Posts Tagged "homeschool"
On Monday Struggles and Gift-Giving
I was unprepared for Monday, but you know how it comes anyways.
It comes all flouncy and plops down on your planner and just rolls in all the blank space, rubbing it in and purring like that cat. That annoying cat.
I felt like a type-A mom living in a type-B house and the anxiety was flooding us all, up to our necks. It was drowning out every ounce of kindness.
And the thing is, I’m not really a type-A person. It’s just that Mondays can make me feel that way.
So I struggled to be patient and the kids struggled to be cheerful and we didn’t get breakfast until 10:30 for crying out loud. Not until 10:30, because there were so many first-things to be done.
And the only thing hunger fuels is anger.
One fifth of the people at breakfast weren’t grumpy, so that one was elected to pray for the grumpy rest-of-us.
I prayed, too, but it was jumbled up repentance and bewilderment and just mostly whining. I wanted to suddenly be prepared and peaceful, to have all my procrastination covered over, and I was just going to be grumpy until that happened.
(I’m this stellar example to my kids, you see.)
But prayer is not this magic wand we wave. The day continued to be a Monday and all my unpreparedness bore it’s ugly fruit, but God did remind me of something my husband had said over the weekend, in regards to struggle.
Struggle is part of the gift, part of the offering to God.
Struggle can seem like the thing that gets in the way of the offering. It feels like struggle is preliminary and annoying and that once we get through this struggle, then we can offer to God whatever gift we think we bring.
But like David at the threshing floor, I realized for a moment that I don’t want to give to God something that cost me nothing.
And looking at it that way changed my attitude a little. Which changes everything a lot.
I looked at the far-end goals out there, the ones we all have for our children and their futures and their relationships, and then I pulled the focus in and looked at right now.
Right now, in the struggle and the kinds of days where you just want to go to bed and start over tomorrow, this is part of the future and part of the offering.
And after David bought the threshing floor and after God had told him that his son would build the temple, not David himself, he spent his time preparing for it. He gathered and planned and instructed for his son’s future.
It was a process.
We struggle to get to the “good stuff”, but that struggle is part of the process that bears fruit. It’s part of the gift of ourselves that we give to the Lord, because in His great Grace He’s given us everything already.
I get bogged down in the daily-ness of the struggle, but looking at the process as part of the offering, and not just an obstacle on the way to an end goal, gives me hope for today.
On a Winter’s Day {Why I make them go outside}
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. ~ 3 John 1:4
We walk through snow and ice and sometimes we wear rubber boots. Three days a week, I tell them, just three times are you required to get out here and raise your heart rate a little.
There are complaints and pleas, there is sometimes a giving-in, but these minds need air and the cold just makes us walk faster.
I am teacher-mom, and that means I have to be the whistle-and-gym-shorts kind, too. Or in our case, the layered-up goof with ear muffs and a camera around her neck.
I even bought umbrellas, because it’s Oregon and we are nearly aquatic. There’ll be no weather-related excuses.
So we walk and there are kids spread out for a quarter-mile in front and behind me, some of them trying to keep up and some of them trying to break free, I think. I annoy them with my camera and my pep-talks, with my smile and my Pollyanna-isms.
“Look at how the buds are coming on the trees!”
“Oh they put fresh gravel down!”
“If you are cold you could always run!”
I annoy them because I stop to take pictures, because I walk too fast, because I run circles around them sometimes in my goofy tights and neon yellow shirt.
I think they love me anyway.
I am freezing and there are at least 30 other things I could be doing at the moment but we walk. Out and back, the same route, and sometimes we talk or hold hands or race home.
Sometimes there are just 5 separate people, walking alone but in the same direction.
I think we’re making memories that will be stored up for one day, for a day when we can’t take walks together and make each other laugh with our cheesy jokes. I want them to see all the joy I see and be satisfied with the simple things like frost on branches and budding twigs.
So when we go for a walk and they complain, I press on because I know it’s the moments that are important and the years are only made up of so many. I press on because I know that seeing takes practice, and nothing is perfect so we take the imperfect and find God there.
I know that the exercise profits a little. I know that it’s cold and torturous and there are other things to do but this moment has to freeze and we have to seize it.
And I know that there is always a truth to see in walking. Not a Pollyanna, look-at-how-the-ice-forms-on-my-eyelashes attempt, but a true Truth that the seasons change, the ground freezes under you, but everywhere in every corner God is at work.
That’s the Truth I want my children to walk in.
The world will tell them otherwise, that the ground freezes and the leaves fall because there is no God at work. They will have people try to tell them to take the easy road, to stay warm and comfortable. To live in ease and find beauty only in the work of their own hands.
Not so, my children.
I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in the whole truth of this created world and the God who made it and them.
See how the tree buds after a long winter.
See how the road is made firm for our walking.
See how far you can run.
Linking up with Emily at Imperfect Prose, #TellHisStory, and Crystal at Thriving Thursdays
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Note to Self {How I Get Through the Day}
Dear Me,
Today is not your day. Today is not the day you get to have your own, be your own, or do your own thing.
Deal with it.
Today is not going to go exactly the way you dreamed it would, when the house was quiet and the sky was dark, when you were full of good intentions and unused energy and you imagined you could teach like Susan Wise Bauer and cook like Martha Stewart and workout like Jillian.
Nope.
Today will not even begin the way you would like. It will just begin and you’ll be in the thick of it before the sun is up, all your good intentions squashed by the casualties of motherhood.
All the grace you intended to show will be challenged by ungraceful accidents, in the bed that was just washed and fluffed and refreshed.
All the learning you planned to engage in will be replaced with redundant reiterations of lessons already learned. You will repeat and try from yet another angle and you will think you’ve gotten through, again.
The laundry you sorted and folded will be dumped in closets and some of it will end up, still folded and clean, back in your dirty laundry.
The meals you were going to lovingly prepare will be derailed by missing ingredients, burned by distracted mothering, or they’ll be just plain late. The ones you prepared it for will pick at it and they might pick at you.
You will be sorry to hear that all your list-making and chore-charting will be overlooked and you will have to remind and re-do and there will be complaints. Many complaints.
Some even from your children.
You’ll take so many long, deep breaths that your head will feel light, and you’d better use your hubby’s deodorant because that all-natural, granola-girl stuff just won’t cut it today.
I could go on but I think you get the picture. You will be challenged today, and it will not look like the fuzzy-homeschool-and-homemaking day you idealized. Idolized, maybe.
Just sayin’.
You can’t crawl back in bed. The day is waiting and the kids are hungry. You are not up to the task so you’d better pray, even if it is a punctuated, “Jesus. Please. Help.” He’ll hear it, and it’s up to you to see His answers.
It’s up to you to see the blessings when they are marred by messes. You have to choose to be thankful that your child is at least truly sorry for his accident. That’s a victory. Celebrate it.
You will need to rejoice that you have another opportunity to teach those lessons and make those meals, because it means you have children at home and young-people-becoming-adults at home, who look to you and need you and would be different people if not for your influence. Make it a godly influence.
You can give thanks today because maybe yesterday you forgot to, and maybe that’s your real problem. Your thanklessness lead you right to discontentment.
You wrapped up in self-pity and failed to see them taking in the Christmas lights, all glowing and silent. You missed the half hour the two siblings spent together, sprawled out on the floor coloring. You were annoyed, rather than thankful, at how everyone congregated in the kitchen before meal time, all together and hungry and waiting.
You forgot about shocking your kids and you let the cares of this world pile up on you.
So today remember just this: you will long for these days in the future. Just like you get all nostalgic about the baby years that are gone (you forget how hard it was, don’t you?) you will one day think back to these days and I hope it’s with joy, not regret.
Since His strength is made perfect in your weakness, you are well-prepared for this day.
Go get ‘em.
{This week had several of “those days” in it and I wrote this and read it and re-wrote it and talked myself through it several times. I write a lot of things that are never seen, but I decided to share my little tantrum here with you. God is good, but sometimes my attitude really stinks and I just need a good, swift kick. You?}
Linking up with Emily, Emily, and A Broken Hallelujah
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Where are My Glasses? {Five Minutes to Focus}
FOCUS.
Sorry for yelling, but I have five minutes to write about this topic: FOCUS.
I could write about the child who’s attention I fight to hold over math lessons or phonograms. The one who I chase like a wild animal, and how just when I get him cornered up to the fence, and just as his breathing slows and I can almost speak slow and gentle to him…someone runs up and asks, “Watcha doin?” and he’s off again.
FOCUS.
I could write about the struggle to look in the right place with the right attitude and set my mind on things above, not on things in the mirror or the sink or on the floor or spilling over the baskets.
Or maybe the discipline of quiet time. The set-aside time to FOCUS (sorry for yelling) on written words that speak loud. The continual hiding away and bringing the heart back and how sometimes I lock the door of my bedroom just to get a second…
How about those times when ten minutes turn into forty-five and all my good intentions and scheduled activities are lost at sea because I lost my FOCUS?
Or how I freak out over little things and walk around looking for my reading glasses and everyone laughs because they’re on my head (the glasses) and maybe they’re a little nervous that this woman is in charge?
Or how I think without punctuation but speak with many… ellipses…and that’s good because we’re supposed to be slow to speak and I really have to FOCUS on edifices, aedificium, building them up.
Nah. I’ll write about How to Order Your Home to Create More Focus. Sounds perfect.
Just another cup of coffee and then I’ll start…
{Yep. Five Minute Friday is here and this week’s topic is FOCUS. I freaked out a little, thinking of how to spend just five minutes on that one. I’d love to read what you wrote. Click the link and play along!}
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How to Inspire Your Common Place
We did it.
Our first ‘official’ week of the school year, it’s done and we lived. We hit the books afresh and added a bit of laughter and silliness, worked through some kinks, and I think we really do know more than when we started.
This is our first year using Tapestry of Grace. It follows the same classical method we’ve always used, but I’m so excited about the depth of it and all the teacher helps.
Someday, I’ll make a page here for homeschooling, a place to share this journey and gain perspective.
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A few links worth sharing with you – I’ll call them Inspirations for Your Common Place:
From Ann Voskamp, How to Cultivate the Habit of Focus…in an Age of Distraction. ”The order of service created around bedtimes, school times, mealtimes — it allows ceremonies to direct behavior…. instead of parents trying to correct behavior.”
From The Homeschool Classroom, Using Social Media To Enhance Your Homeschool. “This post is not about your children using social media, but rather about how you as a parent can use social media to enrich your family’s learning experiences.”
From Becky Higgins, Project Life. Got boxes and boxes of photos lying around? Me, too. Files and disks and cd’s full of digital memories? Me, too. I bookmarked Becky’s site ages ago and just re-discovered it last week…it’s The Answer for creatively-challenged, time-challenged, scrapbook-challenged people like me.
Ordered my kit, printed some pictures, hacked away at some of that mommy-guilt. This product just makes me really happy, and when I have a finished product I will post some pictures for you.
And from Starbucks, brewers of happiness, Fall has officially arrived! Oh yes.
We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the common place something that is inspiring. ~ Oswald Chambers
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Let’s Connect
Other good reads:
- Jen Hatmaker - Examining Adoption Ethics: Part One"Money has always been a magnet for corruption. While there are obviously lots of true orphans, without question, that much cash flow will generate some “created orphans” to satisfy demand, especially for babies." Jen takes a good but hard look at international adoption. A MUST READ (Part I and II) for anyone considering. […]
- The Rabbit Room — “New Things Do Things” by Clay ClarksonFostering "holy imagination' in our children. Yes, please. […]
- Simple Mom | How to subscribe to blogs (Or, why you shouldn’t panic about Google Reader’s demise)Google Reader is going bye-bye. Tsh walks you through how to subscribe to a blog and how to move your subscriptions from Reader to Feedly. […]
- MandipidySuch beautiful art here - Mandy inspires with hand-lettering and heart words, and a FREE printable for the month of May. Check it. […]
- What Would You Look Like? « Living Proof Ministries BlogA must read from Beth Moore - "You following Christ will not always look the same as someone else following Christ." […]