Daydreaming

Following up with my last post, I will tell you, I've been daydreaming about sending all the boys to school.  Our homeschooling journey turned out to be a big whopping heap of blessing in our lives.  We actually loved it.  My favorite things were...

• Rainy Days.  Super spiritual and clearly a great reason to keep your kids home.  But rainy days were the best.  Pajamas.  Small amount of lessons in the morning, maybe 30 minutes or so.  Then the rest of the day would be spent in a candle-lit, lamp-lit house playing Leggos, reading, baking, and resting.  Yep.  Rainy days at home were the best.

• Flexible scheduling.  We would start school in July and work through Thanksgiving.  Then we'd take off from Thanksgiving to the second week in January.  This was a wonderful time to break.  The weather outside is nice.  Parties abound and it is OK if we're staying up later than usual.  Plus we'd all be burned out by the time Thanksgiving rolled around.  We'd pick back up in January and honestly, after Spring Break in March, I think everyone is usually done mentally no matter where they spend their days.  We'd wrap up and be done by April.  Our summer was May, June & July. 

• Big Brown Eyed Boys.  I don't think I'll ever forget the day we were sitting around our little oak table reading our history story and my eyes were opened to what was happening in our home.  We were in a history lesson and my boys were hanging on every word of the story.  I was overcome with emotion.  The joy that circled our table at that moment made all the sacrifice worth it.  Some days were all struggle to motivate the boys to do their best and not give up.  Some days I felt like a huge failure in what I was doing and knew for sure I was messing up my children's lives.  But not this day at the table.  This day was laden with fruit.  They, we, were loving our time together, over a history story.  When the story was over, they begged for another story.  Tear.  Sniff Sniff.  Maybe this is working?

• Close relationships.  Notice I did not say perfect relationships, I said close.  The boys sleep together and they spend their days together.  Some of the fruit of that is that they are very close.  My youngest son's greatest most dangerous move is his elbow, or so he says.  The elbow can cause angst in the close relationship realm.

So, back to my daydreaming.  This summer I was done.  Usually I bounce back from my burnout in mid-June.  Normally there is a clear vision in my mind of where the next year is leading us.  This year the vision never came and I was done.  I was settled that this was our year to send the boys to school.  I even sold all my Abeka Kindergarten curriculum in our yard sale.

A few Sunday mornings ago, a friend at church loaded my trunk with some boxes of schooling resources. 

We came home from church and I said, "Shane, we need to be praying about school for next year." 

He said, "I already know the answer to that question." 

"OK!!! What do you think?"

"We're homeschooling."

(insert bubble bursting here)  (Did I ever tell you how selfish I am?  And how wobbly my faith can be?  And that it takes a huge amount of trust to follow God in this decision and say yes to Him?  Don't read pride into that last statement because my faith is pathetically small, feeble and fragile)

So I go out to the garage and open the trunk of my car.  Wouldn't you just know it.  Brand new packets of every worksheet I would need to teach my youngest son.  As I am wading through each huge box I'm thinking, "That's great Lord that I have the worksheets but you know I sold my teacher's keys at the yard sale last week." 

Wouldn't you just know at the very bottom of the very last box laid every teacher key I needed.  I sold them and God gave them right back to me.  That took care of the Kindergarten curriculum I would need.

After texting back and forth with a friend, getting her input in the big boys curriculum, she asked if I'd like to borrow her books.  I offered to buy them but she wants to keep them for later use, so she is loaning me everything I need. 

God provided everything we needed to school our boys this year.

You've heard it said, "Where God leads, He provides."

You've heard it said, "Obey first, then the confirmations will start rolling in."

This is our story.  The night after I posted my last post one of my best friends and I were sitting in my living room.  Wanna know what she shared with me?  She has a desire to homeschool her children but they go to public school.  Every year she approaches her husband and asks if they can homeschool and every year he says, "Hon, we are not called to that.  We are called to public school."  So every year she sends them.  And it is hard for her.  She feels like she's the minority.  The funny thing?  I feel the exact same way about the road we are walking.

I end with that story because I am sharing my journey with you and I do not ever, ever, ever want any reader to feel she is not on the right path if her story is not mirroring mine.  My path is not the right way.  It is a way.

If we were all an arm the body would not function properly.  It can be hard to be a hand when it feels like the rest of the world is a leg.  So just take yo' hand and go on down the corner and get you a manicure.