I'm back with renewed inspiration and vigor and oh man so much to write. So expect a full week of blabbering and rambling and something that hopefully resembles well formed thoughts.
Oh the homeschooling frontier. Somedays it feel like wide open spaces like you see while driving through Montana. Insert green rolling hills, big puffy white clouds and wide open space that resembles what I think is freedom in all directions. Somedays I wake up and I feel those thoughts when thinking about our day of schooling its lovely and dreamy and promising and the idea of regular school seems crazy. And some days I feel like we are in the middle of a far off desert without water and someone is asking me to run 10 miles as fast as can, the prize is living through the exercise with maybe a glimpse at a mirage of a big glass of red wine. The loser has the promise of teaching her own children again the next day. This may seem dramatic but it is tough.
We have hit some major milestones though and I feel as if we might survive...we may just be getting the hang of this and I think that my children may possibly just be learning from me. Which is actually nothing short of a miracle given to me by God in heaven. I pray each morning that I will be able to touch their minds if even just in the basic barely there required sort of way. I try to run through a positive thought process before my feet even hit the floor in the morning in conjunction with my prayers, in a way those words and prayers are the only thing that get me moving some mornings. I feel humbled by this calling of homescholing and right now I know that a calling is exactly what it is.
We have hit tough times on the frontier. Some days the natives get restless and stage a massacre where I am the enemy. Other days we breeze through and have the latter part of the day to do as we please. Those days where they cooperate with out hostile take overs, the afternoons are filled with giant lego scenes, fort making and dog wrangling. These are the days that make it worth it and I know they are getting what they need right now.
I would be fooling myself to say that this move has been easy for them. Or that we are even part way around the bend with the transition that comes with an upheaval of this magnitude in life. There are days when I feel as if I am the restless native that came in one day to stage a massacre on their previous heavenly existence. They miss their grandparents beyond anything I could have imagined and it is one area of their lives I feel guilty about still. To hear them retell stories and memories to each other of times passed is excruciating for me but I am so happy they have each other. And I actually feel as if homeschooling is actually healing this a bit, or at least providing a cushion for hard days, creating a bond between the two of them that is something more special than any of my words could explain. And this is a valuable. These are just some of the moments that create the feeling of validation...a feeling I don't deserve but that I am grateful for, a feeling that I do not take for or let pass by without a prayer of thankfulness sent upward.
And so today was one of those days of validation sent to me through a test. Grace had a math test in her midst and she was nervous. I watch he almost physically crumple like a leaf drying in the fall. She is her worst enemy at times, quick to give up under pressure, quick to declare defeat. It saddens me and worries me. But it is also healing to me as I know that I have this quality within myself as well. Sometimes my biggest weakness is what appears as strength to someone else. Sometimes the ones who appear most confident on the outside aren't always okay within. Oh my Grace....you make my heart hurt! And so the pair of us are moving through this together. She ends up teaching me more than I could ever possibly teach her at times. And we are moving through. The math test came this morning she began to crumple but with a few skills I taught myself in test taking (for I also have the test taking anxiety gene) we approached the test piece by piece. And I saw that sassy little peanut soar through that test. And with each piece she let out an audible "hmph" as if it were no big deal...as if she were made for this test stuff. She aced it without any help. And that folks was another little glimpse of validation and the frontier once again seemed manageable.
So it'd day by day travelers. I am not sure when each day comes and bad days are inevitable but they won't crush us. They won't stop i sin our journey we will push onward and be better for it. I am thankful for this time with my cherubs even if it does include the parenting strategy "attached." The word I find to be a bit stifling at times has also become freeing for us. The word that seemed suffocating actually resembles more Montana than the desert.
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