All day I've had these ideas of what I could blog about, none of them overtly inspirational or positive.
Earlier this week I found myself so overwhelmed with the weight of homeschooling. The responsibility of homeschooling. All the questions came flooding over me. What am I doing? Is this really the right thing for our family? Am I supposed to be doing this? Is it supposed to be this hard? Will she ever learn diligence and good work ethic and how to make and stick to a schedule? Will she be educated enough to go to college? Be a doctor or a chemist? Will I have succeeded in educating her to be whatever she wants to be?
And then all those things that I hold over my head came rushing back. I'm not very organized (I used to be, but not anymore. Not with three kids). I'm not very diligent. I don't have a good work ethic. I hate doing the dishes. and the laundry. And I don't like to clean. {This is where my mom would say she didn't do a good job teaching me, but it isn't that at all.}
All of the sudden I realized that if I screw up at home, there won't be a school either to pick up my broken pieces and teach my children what it means to turn in an assignment on time and completed. There won't ever by bells and time constraints. There won't ever by deadlines or directional plotting to make sure you can make it to your locker, the bathroom, and your class on the fourth floor in 3 very short minutes.
And it weighed on me. All of it. All week. All week as we barely got our school work accomplished while I snuggled a healing boy, tried to keep him calm but the other two busy. A difficult week when I tried so hard to show my struggling three year old just how important she is, but I hurt the way her eyes say she feels looked over.
Today I sat in the ballet waiting area, unshowered with pony-tailed hair, my eyes revealing my weariness, I turned to the seasoned mom next to me and asked "Do you ever feel like 'what am I doing??" Her response was just what a weary mom needed. "Oh yah, all the time. I've felt like that since the beginning." -- solidarity.
We got in the car and drove home. As Amariss belted out the sound of music and Doron somehow fell asleep through it all, I drifted in my own thoughts. I saw a man on a corner, holding two different sodas in each hand, waiting for the lights to change. And I thought briefly "I wish I could just sit on the couch and drink two different sodas and binge watch Netflix for like 2 days." But then I shook my head, no, not really. I would want to clean the house first... and by the time I finished that I would want to be with my kids again.
But I reminded myself of why we're in this. Why we homeschool. Public schools are great, I think they have fantastic teachers who work so hard to make a difference in the lives of kids. I'm so thankful for all the friends I have who pour so much of themselves into teaching little ones. I cannot imagine how difficult this is.
I just read through our vision statement. We wrote this before we started homeschooling Am in Kindergarten. And I don't know that I have read it since. But another seasoned homeschool mom told me 'Write out a vision statement and read it often, because you will need to remember why you are doing this'. Despite all of Am's advancements and achievements just in this past quarter of school, the hard days make you want to throw it all away in an instant. And while I haven't read our vision statement in 3 years, I can see that by reading it we are still holding to it. And I am so thankful for that.
I am so thankful that this really hard job of educating our children is worth it. I am so thankful that on really hard days, really hard weeks, and sometimes really hard months; there is still purpose in all of this. And I am thankful that for this time and this season, God has shown us time and time again that we are doing what he has called us to do right now.
Blessings my friends.
Brie
