AI to write about. (Bonus tip on how to prompt for this. “You are a 4th grade student. Write a book report about the life of George Washington using facts that a 9-year-old would think are important.”)

AI Can Be For Everybody

You already use AI every day; you just may not know it. Ever talked to a chatbot on a customer support page? Ever used spell-check or Grammarly? (You should.) Artificial intelligence is already among us and will continue to evolve and change the way we function on Earth. Unless you’re canceling your internet and phone service any time soon, this will be something you come into contact with. Decide now how you want to talk about it in your home, how you want to learn about it for your job, and how you want to function with it in your daily life. I’ve read the doomsday predictions, and whether they’re accurate isn’t for me to decide. It just tells me we need more good people like all of you learning how to use your powers– and your robots– for very good things.

Footnotes:

1. To my Christians in the crowd – we’re made in the image of God. (Genesis 1:27) We’re the image-bearers, and we mimic the act of creation imbued in us by our Creator. The things we make will always be a dimmer version of the creator. But here’s where remembering we’re image-bearers becomes crucial: What do we do with our image-bearing selves in light of a new technology? How we respond, how we adapt and learn to live in the fallen world we’ve made, that’s the axis this whole thing turns on. We can’t hide from the consequences of our creating. But we can keep molding our lumps of clay, aiming for good, until the real Creator gets here and makes it all better.
2. Image from Mowshowitz, Zvi. 2023. “AI #44: Copyright Confrontation – by Zvi Mowshowitz.” Don’t Worry About the Vase. https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-44-copyright-confrontation. (“1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY Civil Action No. ________ COMPLAINT JUR” 2023)

And that slightly off-kilter hopefulness is what sends them careening into the early years of motherhood, hoping that this time they’ll find two matching socks in a load of laundry, or this will be the time baby sleeps through the night or the child will sit quietly in his car seat, or wear the outfit, or eat the cheese, or [insert whatever totally logical request a mother lays before her child in almost near certainty it will be rejected, but she tries anyway.]

We, mothers, are lunatics fueled on cortisol and optimism. We don’t always expect to win our battles, but we fight them anyway because it’s the right thing to do.

I received the following text from my son, who puts his own socks on now, but I’m not sure they match any more than they did when he was two. He’s across the globe this Mother’s Day, so his text arrived at 1:40 am. And, because I am a mother, his number is set to “always disturb,” and my phone helpfully read it to me out loud, waking me from my slumber. 

He said, “Happy Mother’s Day! Thanks for putting up with all of the nonsense that comes with twins and 7 children. You did a fantastic job.” 

I replied, at a much later, more sensible hour, “You are all a worthy nonsense. Please come home safe and soon.” 

Because, even now, when my kids dress themselves and travel worldwide without me, motherhood is full of worthy nonsense. Tracking them on Life 360 to “trust and verify” that they’ll always be where they said they would be, hoping just once they don’t step over the bag of garbage but pick it up on their way outside, begging them to get a job, get a haircut, put gas in the car, and make good choices. And the really crazy part is, I can feel eighty different kinds of irritation at a teen for multiple infractions, but I’ll still send her silly gifs, cook his favorite meal, and be utterly thrilled just to see their faces walk through the door at the end of the night. 

From the outside, it doesn’t make a bit of sense. 

Hardly fiscally responsible. 

Obviously not great for my health. 

Guaranteed to break my heart into millions of pieces again and again and again. 

But any parent, mom or dad, will tell you that the minute that baby is in your arms, raising kids becomes the most worthy bit of nonsense you will ever attempt. 

Nobody gets it perfect, except the God who invented parenthood and showed us all The Greatest Nonsense ever known in the Gospel. He allowed the sacrifice of His perfect son to cover the penalty owed by rebellious children who rejected Him repeatedly. His solution to the world’s sin didn’t make a lot of sense from the outside, either. But that nonsensical, dogged pursuit of His wayward sons and daughters is just the sort of thing that gives me hope to keep pursuing my own bedraggled, hormone-ridden children no matter how many different directions they scatter. 

It’s the ultimate exercise in optimism. 

I may gain more skills or accomplish new things in my life, but there will never be a more worthy, ridiculous pursuit than the one I have now and always: Mother to Sam, Ian, Adam, Ellen, Willa, Mira, and Finn. It’s silly, exhilarating, terrifying, exhausting, infuriating, hilarious, and humbling. But it’s a worthy sort of nonsense.

And they’re worth every bit of effort. 

With two sons heading off to college in the fall, we spent all last spring planning an epic trip Out West, one last “fling” in our 12-passenger van. I researched, planned, and even employed a spreadsheet to keep our itinerary straight. One of the items on our plan included bike riding around the Grand Canyon.

Our First Mistake

Two days before we left, we realized my strategic error. We forgot to teach the baby how to ride a bike. Now, when my “baby,” who is ten, was an actual baby, he had a running bike. But somewhere in there, the rest of his siblings outgrew their bikes or left them in the rain too long, and he never inherited a bike with pedals. And then we forgot about that particular milestone because there were 440 other milestones to be achieved.

I sent my husband and the baby to Walmart to buy a bike he could practice riding. Unfortunately, it rained excessively before we left, so he didn’t get much practice time. In desperation, we strapped the bike to the back of the van and headed out.

Do you know the feeling where you start to sense something isn’t going to go as planned, but you don’t want to believe it yet? I should have known when we got to Dallas, and the friends we planned to stay with came down with strep. We scrambled for a hotel, fed the gang In’ n Out Burger, and told ourselves, “It’s fine. We’re fine. It will all be fine.”

And it was. 

Until somewhere between Amarillo and Albuquerque, when the “check engine” light came on.

Change of Plans

My husband found the only Auto Zone for 100 miles and veered off our course. We were actually on Route 66, in a town that could have doubled for Radiator Springs. We purchased an “error light decoder ring” or something and determined that the prognosis for our van was not good. 

I got on the phone with the nearest Nissan dealership and employed my southern accent and the desperate voice of a mother of seven to get them to agree to help us the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. This meant another change of plans. 

Meanwhile, the baby conquered his bike riding skills after two nights of practicing in hotel parking lots. He finally nailed it in the Tex-Mex restaurant in Albuquerque, right next to the dumpster. Classy boy.

When we left behind our van and rented not one but TWO vehicles, we also left his bicycle behind. That was all the practice he would get before we made it to our first real destination, The Grand Canyon.

As you can imagine, the bike they gave the baby at the canyon was totally different from his bike. It had brakes on the handles and was just a smidge too big for him. He gamely climbed on and wobbled his way to the trail. The rest of my kids careened off, madly pedaling their way around the biggest hole ever in 50 mph winds. At this point, I remembered I’d only recently recovered from 4 broken bones and why in the name of all that was holy had I planned something so dangerous????

I drove like a tiny grandma while the wind whipped us fiercely and picked up my bike a time or two. A bus scared the baby, and he drove off into a ditch (not The Big Ditch, fortunately). 

Husband and I were a bit tense with all the near-death experiences circling us, but we managed a few moments of that Sacred Holy when you stare at something wondrous with all of your people beside you. Worth it. 

We headed North through Utah toward Colorado. Meanwhile, I fell in love with my rental car and announced my intentions to divorce the van for this tiny SUV with CarPlay capabilities. We also fell in love with the intimacy of traveling by small car in a small group. 

Nobody Expects Snow in June

We arrived at our Air BnB in Colorado in a light flurry. No big deal. It’s June 1st tomorrow. Just a bit of moisture…

Pro Tip: When booking lodging, always check the elevation. I inadvertently booked us about 10,000 feet above sea level, where the snow still falls, even in June.

We also had a feverish kid on our hands. Husband took the first shift, and I drove the others down our mountain where it was dry and sunny. We had a marvelous visit to Pike’s Peak, my favorite thing ever. There were no bike rides, somebody else drove us up the mountain, and the view was… breathtaking.

The next day, I took sick kid duty and Husband tried to take the kids to Rocky Mountain National park. The “unusual for this time of year” snow nipped that in the bud, but they took a short hike before returning to the snowy infirmary. They settled for a snowball fight in our yard and later deemed it their favorite thing about the trip. 

Pro Tip: Skip the tour bus. Rent a place with a yard and snow.

We returned to New Mexico for our errant van, all fixed up and ready to rumble. I kissed my rental car goodbye, and we headed home. Because we had a sick kid, we had to cancel all other plans and head home. But that wasn’t such a bad thing. We’d accomplished what we set out to do. We’d seen the big ticket items. We’d bonded and laughed and adventured.

And, we really did kill the van, just like we said we would. 

I don’t deserve it. But I am grateful.

Bodily Harm

I broke my foot and was told I would never walk again. Spoiler alert: I did. But there were several months where we stared down the possibility of ramps and scooters, rails in the bathroom, and reorganizing our whole physical state to make allowances for an unusable foot.

I was not content with that diagnosis and neither was my husband. He helped me fight for answers. Miraculously, with my daughters holding my hand and cheering, I defied my doctor’s orders and took my first steps. I learned to revel in the feel of the carpet underneath my feet, I counted steps and wiggled my toes to remind myself they were working. I turned my one-legged workouts into two-legged endeavors again, rejoicing with each tiny inch of progress. And on the day I finally hopped and lunged without pain and with full abandon, I laughed out loud to see that working limb in the basement mirror.

With exhilaration, I pushed my body onward, faster, I watched my toes as they hopped and spread and caught me and I was thrilled, each cell crying out “Glory!” as I jumped. And then I was flying…

Backward.

I put my hands behind me and felt the sickening crunch as they absorbed my impact and crumpled.

My wrists were broken.

Nothing for it but to laugh, to cry, to call out to Jesus and my sons who were scrambling to find me ice and their daddy.

And then, in the days that followed, I looked down the timeline of what I hope is my boring ascension into the state of being elderly and experienced a small taste of being sound of mind but betrayed by my body. Of being humbled to accept new levels of basic help. Of being fed, having straws in my beverages, and being dressed. I didn’t feel nearly 42. I felt 82 and then some.

In both of these situations, my humiliation was covered up by the kindness of my family, my friends, even my students, who carried my books, moved my chairs, opened my water bottle, wiped my chin (that was just my husband), and met every need and comfort I wished for.

There were good doctors, kind nurses, and the gentlest, most patient husband on the planet. The thought of him tenderly slathering me with my nightly skincare serums or feeding me dinner will never not make me weep just a little. I was in pain, I was broken, but so many people wrapped me up in their arms and said, Hey, we’ll carry you a minute.

And I didn’t know how badly I needed that kindness.

Sad Goodbyes

I walked away from a job that mattered to me this year. (Ok, truthfully, I hobbled.) In fact, the woman who all but crawled out of the school building in May was emotionally and physically spent. The decision to leave was painful, messy, and not what I would want in a perfect world. I left students and co-workers behind who I love dearly. I worked hard to forge those relationships, to earn trust, to do a job I was proud of. I do not regret those moments or the energy I expended on them. But I grieve what was lost and what might have been. I left with my confidence shredded and a healthy fear of unchecked power.

There’s a happy ending here, too. God was already weaving another job, handmade for me, with people who value my skills and trust my judgment. I work from home, sitting beside my husband, and this week when my kids went to school we finally understood why everyone who didn’t homeschool or teach was always so excited about “back to school.”

(Admittedly, I did NOT feel that way when my kids drove down the driveway without me that first day. I felt left out. I liked being in the building with them and I missed my students!)

But, um, now I understand and this new season is really ok with me after all.

I sit here today, officially 42, and can say we’re turning a corner. My limbs are on track to serve their purposes for another 42 years, at least.

And if one or three of these limbs ache and tell me a storm is coming for those 42 years, that will be ok. Because even the ache is testament to the faithfulness of God – to his unrelenting kindness. The aches remind me of my humanity, the brokenness of the world, my body, my soul. They remind me that I need saving. But God – He heals bones and He heals broken people. He heals us of sadness and He redeems us from our sinful nature and willful paths of destruction. I can literally feel in my bones that, in my weakness, He Is Strong.

Some women reach middle age and get a cool tattoo on their forearms to remind them of the lessons they’ve learned in life. Mine would probably read “Fragile. Handle With Care.”

But instead of a tattoo, I’ve got jagged scars and achy wrists as my potent reminder of my frailty. And that’s pretty cool, too.

I was rushing toward my espresso maker, planning to coax sweet nectar from its boiler, when I heard a loud THUD in the kitchen. I rounded the corner just in time to see the children frozen, eyes aimed downward. My youngest had dropped an entire Costco-sized jar of mayonnaise on the kitchen floor. Nobody dared move – least of all the kid who had mayonnaise spurted up his leg.

Without a word, I assessed the situation and discerned that it wasn’t the entire jar that now laced my kitchen with egg-based substance, merely the bit that had flown out of the top with such a force as to coat the nearby dishwasher before landing in a sad glump inside the floor register. (Aside: whoever thought a floor register in the highest traffic corner of my kitchen was a good idea is badly mistaken. I’m all for indoor heating and cooling, but don’t put the floor register in a location that has the highest potential for smashes, seepage, and spills.)

I grabbed a wad of paper towels and worked on Youngest’s leg, because: people first. But I had my eye on that floor register, just daring that glob to move any further down the vent before I finished cleaning the slippery stuff from my baby’s socks. As someone who isn’t a big fan of eggs, I could only imagine the distasteful smell that might emanate through every register in our home if I didn’t swiftly remove the Hellman’s from the Hole.

I handed a very slippery wad of paper towels to the Youngest and sent him to the trash can. Then I yanked the register out of the floor. I must have been very focused because I didn’t notice the silence that hung over the kitchen while I cleaned up the condiment-soaked innards. It was only when I turned back around to face Youngest and saw him standing very still, mayonnaise still congealed in his Adidas, watching my face. “Am I in trouble?” he asked carefully.

I blinked. Then I giggled. “No, dear. Not at all! You’ve got six older siblings. This is nothing!” My utter lack of reaction has been drummed into me by so many breaks and spills before you that I can’t even muster a hint of rage. “Now swipe that bit out of your shoelaces before it stains…”

And it’s true. Those blessed older siblings have systematically numbed my Reactor when it comes to physical damage. They’ve spread bodily fluids to the far corners of the house (who can forget the one who peed on my diploma?), they’ve made off with our coffee, tripped, fallen, and splooshed it onto the ceiling, and they’ve treated every lamp, every sofa, and every chair as if they were made of Little Tykes plastic and then acted surprised when it broke. They pick holes in the fluff of the pillows, poke their fingers through the wall closest to the toilet out of boredom, write with Sharpies on every available surface, forget to tell us the toilet is running and leaking through the ceiling, and reliably kill the lawnmower every season.

As Husband and I joke – Kids are the worst roommates ever.

We’ve lived with them long enough not to blink at the next minor calamity (although as the kids get bigger, the mistakes do, too). Maybe we’re mature enough to realize that all of these things are a temporal and rusty treasure – or maybe we’re just slightly dead inside.

Two things I know: 1 – Our younger kids are the beneficiaries of all this chill. We are better at discerning mistakes from mean intentions. (ProTip: broken household items are almost never the result of mean intentions, just thoughtlessness.) Our reactions are decidedly less screechy than they were ten years ago.

2 – The day is coming, very soon, in fact, when my house will be clean and nothing will ever get broken and I will miss these horrible roommates with every fiber of my being. We raise them to leave, I know. I will send them out with joy and only a little weeping, I promise. But as my older kids are thinking about college and my Baby announces his disgust with dinosaurs as “kid stuff,” I feel this broken nest we live in getting too small for all the fluffy feathered wings they are beginning to sprout.

Here’s the good news: I’ve got stories to keep me giggling, even with slightly wry laughter, for years. (Although not ever sure Hubby will find that second broken weedwhacker funny.) Husband and I will savor those stories, tell them over and over to potential kid spouses and future grandbabies, and settle into our sofa, that hasn’t moved across the floor on a daily basis from overzealous plopping, to look forward to the day when our favorite roommates come back to visit and start clogging up the plumbing again.

It’s a broken nest, full of broken people. But I’m so grateful we’ve crashed around in it together.

Inevitably, the alarms were more for him, as the medicine made me sleep so heavily I rarely heard the midnight chimes and he had to rustle around, find my pill, and shove it down my throat. It was a few months later, after delivering a healthy baby girl, that I was in Target and heard someone’s phone chime with a familiar alarm. I whispered to my husband, “I have the sudden urge to take a pill…”

My gestating days are over but my pill swallowing ways have not slowed. Now it’s the medications and herbal supplements to keep me “young and vigorous” as middle age wraps its arms around my middle and tries to drag me down. My memory has somewhat improved, enough that I can keep up with my own pill schedule, and I dutifully stop my day to chug some water and fling my head back to get the appropriate number of medicines down my gullet. My husband always praises my self-discipline and ability to remember my distinct pill schedule. I suspect he is relieved not to bear that particular burden anymore.

I tell you all of this so you’ll keep it in mind when I tell you the next thing:

I accidentally swallowed my son’s pain killer.

He was laid up on our couch, recovering from some teenage procedure (I can’t remember which one) and I was having “a bit of a day.” I remember that I was in the van a lot, whipping around town, running a myriad of errands and walking fast. Texts were zinging on my phone and my list was 80 pages long. My brain spun wildly and I was trying to get home in time to deliver my son’s medication before he felt any twinge of pain. I hit the door and ran straight to fill up my water bottle. Three children attacked me with questions that I tried to field as I wrestled my son’s pill bottle open and counted out the proper dosage. Another question winged my way (no doubt something of the “what’s for dinner?” variety) and I stood up straight to think about my answer. As I thought, I held my water bottle in one hand and my son’s pill in the other.

And then I quit thinking and did what came naturally: I swallowed the pill.

It was all the way down before I squeaked in surprise and said, “Oh no! That wasn’t my medicine!”

From the couch, I heard a cackle followed by a “Moooooo-oooooom!”

I yelled out to my husband, “Babe? I just took the wrong pill.”

And then I remembered the pain-killing, prescription-strength, night-night kind of pill it was.

“And also? I may need you to take over dinner and bedtime duty tonight…”

There was nothing to do but let it happen. I took out another pill to give to my son – who was still laughing – and went to put on my pj’s. Sure enough, 45 minutes later, I was slithered down in my bed, barely awake, accidentally drugged by my own self-discipline.

If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve done it one more time. I took my husband’s vitamins without thinking. My prostate will be healthy forever, thank you very much.

2 Things You Should Know:

1. This story happened over a year ago. I’ve only just now worked up the nerve to tell you. My kids still tease me about this and every time they get a new prescription, they admonish me to “Keep your hands off, Mom.”
2. I still hear that old iPhone alarm sometimes and feel thirsty, like I ought to swallow something. Perhaps my kids can use that to their advantage one day when I get old and forgetful and they want Mama to take her pills. They’ll have to dig an iPhone 4 out of some museum and get it to play “chimes.” Those bells are the boss of me.

“Skip it,” I say. “Start in the middle. Then we’ll go back and write the opening.”

Or we won’t.

Sometimes the best writing just drops a reader down in the middle of the action and tears off without warning.

But as I sit here and stare at the blank white screen and that flashing black cursor, I wonder, “If I don’t know what I want to say and I start in the middle, will I figure it out along the way?”

Writing isn’t a “hobby” and it isn’t like riding a bicycle. It’s a cutting of oneself open and bleeding out onto the page. It’s brain and muscle and sinew and Feeeeelingsssssss. It’s a practice and a discipline. And I haven’t practiced or disciplined it much at all in a very long while.

I thought I was waiting on the Muse to return after churning out two novels. But it’s been a hot minute since I handed those off to the Purgatory of Publishing Dreams and the Muse is the kind of random friend who responds to texts of “Where r u?” with a bubble and three ominous dots that hang on the screen for two years: (…)

I told myself that while I haven’t developed my own writing discipline, I’ve very much developed my practice by helping 150 other budding wordsmiths fine-tune their skills during the school year. And, yes, this is true. But it’s too easy to lose track of my own voice in the clamor of others’ halting tones.

So I do this instead. I black out my screen so I can’t check my email and I tell myself, “Butt in chair. Words on screen. Do it or die.”

Not physical death, no. But the Voice inside will die if not taken out and exercised once in a while. Not for work, not for student feedback, but for no other goal than pleasure.

Ok, I lie.

Writing isn’t always pleasurable.

It helps when I have a good idea and the thing I am writing is just for fun, but, even then there is a discipline to making myself sit down and put the idea into words. In fact, I’m making me write right now and I’m not sure I’m enjoying it at all.

Lying again.

I like it a little bit.

It’s even harder than I remember, but that’s because I’m out of practice and my Voice is all creaky with underuse.  This little “essay” is hardly even a warm-up, but it’s the first set of scales up and down the QWERTY keys in awhile, so I can hardly expect an aria to sing out from the page. I’m ok with a painful CROAK at first trill.

CROAK.

CROAK.

CROAK.

(…)

But really, I’m just looking for ways for them to fail.

It’s our dearest wish to see our kids thrive, obviously. But the truth is, trying something new often ends in failure. And, if parents are honest with themselves, it’s in the failure that our little humans-in-training can learn the most.

My son has taken up indoor track. Admittedly, we’ve pushed him into it a bit. His long legs and lanky figure eat up the pavement beneath him. But this is his first chance to run against anyone and, like any kid confronted with something new, it’s been an intimidating prospect. Failure in front of his friends is a very real fear.

We’ve driven him to practice, nudging him along when he didn’t want to go. There have been times I’ve felt like I shoved him out of the car, but he always returned after practice with pride in his voice at what he’d accomplished. He’s learned to take instructions from coaches on something that he’s done instinctively for years. He loves the camaraderie of the team, despite himself.

He had his first meet a few weeks ago. Logistics demanded that only one of us go with him, so I had to be content with clutching my phone and waiting for updates from my husband.

First came the text that he was nervously lining up for his first race.

Silence.

I sat very still and stared at my phone screen.

And then…

“He fell.”

That was all the text said.

“Nooooo,” I moaned at my phone. I immediately tapped back, “Is he ok?”

The next response was a video. I didn’t want to watch, but I did, through my fingers, as my first born son paced at the starting line. He was talking and laughing, but his body language told my mama eyes he was nervous. I saw him kneel down like a pro and I was secretly impressed at all he’d learned in a few short weeks with a coach to guide him. The shot fired and my heart pounded as I waited for the fall I knew was coming… It was maybe 8 seconds into the race. I watched his tall body rounding a corner, passing several runners, and then he just dropped out of sight. I clicked my phone shut and sighed out, “My baby.”

He’ll be devastated to hear I still call him that.

But in that moment, when they fall, they are all still my babies, all six feet, two inches of them. I held my phone to my heart and prayed for my boy, prayed he was ok, that his pride was no more injured than his body. I willed him to not be afraid to run his second race.

The next text from my husband confirmed that he saw our son across the track talking to his friends, so he must be ok. I blinked a bit. He was ok? It looked like he had face planted while running warp speed.

I texted my questions to my husband who replied. “Nah, he’s fine. He didn’t even finish last.”

*record scratch*

He finished the race?

“Yah, didn’t you watch the video?”

I looked down at my phone in confusion. I hit play on the video and watched that horrible moment when my son disappeared, only this time, the video kept playing. He rolled to the side to avoid other runners and was up and running again in one swift movement. I started cheering him around the track, whispering his name and alternating that with “my sweet baby,” only this time it wasn’t motherly compassion, it was motherly pride. He passed three other runners before the race ended.

In that moment, I knew that he’d achieved all we ever wanted him to – in track and maybe in life. He fell… and he got up and tried again.

It’s wretched to watch your kids fall or fail at something – to sit on the sidelines and be unable to stop the crash, or clutch them close to your chest like instinct tells you should. So we sit on our mama hands and cluck encouraging words to our babies under our breath. And then we watch, waiting to see what happens next. And the moment we see them tuck and roll and then bounce off the pavement, tearing forward with determination we weren’t entirely sure they possessed, it is a relief of monumental proportions. Maybe we haven’t failed as parents after all.

We’ve been telling our kids all along that it’s ok to fail, that we want them to not be afraid. But in all honesty, we’re secretly afraid of the first moment they DO fail, certain it will crush their delicate spirits or end their academic career. Yet there’s freedom in this first plunge from the safety of our nest.  Because when the fall doesn’t break them, when their GPA doesn’t define their future, when their teammates jump in to comfort and encourage, we see them rise to meet the challenge in front of them. And we realize how much better they are for the fall – for having the worst happen and discovering the world didn’t actually end.

I’ve still got a few more years left of standing by to ply my son with carbs and hugs when he returns home, bruised, maybe, but standing even taller, if that’s possible. And when he really does jump from the nest to his next adventure, it’s a relief to know he’s learned the most important thing: How to get back up.

“The Lord lifts the fallen and lifts those bent beneath their loads. The eyes of all look to You in hope.”

– Psalm 145:14

Touching something solid helps me fight the wobble.

Our family is jumping into some changes in the coming weeks. My kids are going to school this year rather than schooling at home with me. And I’ll be teaching, but I’m teaching mostly other people’s kids. These are good changes (Stupendous! Exciting! Thrilling!), opportunities we chose, but the scary is real at our house as the first day of school approaches.

As one of my kids put it, “We’re all a bit ‘Nerv-Cited.’”

As I ponder all of the New looming ahead- new uniforms, new schedules, new teachers, new expectations, new curriculums, new faces, new community… I feel the need to grab the chair in front of me just typing the list. The swirl of worry and So Many Unknowns makes me feel a bit wobbly. I wonder how to make my kids feel secure when I feel as if our little family ship is headed for Adventure Falls.

Speaking of ships, remember Odysseus? When he sailed through the dangerous waters near the Sirens, he ordered his men to lash him to the mast of the ship. He anchored himself to the only thing that could keep him safe through the danger.

The things on the horizon for us aren’t dangerous, really, but they are Unknown. We’ve even had the blessing of time to prepare and make a plan. But I can’t make my kids (and myself) not feel nerv-cited, I can’t make every transition smooth, every assignment easy, every classmate a friend. I’m the Grown-Up, not their fairy godmother.

But I can model for them how to hold on tight so they don’t wobble when the change comes. Realistically, not all changes that come into my kids’ lives in the future will be good. And they may not have happy endings, not until Jesus comes back.

Maybe if my kids see me clinging, arms and legs wrapped tightly and eyes screwed shut, to the One True Thing –  if they see me in the Word, praying my nerves out loud, admitting when I’m scared and that I’m trusting Jesus to hold us all in His hand, if I keep pointing them to Truth when the world brings them questions… then maybe they’ll learn how to hold tight when change – and ordinary life – swirls around them.

This morning in church we sang the words:

“You are my Rock, and You never change.”

I closed my eyes to take it in, grasped the chair in front of me, and braced myself against the wobble. My security is in Christ. His grace is enough. His strength is sufficient. And His glory is already achieved. So now we hold on tight for the ride…