Homeschooling Not So Confidential Volume 9865

The best part about homeschooling is that you are with your kids all of the time.  The worst part about homeschooling is that you are with your kids all of the time.

I had a lot of time to think about this truth this past weekend.  This past weekend I ended up having to take an unexpected trip to the west side to deal with the rental house.  It was unfortunate, the reasoning for my travel.  However, I didn't realize how much I needed the freedom to think without anyone else alongside of me.  Homeschooling does not lend much time for this and I walk around feeling quite imbalanced most the time. My psyche needs time to marinate on its own....I have learned this from our homeschooling experience.  

Homeschooling was never anything I ever saw myself doing.  My mother-in-law told me once that was interesting statement because I would always be willing to do what is best for my littles no matter what it is, and in this thought I suppose she is very wise.  I will always do what is best for my littles!  And what is best for them is homeschooling right now.

Before we moved I had one friend who homeschooled her children.  I taught at the homeschool cooperative in our area but if anything that experience alone furthered my original thought process....school outside our home was what was best.  Well now most all my friends are homeschooling moms, our church is full of them.  I find myself finding them to be full of sage advice, I find them to have a similar heart to my own, I find that most of what they say or believe resonates within my own soul for mothering my littles too.  This is earth shattering to me.  I find myself saying, "I am not sure how this happened?"  The truth is I know exactly how this happened.  I tool a moment to ask God what he really wanted and then I listened and then with a terrified spirit and an anxious heart I moved forward.  

I am no more or less terrified than I was the day that I started. It is a humbling job, teaching.  It is a frustrating and taxing job.  I have had to become quite selfless and sometimes this causes me to be crazy about the things I think that I can not possibly let go of.  I am used to focusing on myself a bit, finding the nuggets that God has intended for me to find.  It is frustrating sometimes because I feel that right now there are no nuggets for me, but if I take time to spend with God every morning I find that there are more nuggets in every day just for me than I could possibly carry on my own.  That's what I have learned the most I can not carry any of this on my own.  

I have also learned more and more that my children's place is within my reach right now.  That if my heart is right than my arms are just an extension of God's for them.  Right now my arms are long enough to reach them still, in fact now at this point I can still wrap my arms around them whenever I feel the need.  But my main purpose now is to prepare them for when I can't reach them anymore. I don't feel at this point that this is anyone's else's job.  In fact I am not sure that it is a job at all.  It is love, it is care, it is a connection that comes from within. It is an understanding and a love for what GOD is creating them to be.  No one can understand them or this better than me. No one wants this more for them than I do. And so the best thing for them is to be with me. 

And so now you now know that after much deliberation we are homeschooling both kids again next year. 

Brian asked me how I felt about it all the other day.  I thought for moment and replied that it really isn't about me and what I can do on my own.  My sanity may fail from time to time but I am learning more and more that that is more of a testament of how much time I spending within the arms that reach for me.  

Please know this is my own journey not a reflection of what I think is right for everyone.  I also know how incredibly blessed I am to be able to take this time to devote to them without interruption.   

"He will perform the cause I hold in my hand." That makes it very real to me today.  The very thing "I hold in my hand" - my work today is the concern that is beyond my control, this task in which I have greatly overestimated my own abilities - this is what I may "cry out " for HIM to do "for me," with the calm assurance He will perform it. "The wise and what they do are in God's hands" (Eccl. 9:1) Frances Ridley Havergal...Taken from Streams in The Desert