Category Archives: April Blogging Challenge

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Somewhere in our Mennonite history, perhaps overly-influenced by Bill Gothard (who was neither Mennonite nor Godly), we adopted a system in which men, when they wish to pursue a relationship with a woman, are expected to speak to her father before they even let her know that they like her.

I think 2020 is a good year to end this practice.

Don’t get me wrong. If you’re a guy and you’d feel more comfortable getting some advice from her dad before you broach the subject with her, cool. Go ahead.

Or if you’re a girl and you want your dad to have somewhat of a gate-keeping role in your life, cool. If a guy asks you out, just use your words, and tell him you’d like him to talk to your dad first.

But I think the blanket expectation that guys will talk to the dad first is harmful for everyone. Here’s why:

1. It keeps women from learning how to articulate what they want

Look. I love my Mennonite culture, but sometimes I fear that we don’t teach our women how to articulate what they want, or say “no.” Which not only makes communication complicated and unclear, but also makes women resort to manipulation. And makes it easier for men to take advantage of women. It’s just not cool.

An adult woman should be able to say to a man, “no, I am not interested in dating you.”

An adult woman should also be able to say, “I’d like you to talk to my dad before we discuss this dating business further.” If that’s what she truly wants, she should be able to say that out loud using Clear English Words.

2. It often makes men have to jump through completely unnecessary hoops

I can see value in a guy talking to a girl’s dad at some point near the beginning of their relationship.

I see absolutely no value in a guy having a long awkward talk with a girl’s dad, only to end up never dating her at all, because she wasn’t interested.

If someone has no chance, they should’t have to talk to your dad about it. It’s pointless.

3. It makes things harder for women in the long run

When a girl is 20, having a guy talk to her dad first seems to have some advantages. She can ask her dad to turn him down for her, and avoid that awkwardness. It weeds out the guys who aren’t serious and just want to have a good time. And it feels romantic to think that this guy likes you so much he’s willing to jump through these hoops to get you.

But it gets worse for women as they get older. Once a guy has talked to five dads with zero results, he’s gonna be exhausted from fruitless dad-talking. He’s going to be much less likely to ask out a Mennonite woman. That’s just the sad reality.

4. Do dads even like having these talks?

Obviously a dad will be interested in knowing more about who his daughter dates, especially if she’s pretty young yet. He’s going to feel protective.

But like, if the guy isn’t going to date her…if she’s just gonna turn him down…surely that can’t be a fun situation for the dad either, right?

Is there something I’m missing here? Do dads just like chuckling to themselves about the poor blokes they got to reject for their daughter’s sake? Because to me that just sounds cruel.

5. The older a girl gets, the sillier the whole thing is

If a woman is in her 50s and single, is a man supposed to drive to the nursing home and yell into her father’s ear for a while? What if she’s a widow? At what point does the practice become ridiculous?

Maybe if the girl is 18, talking to her dad isn’t such a bad idea. But can’t we just nix the practice for girls over the age of 25? Or at least once she’s been independent for a decade or so?

6. We can switch up the order of operations and still keep every single one of the system advantages

I get it. There’s value in making a guy prove that he’s serious. There’s value in a father probing into a guy’s life, protectively looking for red flags that his daughter may not see. Especially if she’s still quite young.

But the guy can still talk to the girl first, and talk to the dad later if she says “please talk to my dad.” It’s not that hard, and it accomplishes all the same goals.

Final Thoughts:

I don’t think a girl should ever make a guy talk to her dad if she has no intention of dating him. And I don’t think a girl should ever make her dad turn a guy down for her, unless he’s legitimately a creep. I think a lot girls, even if they are kindhearted, do these things because it’s just how the system works, and because it’s easier. But I think it’s cruel to the men. (Although men, I’m willing to be corrected if you’d rather be turned down by the dad than the girl.)

Also, I know that someone’s going to read this post and think, “but why does it always have to be the guy asking the girl out? Can’t girls ask guys out?” Honestly I don’t have enough data to tackle that one, but if you have a girl-asking-a-guy-out experience (positive or negative) I’d love to hear about it.

But it did make me think. What if we had a system where Mennonite girls started talking to the moms of Mennonite boys they had crushes on? Sort-of “hey I like your son, what do you think?” Maybe that would be less scary than talking to him yourself or waiting on him indefinitely, hahaha. I’m just joking around of course, but if you’ve ever done that, I REALLY want to hear that story.

…     …     …

I don’t usually post about this sort of thing on this blog. Normally I’d put it on my Patreon, which is an extra, subscription-only blog where I sometimes post controversial/opinionated pieces like this one, and other times I post more emotional, vulnerable pieces.

My latest Patreon post is both. I wrote about why I hated Greta Gerwig’s 2019 Little Women movie, which is a controversial opinion, since most people loved it. But it’s also a vulnerable piece, because my reasons for hating it were very personal.

All my Patreon posts are accessible for $1 a month (or if you want to support me more than that, you can edit the amount to give more). I try to post twice a month, but am committed to posting at least once a month.

If you want to sign up, go to patreon.com/emilysmucker and click the red “join” button.

It was 6:00 am, and my room was faintly lit with the promise of dawn. It’s been years since I’ve been to a sunrise service, but there was no getting out of this one. In this era of coronavirus, I feel obligated to snatch up every special opportunity that wanders past me, no matter how tired I feel.

I fluttered from my room to the bathroom to the kitchen, bumping into the family members that I bump into all the time: Mom, Dad, Jenny, and Amy. The only missing person was Steven, who had to work.

Then, with a long skirt over my sweatpants, I got into the car with my sisters and we drove past my Dad’s grass seed cleaning warehouse, and along the “back way,” the old farm road belonging to my Dad’s cousin Darrell who farms the original family farm. Along one bend we had an unbroken view of the foothills in the horizon, with one true-blue mountain peeking through. We got out of the car and set up camp chairs and blankets.

Mom and Dad arrived shortly after us. Then presently, another car drove up, and Ben and Matt stepped out. Ben lives in Corvallis, half an hour away, and I hadn’t seen him in person for three weeks. Matt lives in Houston, and it had been even longer since we’d seen him. But he’d flown back to Oregon just the night before, and was now living with Ben for the foreseeable future, in order to be closer to his family, and his fiancée, Phoebe.

And then the last car drove up, and there was Phoebe. We were all together at last.

I sat in a cluster with my parents and sisters, while Phoebe set her chair six feet from us, and Matt and Ben sat another six feet beyond her. We sang, and prayed, and watched the sun rise. Hallelujah, Christ is risen indeed!

We went back home, making Matt, Ben, and Phoebe stay outside. We take quarantine very seriously. The six of us that live in the house are the only people allowed in the house. Everyone else must stay outside and 6 feet away. But we didn’t stay indoors long, just long enough to make breakfast. Then we went outside, and we all sat around a campfire, eating and drinking hot drinks.

It had been a cold night. There was a layer of frost on the chairs, and Dad held one over the campfire to melt it off, which I happened to capture in an Instagram story that confused my followers. But the sun was bright and warm. And as we sat there, sun on our neck, fire warming our toes, I knew I was incredibly blessed.

Blessed to be quarantined with my family, whom I both love and like.

Blessed that Matt is home, and now my whole family is near.

Blessed with the sunshine, and the fire, and the food.

And blessed to live here, in the countryside, with extensive grounds and flowers and a creek and trees and neighbors who are relatives and don’t mind if you wander on their property to watch the sunrise.

But although I felt genuinely happy on Easter Sunday, the truth is, these days of quarantine have been difficult for me in deep ways that I truly don’t understand.

I mean, why is this hard? I’m not an extrovert. Even though I genuinely enjoy hanging out with friends, going to church, and attending parties, I always feel a little bit of dread at the thought of going, and if something comes up that prevents me from going, I always feel a weird thrill of joy. Quarantine should be a dream come true for me. I should be living my best life.

But I’m not.

For some reason, quarantine feels like a cheese grater slowly slicing slivers off of my sanity. I feel trapped, with no way to escape. I feel angry at people I see on the Internet who are spreading blatant misinformation. I feel fear whenever Corona comes too close, because my mother has terrible asthma, and I can’t bear the thought of her getting it. I feel annoyed at people who chirpily toss out-of-context Bible verses into the void of the Internet as a universal pat answer to all pain, all fear, all suffering.

Inch by inch my sanity erodes, and I find myself feeling all the things I don’t want to feel. Loneliness, mostly. I’ve tried so hard to not be lonely, and yet, here we are. It aches in my soul, and I feel not-okay for a while.

Then, I feel guilty. How can I be not-okay when I’m so blessed? When I have a family and flowers and health and food and so many things that so many people don’t have?

It’s hard for everyone right now. And I wish that knowledge would logic me out of my feelings. I wish that having a comparatively-easy quarantine would mean that I could stop feeling lonely, could stop feeling like my sanity was grated-down, and could stop feeling my feelings.

But that’s not how feelings work. When things are hard, they’re hard, no matter how much worse other people have it.

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Welcome to April 9! Or, unless you’re up late-ish and on the West Coast, April 10. Not that it matters. Let’s get to what you really came here to see.

On Friday I said that I was giving away a copy of Deborah Miller’s book Daughter: A Girl-to-Girl Conversation About What it Means to be One. And the winner is…(drumroll please…)

Shanna Miller!

Shanna, I sent you an email. Hopefully it comes through. Last time I emailed a winner who’d won a giveaway, I titled the email something like, “you’ve won!” And what do you know, it went straight to her spam folder. Ha. I guess “you’ve won!” is a pretty scam-y looking title.

In other news, Jenny and I did another podcast episode yesterday. It had been, like, a week since we’d last recorded, but it ended up being one of my favorite episodes yet. You can listen here, or you can find us on your favorite podcast app by searching for “Quarantined With Jenny and Emily.”

This episode is titled “Snail Mail and Snail Pets.” In it, Jenny and Emily discuss how to get books during quarantine, how to get someone to stop flirting with you and how to deal with disappointment. They also give some updates on their pets, both the cats and Jenny’s newest pets, snails!

Finally, I was going to end with a mini life update, but what even is there to update the world on? I’m just living life, serving Jesus, tucked away in a big white farmhouse in the Willamette Valley with a mother and a father and two sisters and one brother and innumerable cats that keep hiding their kittens.

Trying to do a million projects. Trying to Not Panic.

I have “sub for Chad” written across next week’s spread in my planner. But of course that’s not happening after all. Mr. Chad is no longer taking his trip, and I am no longer substitute teaching for him.

But I have taken on a funny little school-related project in the form of writing sentences for grammar class.

Dad continues to teach middle school grammar. I’m not sure how, but it involves YouTube videos and iPads. He wanted some extra sentences for the children to work on. They had to be simple sentences, with specific sentence patterns, and they all had to have prepositional phrases. This was harder than I thought it would be. The hardest part has been keeping the sentences simple (as opposed to compound or complex), and keeping out tricky things like gerunds and infinities.

But the most fun part is that I can make interesting sentences. Sentences about the students themselves, with their names in them.

Easter is coming up, and I think we may have a family sunrise service. What are your social distancing Easter plans? Anything fun/creative?

Take care, and stay safe and healthy!

Remember to check out the April Blogging Challenge posts Mom has been doing on her blog. She’ll post again tomorrow, and my next post will be on Monday, April 13.

(This giveaway is now closed)

Happy day 3 of the April Blogging Challenge! Today I’m going to be talking about the book Daughter: A Girl-to-Girl Conversation About What it Means to be One, by Deborah Isabel Miller.

I first heard about this project a year and a half ago, before it was even written, when my friend Janessa started telling me about her new editing job. She said that a girl named Deborah Miller was writing a book about father-daughter relationships, and she’d hired Janessa as a developmental editor.

Deborah Miller…the name rang a faint bell. Hadn’t I hung out with her once? I searched my memory. It must have been 2012. I was in my early 20s, and Deborah was still a teenager. Her family sings together, and they’d come to Oregon on tour. I heard that she liked to read books, so I asked her if she wanted to hang out and come to a bookstore with me.

Of course that was years ago, and we’d never kept in touch.

A few weeks after I’d first heard about Deborah and the book she was writing, Janessa asked me if I’d be willing to do some editing on the project as well. Deborah, Janessa, and I all met up at the trendy coffee shop in New Holland PA to talk about Deborah’s vision for the project, and what my editing role would be. And when I walked in, Deborah greeted me like an old friend, even though it had been years.

Turns out, she remembered me taking her to the bookstore. And apparently I’d given her some writing advice way back then. I had no memory of this, but I was delighted because it was just so full-circle…I gave writing advice, she remembered it, and then here we meet again six years later, and she’s writing a book that I’m going to do line edits for.

(Although I want to make sure I give credit where credit is due: I only really went through the manuscript once, whereas Janessa was working with Deborah very closely, draft after draft after draft.)

Obviously, since I’ve spent so many hours in these pages, and since I’m friends with the author, this review may be a little biased. But here’s what you can expect from the book Daughter: A Girl-to-Girl Conversation About What it Means to be One. 

First, the tagline calls this book a “girl-to-girl conversation” because Deborah is in her mid-twenties, and only a few years older than her intended audience. In this way, the book isn’t condescending or preachy, but reads more like a conversation with a good friend. Even though Deborah has a beautiful relationship with her father, the father-daughter dynamic is not something she’s fully figured out, but rather something she’s still figuring out. She speaks from her own experience when she can, but she brings in a lot of other people’s experiences and expertise to round it out.

Second, the book is about father-daughter relationships, but there are two angles to this. First, of course, it’s about a daughter’s relationship with her human father. But second, it’s about her relationship with her heavenly father. These two themes are woven together throughout the book. They work hand-in hand. But the heavenly father relationship is, of course, prioritized.

However, while the book is absolutely coming from a Christian perspective, it’s not overtly coming from a Mennonite perspective. It’s meant to be applicable to any young woman of Christian faith.

The book is a mixture of stories and practical insight. But I’ll confess that sometimes as I read through it with a critical editor’s eye, I was so focused on switching up wording to make sentences flow well, adding paragraph breaks, and deleting repetition, that I’d miss the full impact of some of that insight. Sigh. Editor brain. Takes all the fun out of things.

Still, there was one passage in particular that broke through the editor brain and stopped me in my tracks with its insight. Here it is, from pages 143-144

In my relationships, I’m learning to give thanks for what is, instead of complaining about what isn’t. Affirm, bless, encourage, and give thanks in the areas where your dad is doing things well. Recognize the places he has taught you something valuable about God and life. For instance, my dad isn’t the best at initiating connection and conversation with me. He assumes that if I’m not asking to talk about something, everything is fine. Sometimes I’ve been hurt, feeling like I have to be the one to initiate connection between us.

I’ve had to learn to appreciate what my dad does do for connection. Even if my dad is a poor initiator, he is a great communicator when we do take time together. Instead of putting more pressure on him to initiate, it’s important for me to thank him and speak well of the way I can have healthy, understanding conversations with him.

Maybe your dad is a workaholic. That isn’t something to praise. But there’s a good chance that, even in this weakness, he has taught you attributes of diligence and hard work. You don’t have to mimic his obsession with work, but you can thank him and bless him for the positive life lessons he has taught in spite of his weakness.

Maybe your dad seems passive. This can make following his lead complicated. But there’s a good chance he has also shown you gentleness and patience through his quiet personality. Bless those attributes instead of criticizing the ways you wish he would lead.

I could see so many things like that in my own relationship with my dad–places where he had a weakness that had a corresponding strength. Like the way he never told me I was beautiful as I was growing up, because he didn’t want me to think that my worth came from my appearance. Honestly, I would have liked my father to call me beautiful. But I could criticize him for that, or I could choose to affirm and thank him for never making me feel like my worth was tied up in how I looked.

Now, I should add one caveat here: This book is helpful for girls whose fathers, while flawed, genuinely have good hearts and love their daughters. Obviously if your father is manipulative and abusive, or just straight-up absent, there’s no way to “fix it.” You can’t just ignore your father’s negative traits and try to find something positive to focus on. Deborah actually addresses this at the beginning of the book, but I just wanted to make a note of that here as well.

Anyway, if you want your very own copy of this delightful book, I’m giving one away! Just leave a comment either on this blog post or on my Facebook link. (If you leave a comment, I’ll assume you want to be entered, unless you explicitly state that you don’t want to be entered.)

The giveaway will close on Wednesday, April 8 at 11:59 pm PDT, and I’ll announce the winner on Thursday.

Finally, I’m sorry to say that this giveaway is only open to people with a USA mailing address. Sending books overseas is expensive, yo! However, if you live overseas I can always send it to a friend or family member for you, so long as they have a USA mailing address.

And if you’d like to buy a copy of Daughter for yourself, you can do so at this link.

I hope you’re having a relaxing quarantine. Remember to head over to Mom’s blog to see yesterday’s April Blogging Challenge post. She’ll post again on Monday, so stay tuned!