Meet Leslie Anne Bustard

Leslie Anne Bustard takes great joy in loving people whether it is at church, around her kitchen table, or in a classroom. She delights in words and the way poets & storytellers put them together, and marvels at the beauty found in the details of ordinary life. Reading, writing, teaching, and museum-ing are some of Leslie’s favorite things. Fifteen years of homeschooling led her to teach literature to 7th and 8th graders and to running the theater department at a classical Christian school.

Alongside her three partners at Square Halo Books, Leslie developed and hosts the podcast Square Halo at https://www.squarehalobooks.com/podcasts.

She contributes regularly for Cultivating and The Black Barn On-line and has written for Deeply Rooted and Risen Motherhood.  She and her husband Ned have been married for 30 years and live in a century-old row house in Lancaster City, where they raised their three daughters.

Leslie’s current book project is called Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide for Choosing Children’s Literature with Square Halo Books.  It is a book of 40 essays written by variety writers and covering a variety of topics. This book hopes to encourage adults with children in their lives as they choose books that plant the seeds and cultivate for beauty, truth, and goodness. Topics include reading poetry, enjoying Shakespeare, passing on book love, cultivating the imagination, and talking to our children about race.

Find Leslie online: 

https://thecultivatingproject.com

https://www.blackbarnonline.com/feed

https://www.squarehalobooks.com/

www.facebook.com/leslie.bustard/

Instagram @LeslieBustard

“He Who Began a Good Work”

In my early days as a homeschooling mama of three girls, I searched for the magic bullet that I believed was out there, or for the snap of a finger that would help me guide my young students to a smooth day of learning and loving.  I was convinced that if only I could plan the right schedule or read the right books, we would be transformed into a delightful family of learners in … a day or two, without so much trouble. 

I could blame watching reruns of Bewitched and Brady Bunch as a child. In Bewitched, Samantha just twitched her nose and disasters were averted. In Brady Bunch, Marcia’s problems were solved in 30 minutes, give or take a few commercials. But more likely, it was my need to know how God patiently works his ways in us over a long period of time. 

In the thick of the ups and downs of parenting and educating, oftentimes my eyes were not open wide to the good that we were already doing; I was too anxious over what I was afraid we should be doing but were not. And, piercing my heart deeply was the desire to help my girls grow in their love for God, for others, as well as for beauty, truth, and goodness. Becoming motivated students, focused on accomplishing their assignments in a reasonable amount of time each day would be “icing on the cake.”  Still, even those days when the homeschooling gods smiled down on me and the books, artwork, poetry, and history brought smiles to our faces and new ideas to our minds, there was always a little worry that it might not be enough. 

But God.

He is kind; he works his ways in us as we wrestle through our days. He has the long view in his sight; he goes before us, even as he is with us, while we, his children, struggle to walk the path on which he has put us. God is patient and compassionate; he knows we are weak and “made of dust.” Over time I learned that “he who began a good work in [us] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) God is not surprised by our struggles, and, as we learn to pray and trust, he continues to accomplish in us that good he has planned for us. 

Although this happened more than ten years ago, one family story continues to remind me of how I easily expected good results quickly. It took living through some ups and downs to see how God’s patience and his long view brings about his ways in us. 

This story starts with a love my husband Ned and I share for Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, an area near where I grew up.  For me, its rolling green land and woods have found their way into my imagination. A land so steeped in history that when I was little I could easily picture Native Americans quietly hunting around the trees and George Washington camping with his soldiers. The drive down Route 1 in Chadds Ford, near The Brandywine Battlefield and The Brandywine River Museum, is as familiar and beloved to me as my childhood backyard.  

However, we live in Lancaster County surrounded by farmlands and Amish buggies. I have great affection for its beauty of spring-time planted fields and rows of tall corn stalks that line back roads in summer. This is the land my daughters know well. 

Yet, decades of living here have not erased the unexplainable “something” that Ned and I love about Chadds Ford, and how we want our girls to know the feel of it, too. 

One year, when our daughters were 14, 9, and 7, Ned and I decided to create a fall where they could experience a little of the autumnal beauty of Chadds Ford without taking the long drive, while also adding in memory-making family time. Expecting laughter and good times, we planned Tuesday night picnics at Rockford Plantation, which is nestled in nearby Lancaster County Park. The land around this pre-Revolutionary War home looks much like Chadds Ford, and we decided the small green knoll facing the house and far off woods would be our destination to eat and play together. 

I would pack our wicker picnic basket with favorite foods like chicken potpie, brownies, and apple cider. Hershey, our chocolate Labrador, would come along. Sometimes we would bring a book to read together or a Frisbee to throw. 

Preparing for this picnic fit well with my vision of adding ordinary traditions into our family life—activities that made for memories of laughter and unity—as well as our hope to “hardwire” the Brandywine aesthetic into their psyche. 

These picnics happened over the course of a couple of years more than a decade ago. Now I remember this time with great fondness.  We laughed, played Frisbee with Hershey, took walks around the fields, threw Pooh Sticks by a creek, and looked into the windows of the historic house. Thankfully, though, I don’t remember the exact details of how difficult each girl was with each other as this new tradition started. I don’t remember the grumbling or prickly words. And I also don’t remember how deeply discouraged I was by the tenor of our family culture each week. But, in fact, I was very discouraged. I had assumed the girls would enjoy this new change in our routine without a problem, but my vision of fall nights and family fun had been dashed by their grumbling during our first several outings. Staying home on Tuesday nights seemed a better option.

Sometime after the first month of our picnics, when I was about to give up on these excursions, Ned wisely said to me, “We’ll keep doing them. Eventually they will get into it and have fun. And one day, we will look back on these Tuesday picnics as one of the highlights of our life together.” 

And he was very right. We kept going to Rockford with dinner in the wicker basket and Hershey on her leash; eventually the delight I hoped for settled into our picnic routine. 

The girls got older and weeknights busier, and our picnic nights came to an end. But every now and then we would head over for rambles in the woods, walks around the open fields, or a “spell of sitting” on the old house’s wide porch; we’d reminisce about our picnics (especially the time when Hershey, off her leash, ran fast after a deer, with all the girls screaming in shock and fear).

Though the beginning of this Tuesday night picnic tradition didn’t go just how I thought it would, now I see how sticking with it helped establish a beautiful tradition for us; the enjoyment we have in gathering together in a special way or with special foods has made its place in our family culture. Reaping the harvest of those picnics at Rockford, now when the girls come to visit us, we sit around our kitchen table and have a picnic of sorts. We have agreed that we love a spread of favorite cheeses and meats, crackers and chocolate, grapes and apples. With music playing and candles lit, we laugh and talk and relax. 

When the girls were younger, I wished and worked for our family time to be easier. I wrestled with God, complaining that I was trying my best and was seeking to do what I thought would be pleasing to him… why did it have to be so hard? Overtime, though, I learned, as he patiently taught me, that he who began a good thing in us was going to keep working it out. There would be no magic bullet  or snap of the fingers. And it wouldn’t happen in a 30-minute time period, like those sitcom reruns I watched as a child. 

Gratefully I can also say that as he has been working his ways in my family, he has also been working his ways in me, helping me grow in wisdom and patience. I am learning to see by God’s “longer view.”  And so, because of his steadfast love and faithfulness, I can say, with the Psalmist, “Why, my soul, are you cast down? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 43:5)

Benediction

By Leslie Bustard

“…We are filled with the good things 

of your house…” Psalm 65:4

like the morning sunshine filling the kitchen windows,

and the yellow knitted throw on my lap,

the books that line our shelves,

and the laughter around the table,

also, the words in my head that I scribble on lined paper,

and the songs we sing together Sunday morning…

And always,

the water on a child’s forehead,

and, every week, the bread and the wine 

placed in my hand, with the blessing, 

“the Body and Blood broken for you,

take and eat.”