Episode 285: Finding Balance in Ministry with Susanne Norris
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Welcome to A Delightful Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I'm Emily Kaiser, and I'm here with Liz Cattrall and Nicole Williams. And today we are joined by Suzanne Norris. Welcome, Suzanne. Hi, so glad to be here.

Suzanne is joining us today as one of our interview guests where we are interviewing people about ways in which they have found balance through the Charlotte Mason Method, but in their specific context. So Suzanne, you are going to be talking about finding balance in ministry. Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your family and how you found Charlotte Mason? So we, my husband and I have been married for 15 years.

And we met on the mission field in a country in Central Asia. And after we got married, we knew that we would be returning. We felt like that was still the call on our lives. And I had never considered homeschooling. I'm the product of public school, as is my husband. But I knew that there was no international school available.

there were no options in that country, in the city we were in for anything other than local school. So I assumed our kids would be local schooled with supplementing English language arts and American history, geography, whatever wouldn't be covered in that local school through homeschool. So I had been researching what to do because I didn't know anything about homeschooling.

homeschooling and pretty early on began hearing about Charlotte Mason. And it's funny to think about it now because I think the first podcast episode or two I listened to of you ladies, it really felt like a foreign language. Like, oh, I'm learning another foreign language. What are they even talking about? Because it was just so beautiful and intriguing, but nothing like I had ever imagined.

heard people describe education before. And so I just couldn't get away from the ideas that I was hearing and I had a longing to give my children that kind of living education, but the broad feast really scared me because of my own deficiencies.

As well as just our lifestyle, we travel a lot. We move around a lot. I didn't know if I might need something easier that would be kind of done for me. And so thankfully, this was all happening before I had a child in school. So I

I had a consult with Liz and she kind of pulled no punches and just said, yes, you can do this. You will learn alongside them. You will make things work. And so we started that first year with my son and,

And that was in Central Asia. So we were there for about three more years after that. So I guess I did about three years there. And then in 2020, because of a medical situation, we had to leave. Yeah. Yeah. So we transitioned to Canada. So we live in Canada now with our four kids. Our oldest is almost 13 and then 11 and nine. And those are boys. And then our girl is seven. Yeah.

going into third grade. Great. So why don't you just share a little bit about what your family has been called to do? And what is the extent of your own involvement in participating with your mission work?

So we are involved in church planting. So when we were in Central Asia proper, we were in more of a, I guess you would say, zero to one situation where there weren't believers, very many. And so that looked more like getting to know people, sharing with them about our faith, and then gathering them into house churches. And we did that primarily through student work because we

We spoke English and that was a need that the students there had. They really wanted to learn English. So it was very easy to get into relationships that way. And then through those relationships and through we taught at universities there, I was a German teacher for six years there.

at universities before all of this. And so I began teaching English there. And so that's that season of life, those early years, I was much more involved in that kind of thing.

As we returned, when I returned married with children, life changed a lot. And I took more of a backseat role in those things, more of a support role. I was still learning language. I still had lots of relationships, but I was primarily in the home with our kids.

When we transitioned to Vancouver to work with a different people group where we are now, it's still, I would say much, I'm still in that kind of back seat role because of the decision to homeschool our children. And thankfully our organization is supportive of that. My husband wants me to do those things. Our team leader is supportive of that. And so I have the freedom to do that. The way it looks for me is I kind of have a daily schedule.

upkeep of things that need to happen. Responding to emails, connecting with our people group through texts. And then weekly, I try to get out one afternoon a week. So one afternoon a week, I try to spend some time with some of the ladies that I'm building relationships with. And the other days I'm with my kids. And then on the weekends, we normally have Saturdays

set aside for soccer during most of the school year, but in the afternoons and the evenings, that's a time that we have people over from the people group that we're working with. And then there are things that just come up throughout the year, teams that come and want to work with us. We work with a very large group of refugees and immigrants. And so the people we work with

you really can't get into the countries where they live. And so if people want to work with these people, if churches want to partner, this is a kind of an accessible way because they can come to Vancouver and

which is not halfway around the world. And they speak English there, but they can still work with this people group that we can't actually get to any other way. And so you could get in, but you probably couldn't get out kind of thing. And so people want to come. So we regularly have teams. So we're hosting teams a lot. And then we have a couple of big holidays every year where everything just has to shut down so that we can be part of

these events that we're hosting because of this holiday. But those kinds of things don't happen regularly. They happen once or twice a year. And so the school year is able to pretty much function the way everyone else's does. I just have to kind of, you know, plan ahead for when breaks are going to need to happen. You know, you really talked about how you're balancing those things

I'm wondering if you had to be very deliberate about those to begin with, or did this all just fall into place this way? I mean, you sound like, you know, these are certain things we do on this day and we, we, I'm with my kids on these other days. And I'm just wondering if you had to really make that happen that way, or were there things that were challenges that you had to overcome to make this work for you and your family?

your family so that you could put your homeschooling of your kids as a priority with all the other requirements that have to be part of your life in this capacity.

Yes. As we had more children in our homeschool and it was taking more time than just two hours in the morning and honestly, not that much prep because he was six. But at the time, it felt like a lot. But as that grew, I had to decide what the priority was going to be.

Because if I'm going to, if I just decided that if I was going to homeschool my children, they deserved that to be a priority of mine, not something I would just do on the side.

And thankfully, everybody in my leadership chain agreed with that. And so I was able to pull back on some of those things. Now, when we transitioned to Canada, it happened again, because in where we lived in Central Asia, if I took my children down to the playground,

the majority people group was who was at the playground as well. The woman sitting next to me was that people group. And so I go outside, I go to the playground in Canada and it's not. And so I had to, when we moved to Canada, we had to be much more deliberate about how I was going to be meeting these people and building relationships with them because it wasn't as easy. Right.

And so I sought wisdom because I just didn't know what to do. And of other moms who were working, we call it diaspora. So when you're working with a people group who are outside of their home country. Right. So how do you do this when you're just not bumping into them everywhere you go? And several moms who homeschooled said, just can you get out one afternoon a week and do something really specific and deliberate about

It takes some planning because you, you know, and so generally there's, I have a handful of relationships that I'm trying to keep up with, trying to encourage them, trying to find out what their time in the words like if they're believers. And that's Tuesday afternoon. I do those things.

Can you share from the two different circumstances where you had to transition and they were both very differently? Can you share maybe a little more specifically about any mistakes or how you found your way? Did you have some missteps? Did that take a lot or did you just have clarity like, oh, this is what I can do and that's what I've got? Yeah.

I feel like I'm always not second guessing is not the right word, but just thinking through if something could be different or better because the kids are always changing. Their needs are always changing. And so there you can't just continue doing the same thing all the time because and so yeah, when I was in Central Asia, my children were very young and

And so a lot of that was just taking the kids along with me. But that was exhausting. And the amount of time we could spend out was more limited. And we had very extreme weather where we lived. So it's kind of part of Siberia. And so for about nine months of the year, it snowed. And for about four of those months, it was snowing.

like negative 40, negative 50 degrees. And so all of that played a role in how much I was able to get out of the house with kids. And so I would say some of the missteps was just feeling bad about things I couldn't control. Like...

I can't get out today. I've got a six month old and it's negative 40. And it's like the wind is blowing. And like, I look out the window and there's a car turned over. Like I can't go out today. Um, and then feeling bad about like, well, I'm not doing anything. Um, what am I doing here? I'm just, you know, just guilt. That's just not from the Lord. Um, who can control that? Right. Like, but the Lord, I mean, I can't do nothing about the circumstances. Um,

And so comparison is another thing that a trap that I, you know, regularly have to make sure that,

I'm not making decisions based on, you know, what I, what I expect, you know, what were people expecting of me or what do I think people are expecting of me? Um, because I've just, I have a lower capacity. Like I have a sister, she can, she can spend probably 10 plates at any given time. She's just, her capacity is great. And mine isn't, I get tired easily. I like to read. Um, I

I need downtime, especially in the evenings. And so I can't do as much maybe as some of the moms I've met. And that is a trap to fall in if I'm not guarded against like, well, this is...

this is not me, this is her and praise God that she is able, but I'm not. That's okay. All very relatable. I mean, I don't think many of our listeners have lived in negative 40 degrees for months on end. But I think we can all identify with these things that you're saying in our own sphere. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

It also occurs to me that I hear a lot of ministry families talk about how hard this is on their children. And you hear kids that grew up in ministry homes of various kinds that talk about how difficult it was to live in a fishbowl or always be on stage, so to speak, you know, people examining them. And I just wonder, you know, now that your children are growing up,

What positive benefits do you think your children have gained from having parents that are in full-time ministry? Yeah, yeah. We try to guard them against some of those negative things. And there are so many benefits. I think about the amount of godly people who have poured into their lives over the years.

The kinds of missionaries and church planters, homeschooling moms who they've gotten to see and walk alongside, that's just invaluable.

Also, even just they get to help out with a lot of things. So we often host events for families and I've had my kids come and teach finger knitting or teach brush drawing, teach some kind of little physical activity, movement thing,

And they love that. And so they're gaining some neat skills just and we don't make them do that by any means, just if they want to. We've also had team teams come that do knocking on doors and handing out flyers. And a couple of my more extroverted kids love that. They actually do it.

And so that sort of thing, I just think this is good for them. This is building confidence. They're willing to talk to people. They also have gotten to travel a lot. We lived in many places because primarily because where we lived in Central Asia had really kind of stunted medical from the medical was about 70 years behind most of the world. And so anytime something happens

serious or even slightly serious needed to be done, we had to leave. And so three of my kids, uh, my kids were born on three different continents. So they were, two of them were born in Istanbul, Turkey, and one of them was born in Nairobi, Kenya. And they just, they've been all over and that's kind of neat. They don't know that it's neat, but I know that it's neat. Um,

And there are so many benefits. But also, like you said, some things we have to watch for because they're not perfect and neither are we. And we don't want to give that impression. It just seems to naturally counterbalance some of the negatives, I think, of homeschooling and having your children more insulated from homeschooling.

not just the world, but like other people on a regular basis. You know, we don't have to leave our home to do what we do every day. And we have to seek that out and be intentional. But that is just a natural rhythm, it sounds like, of what you're doing and work. I think that would be a huge benefit. Absolutely.

Can you tell us a few cautions, suggestions, or encouragements that you would have for either ministry mothers or even just wives and mothers who are homeschooling their kids? Yes. So there were a few scriptures that came to mind, a few passages that came to mind when I thought about

encouragement for just moms in the thick of it, even if you're not doing ministry, you are doing ministry actually to your children and to your family and your neighbors and honestly, just the watching world. A passage that I thought about is from 2 Corinthians 4, starting at verse 14, and I'll read through 18.

Knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we do not look to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient,

but the things that are unseen are eternal. I don't even know that that needs a lot of commentary, but I thought about that encouragement for a weary mom that yes, outwardly,

I have more gray hairs than I've ever had, but probably fewer than I will have. Right. I'm wasting away. Literally. I'm watching it, you know, but not on the inside. And I feel that I, as I get older, I feel this inner renewal that is just from the Lord, from being in his word, from being around his people, his,

And honestly, a lot of this has come through the living education that I'm giving my children. Just the tenderness. Like, I rarely get through a poem with my children without, like, choking up. And I think this is me inwardly being renewed. The joy and the tenderness and the compassion is just growing more

And that's preparing us for what this passage says about that He's going to bring us into His presence. And we're not going to be horrified.

hard calloused people, but we're going to have been renewed day by day. And I think this, this education offers that not just for our children, but for us. And, and if we're, and if we're actually not partaking in that, I don't know that we can lead our kids to partake in that. And so I would encourage moms to be in the word and,

Even if some days it's hard. I had four kids, four and under. My oldest was four when my baby was born. I had three in diapers twice. And I was nursing two children pregnant with a third. All out of the context of my mom and my sisters and just in a kind of isolated area. And it was a low time for me.

And I think below zero. And there were days where, you know, even opening up the word was hard and I would do it and it would kind of fall on like a rocky kind of place that just didn't, you know, and there were years like that. But I came out of that. And if I think that those habits of being in the word and being among God's people and those, those kinds of things,

So when you do come out, when you come into a season where you can feel a little bit more, you're not just surviving. Those habits are still there so that that inner renewal can happen. You're not just way off track somewhere. Such a good word. That is beautiful. It was.

Such a good word for all of us. And it's just where we live. And no matter what context God has placed us in, that lesson is still the main thing. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. Would you like to go deeper in your knowledge of the Charlotte Mason Method? A Delectable Education has resources available for your continuing education and growth as a Charlotte Mason teacher.

We have a variety of full-length video workshops as well as video demonstration lessons featuring real families using the Charlotte Mason Method that you can watch at your convenience. Visit www.adelectableeducation.com and click on the Teacher Training Videos under the Teacher Tools tab. Thank you for joining us today on the podcast. We hope our discussion serves to equip and encourage you as we seek to explain the Charlotte Mason Method.

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