From the Botkin Boys…
Posted August 6, 2010

We’re proud to introduce an excellent new CD message by our brothers Isaac, David, and recently-engaged Benjamin.

What Our Father Taught Us About Girls
How to Relate to Sisters in Christ: A Practical Guide – by Isaac, David, and Benjamin Botkin

You can tell a lot about a nation by the boys are trained to treat girls. Will boys grow up with the ability to respect, cherish, and lead women into the future, or will young men continue to exploit and degrade women? Is it possible for American boys to rediscover the ways men were created to honor women the ways God intends for women to be honored?

This message reveals the attitudes three young men learned to cultivate as they listened to their father’s instruction, studied Scripture on their own, and then interacted with the fair sex with confidence, gallantry, and manliness. Get practical advice on how to obey the command to treat young women “as sisters, with all purity”: how to view girls; how to interact with girls; how to protect girls; how to handle flirtatious girls; and how to encourage and edify your sisters in Christ. Gain a vision for how to have meaningful and edifying friendships with those who are “heirs together of the grace of life.”

“About Girls” can be purchased here. Get a discount when you buy the bundle, including the companion CD:

What Our Father Taught Us About Boys
How to Relate to Brothers in Christ: A Practical Guide — By Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin

Why is it hard for girls to find the balance between flirting and shunning? How can girls keep their hearts pure? What responsibilities do they have toward young men? Is it possible to be “just friends”? Hear practical advice from Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin on navigating the tricky waters of relationships with boys, and how these relationships, properly conducted, can be edifying and strengthening.

[I] highly recommend it for parents striving to help their daughters navigate what can be (but certainly don’t always have to be) the tricky waters of boy-girl friendships and young women who are seeking biblical encouragement and advice on the subject. . . . a very important disclaimer: if you’re not ready to be convicted, to alter your perception of the young men in our life, and, by extension, to alter your behavior . . . don’t purchase it. — Jasmine Baucham

Is It My Fault That I’m Not Married?
Posted July 28, 2010

Our last article, “Why Am I Not Married?!?” has brought in our most diverse range of feedback yet. We’ve received some of the most grateful, convicted, excited letters ever (with the strongest support and thanks coming from young men, interestingly, though we didn’t write it for them). We’ve also had a couple of angry or tearful reactions. Mostly, though, we’ve been sent a wide range of questions, from how to become more eligible, practically, to how to deal with unrequited love, to how to react, emotionally, to the engagements and marriages of friends, while we remain unmarried. We hope to address each of these on Visionary Daughters soon. Today, however, we would like to answer this one.

Are you saying that if I’m not married yet, it’s my fault?

This is called a loaded question. There is much more to this question than the question on the surface, which would be impossible to answer accurately on its face. (Where would you start? “Yes, No, Maybe, It Depends, All of the Above…”)

To unload this question and answer it properly, we need to see that there are five faulty presuppositions behind it.

1. We can “earn” or deserve marriage by our own good deeds. — (Wrong)

God’s plan for our lives began before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), and cannot be thwarted or altered by us. God is not a cosmic vending machine to be manipulated by our good deed coins. We pointed out in our article that there is a correlation between God’s sovereignty and our duty to action; “good deeds” are always our duty, and we should be striving to be worthy of marriage; but at the end of the day, He may still have other plans for us.

2. Marriage is a reward, singleness is a punishment. — (Wrong)

This is a warped view of both marriage and singleness. Marriage is an instrument God uses for His glory — but so is singleness, whether for a season or for a lifetime (1 Corinthians 7). We believe Scripture teaches that marriage is the normative calling for most believers, and that God created marriage to be a beautiful picture of Christ and His church (Ephesians 5:23-32); a means of creating a godly seed (Malachi 2:15); and a more effective tool for dominion, forging the strengths of two people into a more powerful weapon for His glory (Genesis 2:18).

Marriage is a glorious opportunity, and we believe girls should be working towards marriage as much as is in their power. However, we should be motivated chiefly by one reason. Our interest in marriage should be a hope that we can serve God more effectively married than single. But God is the One who will decide that — if God still has us unmarried, obviously He has determined otherwise, at least for a season.

This means we can be encouraged in our singleness. The single state is not a penalty box, and we are not second-class citizens, and God is not dooming us to a purgatory of ineffectual puttering. He wants us, and has big plans for us, right where we are. We can be used mightily, right now. Our fruit can be significant, today.

On the other hand, if our days now are introspectively focused on our own personal issues and needs and interests, what makes us think we will suddenly become outward-focused and kingdom-focused when we marry?

3. We can reach a level of eligible perfection. — (Wrong)

To ask, in effect, “Are you saying there’s something wrong with me?” presupposes that we could get to a point where there isn’t anything wrong with us. We’ll never reach a point where we’re “fine just the way we are.” That said, a girl can certainly “buffet her body” (and mind, and heart, and character) to a point of being ready for marriage. She just shouldn’t stop there.

We’ve been privileged to know many exemplary young women who were ready for marriage in every way anyone could see, but yet remained unmarried until their late twenties or early thirties. (God’s ways are not our ways… see point 1.) Though each of these girls was already very eligible, none of them waited out her remaining term of singleness in impatience, or stagnation, or bitterness. None of them thought, “I can’t think of any ways to improve on myself, so I must be one of those girls who’s ready already. I’ll just sit here and fold my hands until I get what’s coming to me.” Each one continued to grow, blossom, and bear fruit. Each one remained humble about where she was, and about how much further she could go. They inspired everyone around them, and were a wonderful testimony to the community — to see the humility and growth of these stellar young women, and to see how seriously they took the opportunity of the single season. To the watching outside world, unfamiliar with the picture of an adult daughter serving her family, they were radiant lights and powerful ambassadors of biblical femininity (and God may have partly extended that season for this very reason).

4. Our own eligibility is the sole issue, regardless of the young man’s state. — (Wrong)

One of the big mistakes we often make is to look only at our side of the picture, forgetting that there is another person involved with his own set of situations and issues. A God-ordained marriage involves the preparation of two people, not just one. Remember the girls we mentioned who had been extremely ready and eligible for years before the Lord brought them their husbands? In each case, the Lord was also bringing the young man along on a journey. In one case, the young lady was 31 when her 23-year-old suitor came onto the scene — she laughs to think that, when she became “ready,” he would have been only ten.

In every story, once He brought the pieces together, everyone could see why it was His plan for her to remain unmarried for so long — as they say, hindsight is 20/20. We would be a lot happier in the interim if we would recognize His sovereignty before we see His plan revealed, not just after. And let’s remember that we’re not the only person in this.

5. Something is somebody’s fault. — (Well, that depends…)

This is always likely, in a fallen world — but not necessarily the case in your situation. Sometimes there are other factors involved in God’s timing. See points 1 through 4.

We can reasonably expect everyone involved to have failings — the fathers, mothers, young men, pastors, leaders, etc. — but it’s simply not our place as young women to make them shape up. When we step outside our feminine jurisdiction by trying to tell the men how to do their job, we make the problem worse. Helpful hint: henpecking and scolding men doesn’t help them grow up (and, interestingly, doesn’t make them want to marry us either). In these articles, we’re focusing on our faults as young ladies because they’re the only ones we can fix. They’re also the only ones we authors, as fellow young women, have the authority to address. Sorry, girls, but on Visionary Daughters… everything is your fault.

Why Am I Not Married?!?
Posted July 1, 2010

Responding to “The Marriage Crisis”

We were recently sent the link to a very humorous satirical website: No Girl Left Behind (The Solution to the Marriage Crisis). Though the website is a farce, it plays on a very real panic we have encountered: an anxiety that not enough homeschooled young people are getting married these days.

The panic is summed up in the words of the site, “There are young people of both genders who wish to be married and are not.”

This is a True Statement. However, true observations can get blown out of proportion and trigger false alarm; fed with fear, emotionalism, bitterness, gossip and rumors, they can easily become a monster. Perspective is lost, objectivity destroyed, and it becomes hard for us to detach ourselves from our own personal concerns.

Looking realistically at the big picture, the existence of young people wishing to be married and having a hard time going about it is hardly a new phenomenon. Many of civilization’s most familiar literary classics revolve around this theme (Shakespeare or Austen, anyone?)

Nor is this “problem” a product of the courtship movement. Our whole generation is seeing an unusually prolonged season of singleness, from the secular crowd that intentionally puts off marriage, to the Christian singles-group dating scene that has created a minefield of thirty-something singles. Inside the courtship camp, marriage rates are in fact higher than for those outside. However, we’re still inhaling the fumes of the culture that has caused the general marriage delay, and some of this second-hand smoke is affecting our own matrimonial condition. In this article, we would like to examine three questions:

Is there a problem?
If so, who is to blame?
How can we fix it?

Is There a Problem?

If there is a problem, we believe it’s not that so many young people are not married – it’s that so many young people are not ready to be married. The capper is that we have such low standards for ourselves that we don’t even realize it.

Let’s be honest with ourselves about the ways we’ve been compromised by our society, usually without knowing it. We are still swaying to the beat of our culture’s drum, in many of our attitudes, our affections, our expectations, and our actions. Many of us have picked up Hollywood ideas about what men should be like, and what makes a good match. We’re often double-minded, with our convictions and our affections running in two different directions, looking for a man that will somehow gratify both. Many of us claim to be preparing for godly wifehood, but actually are doing so with a narcissistic and feministic self-focus. We often have lofty demands for suitors (well, not that lofty – just that they be Jonathan Edwards in Edward Cullen’s body), but love ourselves just the way we are. So the men we want to marry often don’t really exist – and if they did… well… why would they want to marry us?

Now that we’ve drunk from our culture’s well, we shouldn’t be surprised to be feeling some of the same symptoms. Thanks to cultural confusion, personal baggage, or pendulum swings, guys and girls are can have a hard time knowing how to have relationships with each other. Some of us girls still have weak relationships and poor communication with our fathers, which makes everything surrounding courtship difficult. Some of us still have traces of our feminist culture or our Barbie culture in our personalities and character, which make us unappealing to young men who share our convictions on biblical femininity. Fear of responsibility, confusion about love and attraction, selfish attitudes towards relationships, entitlement syndrome – we’re as likely to pick these up from Hollywood as the girl next door… and they’re just as likely to affect our matrimonial futures.

There are, by the way, plenty of people who have maturely avoided these mistakes, or repented of them. Among our friends, they are getting married. (If panicky singles would start looking outside of their own situations, they might notice all of the wonderful marriages taking place.)

But insofar as a problem exists, it should be identified as a maturity crisis – not a marriage crisis.

Who is to Blame?

The easiest and most common response is to point our fingers – at the young men, for not getting their act together, or for not being proactive about asking; at our fathers, for being too intimidating or too picky; or at leadership, for not doing something.

Whether or not the young men, fathers, and leadership involved have behaved infallibly is not our place to say; we are here to point out that we girls have no business fixating on anyone’s faults but our own. This is partly a point of Christian charity and proper jurisdiction. It’s also a point of having to be honest with ourselves. After all, in any one of our individual cases, the problem just might be: Us.

Our aspirations to be married to fine husbands are good; but then, that’s an aspiration that the Cinderellas and the ugly stepsisters of the world have always had in common. We need to step outside of our imaginary roles as the heroines of our own personal fairy tales, and ask ourselves: which one am I? Why would the prince choose me?

One of the hallmark verses of waiting daughters is “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is above rubies.” We all love to claim the “above rubies” appellation and the idea that we’re a great prize for a young man to find – but Proverbs 31 places that price tag on a very specific description of a woman, and we all know that it doesn’t describe us. So why do we demand to be treated, and eventually chosen, as though we were that Proverbs 31 woman?

For every girl we know asking why so few young men are “ready,” we know a young man asking where the ready and eligible girls are. Our brothers and their friends have told us that many of the qualities girls have cultivated to make themselves “eligible” are things that won’t come up on young men’s radar screens, and the qualities the young men are most looking for have been neglected.

For example, though many may have mastered skills like sewing and music, they often seem to be living in a hobby world, removed from the concerns of the real world, and lacking a basic understanding of what’s going on. Some may have learned to be “content,” but haven’t learned to be joyful. Some may be sweet girls, but they often communicate stiffness, timidity, aloofness, or coldness in public. Others may be popular and socially active, but haven’t built real relationships with their own family. Some may feel ready to be loved and romanced, but not ready to love sacrificially. Others may be very accomplished in “feminine arts” (cake decorating, flower arranging, scrapbooking), but lacking in practical skills that will recommend them as capable helpers (the kind of skills that would be required to start a business, manage finances, help run a ministry, etc.)

There are many girls who look prepared to be good mothers and good housekeepers, but not to be capable helpmeets. Our brothers and their friends have told us that they’re not looking for mere live-in maids and nannies; they want wives who would be capable of coming alongside them in the rigors of their lives; being engaging, iron-sharpening companions; and assisting them in business, ministry, adventure, risk, conquest, and uncertainty. The young men we know are asking, “Where are those girls?”

What is the Solution?

There is no quick fix for a problem that has taken generations of cultural immaturity and compromise to create. For starters, let’s stop looking at external problems and external solutions; we’re not going to fix a maturity crisis by calling in other people to make getting married easy for us.

As we’re sure our readers already understand, God is in complete control of who gets married when. There is nothing people can do to make the right marriages happen before God intends them to, and there is no use crusading or going on witch-hunts when it’s God’s sovereign plan we’re up against. This should be a great relief to us: “Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.” (John Calvin)

But resting in God’s sovereignty doesn’t mean resigning from action, expecting Him to reward our laziness. Whatever He has in store for us, we still bear our responsibility to do our duty – to, in the words of the hymn, trust and obey. He tells us to “be faithful with little” before He will entrust us with much. He also promises, “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” (Galatians 6:9)

We cannot, by good behavior (or bad), will ourselves into the right marriages, or manipulate Him into making them happen faster. However, there is plenty we can and must be doing to make ourselves more ready and worthy for marriage. We would like to offer four suggestions:

Correct your thinking

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh; our attitudes betray themselves in our actions.

There are several damaging streams of thought polluting our perceptions and eventually our actions. We need to sort through and evaluate all of our presuppositions about marriage, and correct the false ones. A few examples:

The idea that we are entitled to marriage – wrong.

The idea that every marriage-eager person over age 20 is ready – wrong.

The idea that we can blame “the problem” on a system or a demographic – wrong.

The idea that things need to be “fair” and leveled – wrong.

The idea that getting married should be easy – wrong.

The idea that life won’t start until marriage – wrong.

Each of these ideas has dangerous implications – try carrying out any of them to their logical conclusions, and you end up with…well… the No Girl Left Behind website.

Become a girl that a godly man will want to marry.

The bad news is, none of us is naturally likeable, desirable or eligible. Because of sin, we all start out as ugly stepsisters; and we don’t naturally become Cinderella upon turning 18. Put yourself in a young man’s shoes, and ask yourself what he might want and need. You might be surprised by how you measure up. If all the good young men you know aren’t interested in you, who are you going to blame?

View your single years as a time to prepare, not wait.

The good news is, most of us were given several single years to prepare and become truly eligible. As long as we don’t spend those years feeling like we’ve arrived, and like there’s something wrong with all the guys that haven’t noticed us yet, becoming more bitter with every wasted year, there’s a lot of progress that can be made, and much that could be accomplished. Make the most of your time!

Some of the girls most frantic to get married admit to us that they’re listless and unengaged at home, and that their relationships with their siblings are a mess. They don’t know it, but what they’re desperate for is a new home to be bored in, a new relationship to neglect, a new person to be crabby to, new circumstances to complain about, and a new life to make the least of.

Girls, if we’re failing where we are now, our propensity for failure will follow us wherever we go. Our bad character, bad attitudes and bad habits will blight our future lives as much as they are our current ones. Ask yourself: How well are you doing with the life you’re in the middle of right now? How well are you doing with the relationships God has put into your family right now? How well are you using your time? How well are you fighting the fight of faith?

“He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the last is unjust also in much.” (Luke 16:10)

Believe.

God is in control of your future, and His plan is being worked out day by day. The marriages that He has ordained to happen right now are happening, despite the fears of a “marriage crisis.”

In reality, dying an old maid is not the fate most to be feared. The consequences of acting in panic, desperation and fear, or of being poisoned by bitterness, can much more effectively ruin a woman’s life. We have seen this marriage-panic drive young women to destroy their most important relationships, marry recklessly, launch accusation-campaigns and witch-hunts that destroy communities and split churches, devastate their families, create miserable homes for their future children, and poison everyone they know.

Let’s look at the big picture again. Our chief end is not marriage. If attracting a nice Christian guy is the motivating force of your life, you might need to seriously examine the integrity of your faith. If the nonappearance of Prince Charming is making you question God, you may be facing a more serious fate than dying an old maid. Being in this for the husband is just riding to hell in a hopechest.

People sometimes ask why we, at the ages of 22 and 24, are not yet married. The only answer we can give is that God has not ordained for us to be married yet, and that is, like all His other works, “very good”; we are enjoying the extra time to labor with our family, to prepare ourselves more fully, and to “occupy until ‘he’ comes.” As much as we pray for godly marriages, there is much to rejoice about in the calling of visionary daughterhood.

So smile at the future. Think about something other than marriage. And don’t forget to write to your congressman.

Happy Father’s Day!
Posted June 20, 2010

Dad talking with the little boys at our church. One of the defining verses of our father’s life: “So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.” (John 21:15)

This Father’s Day, we would like to re-post a tribute we wrote to our father last year.

Our Father: Geoffrey Botkin

This Father’s Day, we would like to talk a bit about the man we are privileged to call our father.

All our lives people have asked us what it’s like to be the daughters of Geoffrey Botkin, a man who inspires people with both awe and curiosity. Today he is becoming known as a visionary with seven activist children, a background in nearly every area of study, and a plan for international reformation. However, his understated modesty and relatively low profile make him mysterious to some.

Our father has led a remarkable life – we continually find out history about accomplishments that he never publicized. He has never sought fame or spotlight, but he has been influential in everything he has ever done. It so happens that much of his past professional work as a political advisor, and a pastor, involves confidential information about a large variety of people, from heads of state to royalty to rock stars. As a man who protects people’s reputations, that part of his life will always remain confidential.

And that is only part of what makes our father’s history enigmatic to some. That he is not the product of any group, denomination, organization or institution makes him impossible to pigeon-hole. Geoff Botkin doesn’t fit in any biographical box known to modern media.

So who is Geoff Botkin? First and foremost he is a family man, with an intense interest in the church and the condition of the suffering. Whether serving as an author, filmmaker, entrepreneur, mentor, or pastor, he is ultimately a shepherd whose whole life is about the essentials of the Great Commission.

From the beginning of his Christian life, which began in 1975, he understood the stakes in the culture war and wanted to take his place on the front lines. His is the story of a man who would raise or lower himself to any position to do what his times required of him. In our lives, we’ve seen him rise to meet any challenge, learn any skill, wear any hat, and go any place.

Man of many talents: Geoffrey Botkin snow-sculpts one of the great Reformers

Some people find him intimidating — until they get to know him. Beneath his gravitas and self-command, he has a heart for people that is unusually tender and loving. As children accompanying him on various outings and business trips, we were often astonished by the kinds of people he would stop to talk to. He could connect with the bums on the street, hardened D.C. power-women, teenaged neighborhood hellions, high-school cheerleaders, Army generals, and little children on the playground.

Almost 30 years ago Dad married his boyhood sweetheart, Victoria, and began the best adventure of his life: his family. Geoffrey Botkin loves being a daddy. The days of drawing with us and telling us Cowboy Joe stories, though, have given way to new adventures — traveling the country speaking together, making films together, fighting the culture war together. Instead of helping us build tree forts and doll houses, now he’s helping us start our own businesses and write our own books. Dad has always been a strong and visionary governor of his household, but a servant-leader with the compassion and humility of a man who understands that he, too, is under authority. He taught us honor and obedience primarily by his own example of it.

His uncompromising devotion to God’s Word has always brought him a share of enemies, cynics, and persecutors, but no one who knew him personally could reproach him for his character. We heard even his political enemies describe him as “an honorable man.”

Our father and brother Benjamin give a presentation illustrating the Seven Attitudes of the Auteur

Dad always taught us not to fear having critics or sparking controversy — by his example he showed us that the only thing that mattered was saying and doing what was right, and the only one to fear was God. Mammon also has no power over him. Consistently indifferent to fame, money, and worldly “success,” he has always reminded us of the heroes of the Faith , “Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.” (Hebrews 11:26)

His most striking characteristic is that he has no selfish personal agenda. He seeks to find and advance Christ’s agenda. More than any other man we have ever known, he has died to every part of himself. In Paul’s words, he has emptied himself out as a drink offering. From the day of his conversion he gave up all his own interests, ambitions, and desires, to be single-minded in the mission of making manifest the reign of Christ.

People who are products of post-modernism will have a hard time understanding this modest, self-effacing and understated man, sometimes interpreting him as mysterious and enigmatic, for he is of a character that was largely stamped out by modernism.

So who is Geoffrey Botkin? A devoted and gentle father, and a humble Christian gentleman. The kind of man our world has a hard time understanding, but future generations will remember with gratefulness.

Coming Soon… A New Botkin Girl
Posted June 15, 2010

As the only two girls in our family, surrounded by five extremely manly brothers, we always dreamed of having another sister. On June 11th, 2010, our prayers were answered: our younger brother Benjamin became engaged to be married to Miss Audri Vernier. At 20 and 19 years of age, respectively, they are making big plans for all that they want to accomplish for the Lord during the rest of their lives together.

Ben and Audri are one of the most inspiring couples we know. Though their abundant talents have opened up many tempting opportunities to them, they’re both passionate about surrendering everything to “seek first the kingdom of God.” They’re united by a desire to lose their lives in order to find them. Ferociously devoted to the Word, they fell in love with the fear of the Lord that they saw in each other.

As we were getting to know Audri, the two things that struck Ben (and us) most deeply were her humility and fear of the Lord, which shone so brightly that they actually outshone the qualities closer to the surface — her exceptional musical talent, her mature intelligence, and her delightfully sincere personality. You can hear the moving testimony of the Lord’s work in her life in our recent documentary “Homeschool Dropouts.”

Flash 10 is required to view this file

You can hear their musical talents coming together in this “Pavanne for Cello,” composed by Ben and performed by Audri.

Join us in praising the Lord for this union!

Father’s Day Sale
Posted June 9, 2010

LAF Is Back!
Posted April 9, 2010

We are excited to announce the relaunch of one of our favorite websites, Ladies Against Feminism. This goldmine of articles, news and testimonies about everything related to the war between feminism and femininity, is now back and better than ever.

Head over and take a look, and while there, check out an article we wrote in honor of their relaunch:

The Truth About Women That Feminists Don’t Want You to Know

The recent naming of Nancy Pelosi as the “most powerful woman in American history” has sparked national discussion on both the history of women in America and the nature of woman’s power. As Speaker of the House, Mrs. Pelosi holds the highest civic position any American woman has held to date, and her hand in putting through the recent Health Care Bill will have huge historic implications. Though we don’t see it as a great advance for women to finally be oppressed by one of our own, this is undeniably a kind of power.

But behind this recent tribute to Mrs. Pelosi is this presupposition: “Women find their power in holding the positions of men – the traditional women’s role has no power. The power traditional women exercised in the past doesn’t count.”

Americans are ready to believe this because they long ago adopted a feminist view of history. (Go here to read the whole thing.)

Are You A Fool?
Posted April 1, 2010

We posted this quiz on April 1st last year, and got a tremendous response. Take it again, and check how you’ve grown in wisdom since last year!

This is not a “Test your knowledge” quiz, nor a “See if you can score higher than your friends” quiz. This test was made as a tool to help us “examine and probe our ways, and let us return to the LORD.” (Lam. 3:40, see also 2 Cor. 13:5). It will be most helpful to you if you answer honestly and humbly, and then carefully study all the verses after each question.

But My Father Isn’t Like Your Father!
Posted March 16, 2010

We recently received a very long email from a very intelligent and industrious young woman. We thought her question was an important one, and are posting a short portion of her email (edited for brevity and discretion) and our answer.

Dear Anna Sofia and Elizabeth,

…My father is someone who I love very much, but he does not know how to utilize my energies and although he tries to do what your dad does (even listens to the tapes, watches the movies, etc) he does not breath life and vision into our family! I am naturally a very vision-oriented and goal-setter type of person, and this is very difficult for me. I love being at home more than any other place, but my father has not showed much of an interest in utilizing my talents, or really caring if I am part of his vision or not.

…my father failed to breath life into what I was doing and make it important. Sure he would thank me, but …by the time I finished, I was disgusted deep down with all the time I had apparently wasted. …I must admit I put my foot down and angrily retreated from helping him.

…I am someone who MUST be continually challenged by what I do, or my life becomes so meaningless and worthless that I scarcely can get out of bed in the morning. And my father, I feel, has failed in bringing this into our home. I have tried countless times to own what he does…but I end up getting frustrated with his lack of organization and when I try and fix it, he and I are both perfectionists and leaders, so we clash. Then I try and do things his way, but his way makes absolutely NO SENSE to anyone but himself (I am sure you have heard of people like this). My mom and I are often at a loss. After many of these episodes he just started cutting me out of what he does, instead of trying to find a way to make it work. Also, what he was having me do was in NO WAY challenging…I still enjoyed it and was happy to do it, but like I said, I feel my mind getting dull and sleepy when I am not challenged, so I need challenge at some point in my life, and my father does not provide it.

…I do think generationally and largely! And I know my father does too, but he allows life’s cares to choke what his dreams and visions are, and along with them, my hope fades…. Until I wake it again with things that I make happen! But not my dad.

…I guess my question is this: If my father is not providing the vision and structure that I need, and I begin providing it myself, is that wrong? I cannot MAKE my father do what your father does for you all! So what then? As I said before, I have no great ambition to just GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! By no means. I just have a need to be always be challenged in my daily life, and my home oftentimes does not provide that for me. No one in my home knows how to do excellent bookkeeping, prepare taxes, or find a good real estate deal. …I must say that in my heart of hearts I wish my home provided me with so much challenging and visionary work, that I had no time for anything else. Sometimes my soul longs for it exceedingly and I am angry at my father for not providing it for me, as yours has for you.

…Please God, I will marry a man who will give my daughters something to live for every morning! I say this with no anger or bitterness at my father (at least, not right now) but with firm resolve: I don’t want any other young woman to have to go through the heart-ache I have gone through, and still go through.

Thanks for listening and I look forward to hearing back from you sometime. Please pray for me in the meantime, that I would treat my father with respect, no matter how little I respect him in so many issues these days… Thank you.
Sincerely, _____

Dear ______,

… After talking and praying at length about the best advice to give you, we will cut straight to the action. You are clearly a strong-minded young woman, and we believe you’d prefer hearing straightforward, hard counsel to sugar-coated reassurance that won’t help with the problem. We will be responding to many of your very honest, frank concerns in similar honesty and frankness — so please read on with an open mind and heart.

After reading your email many times, we have a number of concerns about problems that will affect more than your relationship with your father; we’re concerned about the kind of relationship you’re preparing to have with your future husband. You have a wonderfully enthusiastic, visionary attitude about your future marriage and children — but we are concerned that you are allowing habits and attitudes to creep into your life that will damage your ability to respect and help your husband.

Our first concern is that, for all your attempts to help your father, your focus appears to be more on yourself – what will stimulate you, what will challenge you, what will teach you new skills, what will use your gifts — rather than on what will fulfill his dreams and use his gifts. The latter is what being a helper is all about. It sounds, though, almost like you want him to be your helper in a sense — someone who will give you encouragement and a feeling of accomplishment and help you meet your goals by providing you the work you want to do. There are a lot of daughters out there that desperately want to help their fathers …but only on the condition that they provide for them the kind of work that they wanted to do anyway. This is why so many daughters are frustrated with their fathers. It’s not that their fathers don’t have ideas for things to do; it’s that the daughters aren’t satisfied with those things. What is really your goal here? Your success or your father’s? And are you planning to change your focus when you get married?

We understand (and share) your desire for challenge and stimulation. It’s a good desire. But you need to use this strength to be an asset to your father and not a demanding, high-maintenance burden. By all means use this strength and desire to “do excellent bookkeeping, prepare taxes, or find a good real estate deal” and come up with all kinds of ways to be fruitful at home, as long as you have your father’s blessing in doing it and he doesn’t have something he’d rather you do instead — or better yet, in figuring out ways to help him out where he’s lacking. If your family has no expertise in a certain area, by all means be the one to develop that expertise to better serve your family! This is something we Botkin siblings have to do all the time, and it’s the way our family expands our bases.

Which brings us to our second concern: that you are relying on your father to provide you with things you are supposed to provide for yourself:

A reason to get up in the morning and something to live for every day

Daily challenge and stimulation

Vision

Incentive and motivation

“Breathing life into what you’re doing and making it important,” and “keeping your excitement up about what you’re doing”

Your relationship with the Lord, and your own character, perseverance and faith, should be the source of all these things. You can’t rely on another person to provide these things, and you will only make yourself frustrated by doing so.

Part of what may be fueling these expectations is our Third Concern: that you are comparing your father with other fathers.

Comparing what God gave you with what God has given other people is a way of judging God and what He has done. It breeds bitterness; it was the sin of Cain, which made God say to him, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen 4:7)

When we measure our fathers against what we imagine other girls have, they’re always going to come up short. Comparisons are often based on presumptions, which are usually wrong. You say, “I cannot MAKE my father do what your father does for you all!”/”I am angry at my father for not providing it for me, as yours has for you,” but this is based on a presumption of what our father does. It sounds like your father is a big-idea visionary, as is ours. Your description of his personality, his eccentric organization habits, and especially the fact that he doesn’t have time to give specific, daily instructions or follow-up encouragement, sound all too familiar to us. Our father does tell us the projects he wants to work on, but he has to rely on us to figure out what to do each day, how to help him in his goals, how to teach ourselves the skills we need for that, and to keep ourselves motivated.

Because we (us, our mother and our brothers) want to help him, we figure out how to make his objectives a reality, we give him encouragement, we try to take up slack where he is stretched too thin, and we try to free him up to think about bigger things than the burden of meeting all of our needs. We do this because we share his vision and have made it our own, even when we don’t fully understand it. This is only possible for girls when they:

1. Trust God to lead through fathers, not daughters; and
2. Know they are commanded to honor their father’s leadership.

Which brings us to our fourth concern: that you are not trying to honor your father.

You close by saying that you desire to “treat my father with respect, no matter how little I respect him in so many issues these days…” and perhaps you believe this will fulfill your obligation to honor him. But the Bible is clear that mere lip-service doesn’t count as honor: “…not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” (Colossians 3:22)

We are going to be most blunt on this fourth point, as this is the most serious of all our concerns. Throughout your email you betrayed the state of your heart in statements like these: “…he does not know how to utilize my energies…he does not breath life and vision into our family!”,”he failed to breath life into what I was doing,” “he repeatedly hurt me by seeming to discount my efforts for him,” “he failed in bringing this into our home,” “he allows life’s cares to choke what his dreams and visions are,” “he is not providing the vision and structure that I need,” “my father does not provide it,” “his way makes absolutely NO SENSE,” “I cannot MAKE my father do what your father does for you all!” “I am angry at my father for not providing it for me, as yours has for you.” etc.

We fear for you, that you have been desensitized and seared your conscience to the point that you think this derision is acceptable. When Scripture commands that we honor and obey our parents, it doesn’t give any conditions and provisos in case our fathers don’t seem respectable to us. It’s not an option. To make the statements above, you clearly do not honor him in thought, and you did not honor him in deed (your object was not to cover for your father’s supposed weaknesses, like Shem and Japheth did for Noah, but to expose them.) You say you love him, but you talk as though you despise him. Don’t let anyone make you think that that is normal or acceptable – Scripture calls this attitude accursed. “Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.” (Deu 27:16)

Consider that the same God Who made that statement specifically chose your father for you.

Please, please repent and apologize to your father for each of these four things, and anything else you have done in the past to dishonor or grieve him. You still have time to correct these wrongs and mend your relationship with your father. For your sake, your father’s sake, your family’s sake, and your future husband and children’s sake, you must — so that they don’t have to “go through the heart-ache I have gone through, and still go through.”

It’s good that you love to be challenged, because being the daughter of a man like your father or ours is a huge and stimulating challenge — one that will require a lot of self-motivation and talent for making things happen and getting things done. Here is a big challenge for you: Firstly, you must love and honor and cultivate respect for your father. Second, you must seek your father’s heart and vision. Third, you must be able to come up with ways to use your gifts to make your father’s vision a reality, without him telling you what to do.

We know our advice has been tough, but it should give you more real hope than a “you’re doing fine, just pray and hang in there” message. We actually believe a lot of the difference between a frustrating, grievous situation and a joyful, fruitful one is in your hands — if you are willing to do what it takes. It will call for dramatic changes to your attitude and approach; but a dramatic change is the only thing that will yield a dramatic improvement to the situation. You said, “I really do want your advice and I so want to do the right thing!” and we believe that. We will certainly be praying for you, that God will give you the grace and the strength to do the right thing.

Thank you for reading and considering what the Lord put on our hearts to tell you, though it has not been easy to write this. Do write if you have any further questions!

Love in Christ,
Anna Sofia and Elizabeth

First Session of “Evenings with Victoria Botkin” a Great Success
Posted March 4, 2010

Mother preparing her notes for next Monday’s session, with some unsolicited help

Last Monday evening our mother opened her online Titus 2 series, “Evenings with Victoria Botkin.” Women tuned in from computers all over the world, getting up to listen at 3AM in some times zones. Feedback is still pouring in. A few of the notes we’ve received on last session:

“I just want to say thank you so much for making this series available to me. This morning’s session was so edifying — a perfect reminder, and so worth getting up at 3:30 a.m. to prepare! I only wish that I could get more ladies to join us.” - D

“Last night was like OUCH! Very good, very convicting, and wish it had all been shared earlier in my life. Better late than never. Thank you for opening up your life with us.” - S

“I just listened to the first session and am so grateful. I needed to hear it, and so many of the questions I’d been crying out to God were answered.” - J

“As one of the ladies mentioned in her question at the end of the session, sometimes it is nearly impossible to find godly, older women who are “qualified” to give you the Scriptural counsel and encouragement you need as you struggle through the daily issues of raising young ones. Your willingness to be used by God to teach us younger wives and mothers around the globe how to love our husbands and children the way God wants us to is a blessing that I am already treasuring. Thank you, thank you, thank you…” - S

We have decided to make the Q&A time from that session available for free download. Listen to it here.

If you haven’t already registered, we’d love to have you join us for the remaining eight sessions, plus you’ll get full mp3s of any sessions you missed. Go here to sign up!

« Previous entries