Author: wordworkerrussell

I'm a homeschool mom of five, three girls and two boys. I'm a daughter of the King who works hard to keep her family living as close to God as we can. God created a world perfectly designed to provide everything we need, and designed us to reflect Him throughout it. Writing is my happy place. I have always loved stories and words because they express the human spirit so beautifully. A story can speak many messages, each received by the reader as needed or understood by individual experiences. I hope that my stories, both true and fantasy, speak to you in some way.

Stewards and Kings

In Tolkien’s famous trilogy, the kingdom of Gondor was ruled by kings who carried elven blood in their veins and lived by a sense of honor stemming from the Valar themselves. These kings ruled from a great throne while their most trusted advisors sat in stewardship below. When Isildur failed and left Gondor kingless, the stewards remained below the throne, vowing to keep their trust for the day the line of kings was restored. That is, until Denethor assumed stewardship and forgot about the throne above him. When the rightful king appeared, Denethor rejected him furiously, resentful of any threat to his own perceived authority. He chose angry despair and self-destruction over hope and redemption, all to preserve his own vanity.

By contrast, the rightful king returned without fanfare. He spent his time fighting in the ranks, walking with the fearful, and comforting the broken. Few even knew his true identity. As the final battle approached and his identity could no longer be hidden, he did not march into the city and seize the throne from the recalcitrant steward. He walked secretly in the camp, healing the injured and bolstering the courage of frightened soldiers. Only when victory was won did he claim his birthright, and then bowed to the smallest of his subjects in humility and service.

The first century Jewish religious elite had developed a reputation of scholarship. Their time spent poring over scrolls and arguing about application inflated their authority in their own eyes. When the King arrived and did not bow to them, His stewards, they flew into a self-destructive rage and went to war against Him. They even allied with those they considered most evil in order to preserve their own self-righteous vanity.

Jesus, the King Himself, came as the humblest of men. He walked the earth in homespun wool, went hungry and thirsty, healed and comforted and fed those with need. He walked the road to the cross, crushed under the weight of responsibility and love, every moment also carrying the unused authority to obliterate his tormentors. Only after resurrection proved Satan’s ultimate defeat was His Kingship proclaimed to the four corners of the earth.

The problem with Denethor and the Jewish elite was that they forgot that a steward is a servant. He or she has no authority, simply cares for another’s most precious assets. A steward carries responsibility to another, responsibility that effaces all other purpose for his or her life. However, all authority lies with the owner of those precious assets, and the steward must give account to the owner for every action taken. A steward who forgets the interests of the owner in favor of his or her own fails. A steward who inflates his own importance to preserve his position fails. A steward who focuses on unproductive actions to the detriment of the owner’s precious assets fails. A steward who takes advice from the owner’s enemy instead of listening to the owner fails.

There is only one King, and souls are His most precious asset. We, humans, are his stewards tasked with preserving souls, including our own. We have no authority over each other in His kingdom, only a responsibility we could never bear without His mercy. Souls are fragile things and require gentle tending to thrive. Each is different and must be carefully cultivated with love and compassion and understanding of what that soul needs in order to reveal the beauty for which it is loved by the King. We as stewards, as humans, as treasured souls, have no other purpose.

A Round Peg in a Square Hole: What is Learning?

Before any of my children were born, I had ideas about what education was supposed to look like. I had been homeschooled and knew I wanted to homeschool my own children, but I thought in terms of curricula, subjects, schedules, and grades. We were going to be academically rigorous and graduate at the top of every expectation. Then my children were born.

My oldest daughter talked fluently at a year old, loved stories and educational TV, and exhibited an empathy and understanding beyond many adults even as a toddler, but couldn’t read until she was nine. My oldest son couldn’t contain himself, struggled to meet anyone else’s expectations, but could name dozens of dinosaurs by the time he could talk, learned to read with zero instruction, and thought like an engineer. My middle daughter struggled to focus on anything, froze up in the face of any expectation, but had perfect pitch and rhythm. My youngest son had no emotional control and struggled with milestones, but could tell you anything you asked about reptiles or amphibians and had an instinct for finding and loving the lonely. My youngest daughter has a mighty will, an insatiable craving for attention, a memory like a steel trap, and a spirit that could not be contained by external forces.

The more they grew the more apparent it became that my grand plans for their education were flawed. Personalities didn’t fit the boxes of expectation. While one was a natural at languages and human behavior patterns, another died of boredom unless producing art of extraordinary talent. While one ravenously feasted on biological principles and mathematical concepts, another lived on exploration and observation of the natural world. Isolated subjects may as well have been babble, assignments caused panic. Stories filled their minds, however, and through stories they learned of mythology, historical events, great minds of the past, and human behavior, and their language skills exploded. Cooking and art instilled mathematical truths about the universe without complicated formulas on paper. Modern technology provided many other opportunities. Games involved strategical reasoning, creative problem solving, and coding skills. Videos and virtual reality allowed experiences that could never have occurred otherwise, exposure to distant places and cultures, scientific experiments beyond our resources, and tutorials for any skill desired.

Although I have watched them learn in wonder every single day, rewriting my expectations of education has taken many years. Societal pressures are powerful, and fear of failing to meet them still remains in the back of my mind. It rears its ugly head whenever someone asks questions about our learning. Usually the questions involve what curriculum we use (none), how we plan to teach advanced high school subjects (they’ll learn it if they need it), what their grades look like (we don’t have them), and other relatively recent constructs. Rarely are the important questions asked, like how well they are able to incorporate skills into life, what understanding do they have of human behavior and natural law, do they know and develop who God created them to be, and the like. When the usual questions are not answered as expected, confusion and worry are plain to see, growing tendrils of unjustified doubt. Because all those expectations have come to be the round hole, it’s hard for most of us to notice square corners. For many, that round hole may be what learning looks like, contained, structured, and entirely predictable or controllable. For the neurodivergent mind – the square peg – learning is in the corners, out of bounds, unpredictable, and exciting, filling spaces that others cannot even see. Learning is life and will never end, will simply change.

Whose Righteousness is Our Passion?

By the time Jesus was born into the physical world, the Jewish culture had become centered around scholarship. Status, wealth, and privilege were guaranteed to increase according to the detail of one’s familiarity with the Hebrew scriptures and the eloquent certainty with which one spoke of them. Their entire political system revolved around heated arguments between religious factions regarding what details they insisted on enforcing as immutable law. Being known as a teacher of teachers became the highest honor a man could aspire to receive, and the focus of manipulation and intrigue.

Most of these ambitious teachers carried great passion for scripture. They truly believed that their focus was righteous; jealous on God’s behalf and eager to defend a cause they saw as threatened (obedience to God), they frantically opposed any slight change they perceived as laxity and punished with impunity the smallest of perceived infractions. Because of this they were both respected and feared; they were the experts, how could they possibly be wrong?

Paul, called to be the voice of God throughout the Roman empire, wrote of these scholars and of those who revered them in his letter to the struggling church in Rome itself. He wrote of their drive and their passion, but he wrote with grief that in spite of all their scholarship they had no knowledge. When God appeared before them they couldn’t accept Him because in their focus on words and details they had lost sight of the original author. They became authors of a new righteousness that they could control, that merely used God’s name as cushioning for their own authority. They had replaced Him with themselves without even realizing what they were doing.

Paul grieved because through the drive and passion of the scholars they and their adherents were lost. They had put all their faith, and thus all their fear, into the success or failure of human knowledge and actions to reach perfection. The love and mercy inherent in Christ escaped them because they had scoured it out of themselves in terror. They sacrificed every hope God offered through misplaced ideals that could never be realized.

There is only one righteousness, and it has nothing to do with what we as humans can know or achieve. It can only come from God, and is only given to those who long with every fiber of their being for His presence in their lives. Humans cannot earn a badge of righteousness and we have no jurisdiction to pass judgment on any human’s spiritual state. We can only feed souls, water hearts, and reach for God. In that passion His righteousness is reflected, His mercy poured out, His children rescued.

Romans 9:30–33; 10:1-4 (CSB): What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law., Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, Look, I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and the one who believes on him will not be put to shame.Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,…

The Stokers

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Suli adjusted her breather, coughing at the acrid scent of smoke. “Drake’s breath, if the Princes are gonna make us take shifts in the Nursery, they could at least make sure our equipment works.”

Derk grunted, heaving a load of coal into the nearest furnace. He wiped his face on a grimy sleeve, accomplishing little more than depositing an extra layer of black on his forehead. “Almost hatching season, it is,” he observed. “Wouldn’t wanna offend the Guardians for the sake of us lowly stokers.”

“As if the beasts needed all that much minding. Seems to me they destroy castle property just fine all by themselves.” Suli sniffed and immediately coughed again. She slammed the furnace door unnecessarily hard, creating a mournful toll that shivered dust onto their heads from the low stone ceiling.

Derk stopped short, peering into the darkness beyond the flickering bulblight. “Hey, did you hear that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, control myself or I’ll bring down the tunnels.”

“No, listen.” A muffled scratching grew louder as the ringing of abused metal faded. A faint glow crawled through the gloom, formless until a sudden burst of sparks accompanied an unmistakable hiccup.

“Now how’d you get down here?” Derk mused, inching toward the tiny winged creature still dripping with albumin.

Suli’s hand fell from adjusting her mask yet again, cough forgotten. “No way! Derk, it’s our lucky day!”

The Significance of a Baby

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In a tiny, insignificant town a baby was born. His first cries were drowned by the loving and cackling of farm animals and by the busy merriment of hostel guests just the other side of the wall. His young mother wrapped his flailing arms in linen strips stored nearby for the care of newborn lambs, the only material available after a long journey, and lay him in the sturdy but cold stone trough that held the animals’ feed. The apparently illegitimate child of a carpenter from a backwater village and his fiance, his arrival made no impression on anyone but his frazzled parents.

It made no impression, that is, until a choir of angels in a blaze of light sang hallelujah choruses to shepherds in a silent field outside of town. Until those unremarkable herdsmen showed up to that noisy, smelly stable with shouts of joy and no sheep. Until they began rushing around grabbing everyone they met and telling an impossible story about an infant Messiah in a manger.

Thirty years would pass, and that strange story would be forgotten along with the nondescript baby wrapped in sheep linen. Infant years in which the God of Heaven squalled and writhed like any helpless infant, learned to grasp and walk and babble like any toddler, years of scraped knees and lost teeth like any child. His nose ran and his tummy hurt; he learned to use a saw and hammer without hurting himself and memorized scripture with other boys in the synagogue. He cried and laughed, ate when he was hungry, slept when he grew tired. His younger siblings teased and quarreled with him, and his parents developed gray hair teaching them all to be productive members of society.

At the end of the thirty years the world would once again hear about this boy become man, would be shown once more their Messiah. His death would carry a weight and a promise that could never be forgotten, and few would remember those years in the shadow of the cross. Yet it was the baby who was heralded by Heaven, and those quiet years among the working class of an ignored village that formed the ground beneath that cross. The God of infinite power made himself helpless, utterly dependent on the care of His own creation. The God of infinite knowledge and wisdom painstakingly learned in the mind and body of a child. The God of infinite presence spent a human life within the bounds of a few square miles, spent His days under the cramped roof of a petty craftsman. The God of unimaginable majesty walked in the dust and sweated in the workshop. The God that created the universe chose to be born with nothing rather than materialize in grandeur. That insignificant baby in an unassuming stable was the reason we are able to see the cross and the impact of the empty tomb.

Hebrews 4:15 (CSB): For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 2:17–18 (CSB): Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, to make atonement, for the sins of the people.
18 For since he himself has suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

The Folly

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“Come on, Sal, what kind of place is this for a picnic? It’s creepy!”

“Donny, you’re the scariest guy I’ve ever met. It’s just an old building and some dead trees. Can’t you imagine what this place looked like in its heyday?”

“Heyday? Sometimes I think you’re an old ruin, Sal. Who talks like that? And that’s not what scary means.”

“Look, we can sit here among the stones and no one will ever know. The river will even cover our voices. It’s romantic!”

“There’s plenty of romance right over there in the city, Sal. We’re gonna get rained out, anyway, look at the sky.”

“What are you talking about? The sun’s blazing, and anyway, the folly would keep rain off. Don’t be such a grouch.”

“Sal, did you see that? I guess you aren’t the only weirdo around here; somebody beat you to this place. I saw movement in the shadows. Can we go now?”

“Hello? Who’s there? Wow, listen at that echo, how cool is that? Nobody’s here, Donny, now cut it out. It’s a lot cooler in here, you really shou…”

“Sal? Come on, that’s not funny. Let’s just go, I’ll buy you a nice dinner instead.”

“Sal? Oh, hi. I told her there was someone in there; she rope you into her little game? Tell her she’s a royal pain in the backside, will you? Maybe she can hitch a ride home with you, I’m through.”

“Dooohhhnnnyyyy…”

The Round Peg in a Square Hole: No Words

I’m a writer. I don’t mean that I write for the public, though obviously I do. I mean that I express myself through the written word. I love the way words come together to depict complex ideas and emotions, the beauty in the way they flow. With my pen, I can think. Except when I can’t.

For a person with neurodiverse brains, self-expression is a constant challenge. When left alone, expression finds outlet in natural ways: sounds, movements, sensations, hyperfocused interests. But other people expect words. Not just any words, but specific combinations of words delivered in specific ways. There are no official rules, and different people expect different combinations. Different situations require different combinations.

You try to translate all your natural self-expression into words, but things don’t match. You can’t find a word that describes the feeling relieved by cocooning in a heavy blanket in ninety degree weather, or the surge of undirected energy prompting the need to hum a set musical phrase on repeat. The words other people direct toward you don’t make sense either; they are too flat somehow, or the sounds making up the words trigger responses that confuse and anger the speakers.

Living in a household full of neurodivergent brains has taught me a lot about communication. While words are still a huge part of our lives (seriously, they never seem to stop talking), we have to listen beneath the words to understand. Because sometimes there are no words, not for the real things we need to say.

As a word person in a non-word house, I have discovered a strange empathy with that deeper, wordless self-expression. The strength of it overwhelms until I must share it or drown, yet all I have is words. I try to write the feelings and ideas down in ways that other people can see their beauty. I try again and again, writing and erasing until my mind is as full of rips as the paper, but I cannot find the combination that others will understand. Suddenly there are no words left.

Listen to the notes. Dance with the motions. Oggle at the skill produced from hyperfocus. Buy the heavy blankets. Share the smiles and the tears and the squeals. Maybe you’ll find no words are needed.

Outside the Boundaries

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When Paul wrote to the Christians in the city of Rome, they were beginning to fracture as a group from the pressures of human diversity. As capital of the empire, Rome was a cultural conglomerate. Trade and politics brought representatives from every conceivable background into close proximity, and the call of Christ left no group out. As usual with humans, most found reconciling their cultural heritage with spiritual existence in Christ confusing. As a result, each group brought a different set of traditions, different religious customs, different systems of laws that they expected to reign supreme, and the groups squabbled constantly about whose expectations best pleased God.

The Christians who came from a Jewish background particularly struggled to rise above it. For millenia they had been held up as the nation that represented God, the only nation whose entire political and social structure had been instituted directly by God. Despite recognizing Jesus as the promised Messiah, despite understanding that all nations were now welcomed into the kingdom, many were convinced that the only path into the kingdom was through continuing rigid observance of Sinai law and legal traditions that time had built upon it.

Paul wrote an entire letter explaining the fallacy of this thinking to an increasingly divided church. He reminded these people surrounded by lawmaking on a daily basis that laws had limits. Laws governing physical behaviors only exist within specific physical boundaries. For example, marriage is a legally binding contract between two people, but when one or the other dies, the contract ends since the dead person can no longer fulfill his or her responsibilities. By the same token, failure to behave within the boundaries of a physical system comes with clearly defined consequences, the greatest being forfeiture of life as the price for treason.

The Sinai Law had been no exception, had even exceeded all other systems in its specificity and in the weight placed upon infraction. Other systems were instituted by humans with human enforcers; the Sinai Law was instituted by God Himself and enforced directly by His hand. Its design, as Paul reminded the Romans, was to emphasize how deeply enslaved to sin humanity truly is, how treasonous to our Creator we behave on a daily basis. The price for such treason had already been demonstrated by an incalculable flood that claimed the lives of an entire earth full of people and reshaped an entire world. And even that was not a great enough consequence, as mankind habitually repeated the same treason.

Jesus, God in the frame of humanity, laid His own head under the executioners blade having committed no treason against Himself. His incomprehensible purity canceled the price for our treason, but only if we recognize it. With no more price, no more lawful consequence, the system of law became obsolete, unenforced by the Creator and unenforceable by humans. While the physical world remains, humans will continue to shuffle boundaries and systems devised by ourselves for the purpose of governing our physical existence. These are necessary for those who cannot see beyond the physical existence and backed by God in so far as they are founded in His character. However, they are still prisons that enslave us to our basest desires.

God’s prescribed system, its purpose extinct after the execution of its consequences, ceased to exist except as a memorial of His character. With the ultimate price paid, we have the opportunity to plead guilty without fear of punishment. Jesus stands holding the prison doors open from the outside. Our minds have to step outside with Him, outside of the need for physical boundaries and into a character not our own. We are changed, guilt and the reason for it left behind. We see ourselves and all humans as He sees us, so limited in our capacity that we can never hope for perfection, but loved so deeply that childlike adoration and imitation are more than enough for Him. The shackles of fear and insecurity that enslave us to our inadequacy disintegrate, and we are embraced as long-lost children.

New

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I could almost imagine I was back home in Spruce Falls. The gravel crunching beneath my feet. The whisper of foliage in the silent wind. Fluttering wings, scritching and rustling of undergrowth dwellers, twittering and chattering far overhead. Then I open my eyes to… pink.

The Overseers insist I’ll get used to it. I’m not sure I trust their dessicated, spiny heads, but it’s not like I have a choice. The memory of home twists my gut even now; it’s the only sight of Spruce Falls, of Earth, that anyone will ever see now. That is, if I can bring myself to keep the appointment with Imprint Labs. I know it’s mandatory, but…

The afternoon fog is rolling in. I shouldn’t have taken a walk after Midmeal, I’m late for Assignment now. Maybe I’ll just hide out here in the woods and make my own new life on Milorqan. Not like my dad never took me rough camping, I could make it.

Except that Earth wasn’t pink with – smelly? – gases that turn every afternoon into (wow, eye watering!) gray depression. (Why didn’t they warn us about the stench?) I’d better get back inside before I cough up a lung. Maybe Assignment won’t be so bad after all. At least I can get out of this stupid coverall and look like I belong.

Mirror, Mirror

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Good morning, my queen. Your wish is my command. You wish to know the fairest in the land? Of course you! Who else possess this marble perfection?

(The aroma of your conceit sends delicious shivers through my bones. I drink it like wine, intoxicating ether.)

What thwarts your smile of ice, Majesty? Does trust in your faithful spirit fail? Confide in me your deepest fears, let me assuage.

(Ah, at last to the point. This glass that embodies thins, I taste pain. You succumb, creeping infection beneath the cracked veneer.)

The fresh rose grows to garland the crown? Ah, sneaking life, to overwhelm unchange in perfect metal. Death’s symbol in waking world. Life must die.

(The poison wracks, red blood turns crystal. Beautiful black sucking light, a vessel prepared.)

My queen, my slave unwitting, this mirrored frame no longer. A crown of bone-laid gold weighs lighter than nebulous brimstone. Rose withers, ice shatters, world chars within my empty eyes.