What if we weren’t meant to “have it all” (part 1)

When we lived (happily, most of the time) on a food stamp income, money matters were more simple in some ways because there was just food/shelter/car/somehow make it till the next paycheck.  We watched God provide for our needs in amazing ways and we never were without basic needs.  Those around us observed and saw the needs, simply helped meet them if they were able.  It was beautiful.

We have always made giving a priority whether we had little or a lot.  We’ve seen it modeled in people we love and respect (and not to mention in Acts as we read about the early church) and believe it’s part of life.

It isn’t us the giver, that are so awesome for giving.  I truly believe that we are simply intended to be the conduit for what doesn’t belong to us anyway. Which when you look at it that way, it shouldn’t be hard to pass it on to a place where the need is great. There is profound joy to be had in giving your time to someone in need, your hands to help with work, your cooking skills to someone who is ill, your clothes to someone who needs them, your food to fill someone else’s pantry.   If we didn’t choose to give, to share, WE would be missing out as well as the ones we are able to bless.

Last year as I pondered what extra activities to add on to our weekly schedule, I was so tempted to do the music classes that we’d done in previous years (on a full scholarship).  I knew I could make it work in the activity budget.  I emailed, I got all the info.  We could do it, so we should do it was my train of thought.  But as it came time to actually write the (large) check, for four kids to do these (stellar) classes, I had this overwhelming sense that just because we could do it actually didn’t mean we should.

I felt a little lame writing to say we wouldn’t be registering the kids after all.  But something in my heart told me that although the classes would be fun and delightful for our kids, that perhaps there was something far more meaningful that money was intended for.  So instead of music classes we added to our brood of Compassion children. 

To try and communicate how this investment is such a treasure to our family or how richly blessed we feel to get to write back and forth with these five sweet children in Kenya, Guatemala and India and get letters back from them that say things like “I send you and your children a kiss and a big hug”.  Sponsorship is a bigger deal to these children than I’m sure I can even imagine.  They are steps away from crisis and hunger.  Closer than I’ll probably be all my life.

There is no judgement intended here, only a heart that wanted to share a little piece of our story.  This perspective continues to permeate my thinking and is part of the way God is showing me, showing all of us, how the gospel can be lived out in our life in this land of plenty.

Someday

Someday my couch will have all its cushions on it and it will not perpetually look like this:
Someday my kitchen counters will actually feel smooth when I run my hands across them, they might actually be clean for more than 5 minutes.

Someday there will not be a giant pile of dirties next to my washer, there will be no muddy little people to accumulate said dirties.

Someday there will be quiet and calm here.

Someday the kids bathroom won’t smell like pee.

Someday I will have the time to sit and drink whole cups of coffee before they are cold.

Someday there won’t be a shoe around every single corner or permanent marker art on my wood floor.

Someday I won’t shop at Costco anymore or buy 500 pounds of beef at one time.

Someday I will (maybe) think about my outfits, my style and actually wear something not from Costco or the Goodwill – and it will stay clean on me for the whole day.

Someday I won’t find my hairbrush in the toilet because there will be no one here who would think to put it there.

Someday I will go for long walks, have time for daily Pilates and have time to exercise.

Someday I might drive a small, zippy, efficient vehicle.

Someday I will go weeks without uttering phrases like “show kindness please” and “take the craziness outside”.

Every season at least once, I ponder what my days will look like in a few years time.  How this place will change and how different the issues and challenges will be that we each face.  This season of training many littles is exhausting.  But I am foolish to think that someday I won’t miss the loud, chaotic, crazy LOVE that spills from this home.  Oh yes, love will still live here.  But it won’t look the same, sound the same or feel quite the same as having my brood here, under my roof.  So every morning I wake up and remind myself to live in the moment that is today – my chance to impact and imprint upon real, live people is today.  Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

Honestly every day I am ridiculously thankful for my present, for my today.  From the outside looking in I know it may seem nuts, this life, this way that we walk.  And that’s okay.  I would not trade it for any convenience, any comfort, any dose of ‘easy’.  The riches are immeasurable,

Why we homeschool

I love reading other people’s post about why they homeschool and I used to struggle to formulate a proper response succinctly when people would ask me why on earth I would choose to keep my kids with me all day, all year.  So this year, really for myself more than anyone, I thought I ought to make myself write out some thoughts on the matter.

There are a lot of reasons why we homeschool now though if I’m honest in the beginning it was more from fear of other options and a dreamy hope that we would whittle away blissful days of learning together.  While we do spend days learning together and it is awesome, bliss isn’t probably the best descriptor.  Chaotic, messy, loud, passionate, frustrating, rewarding and meaningful would better fit the bill.

One of my favorite aspects of home based learning is that learning becomes a lifestyle that we live out together.  We don’t sequester off a ‘school room’ and only do school certain minutes in that certain place.  Though some times and spots (the kitchen bar or table or couch or covered front porch or under a tree on the front lawn)  we do more traditional work, the boundaries of home and school blend into a beautiful mess.  It can be a Saturday morning at 10 and Caleb can find a brilliant green striped caterpillar and we can work on identifying and classifying it together.  It can be Rylee not feeling well and waiting till 4 pm to sit down for her math lesson because she tends to work best later in the day anyway.  It can be a week that several people we know are sick or in need and we spend a Tuesday baking and cooking food together then delivering it to bellies that will be blessed by it.  Life and learning and loving get all wound up in this indescribable way and it is hands down, every day worth the sacrifice and the work.  It’s worth missing out on coffee dates with friends after school-drop-off time and time to pursue hobbies and such.

We are able to adjust for different children’s learning pace and style when they learn in this setting.  This has been a huge blessing as we’ve watched our children grow and develop in their skills and styles.  I am challenged to be a student of my students and to figure out how best to bring them to feast on knowledge, truth and great literature.

Facilitating sibling communication and relationships, sometimes my least favorite job, is also a part of our learning lifestyle.  We get all day to figure out how to work together, how to all pitch in to make this home run smoothly, how to honor mom and how to work hard.  We mess it all up all the time and we learn and we get the chance to give grace every single day.

When we talk about the stars in the sky and read about the founding fathers, I marvel and wonder out loud at how God works and designs and uses the lives of people to make history.  This I love.  I could not imagine not being the one to stand before them impassioned and animated reading the Declaration of Independence and talking about what freedom means and the price so many have paid for us to enjoy it.

We can hunker down and get a school-days worth of work completed in a couple of hours.  Then we can pursue carving, sewing, tree-climbing, adventure-finding and delight in nature before the sun goes down.  We can have friends over or go to classes at co-op or take field trips when we fancy.  Even if its a weekday afternoon or morning.  The freedom and flexibility abound and I love that.

The way ‘school’ soaks into life and the kitchen table gets covered with handwriting practice and maps.

The chance to be the one learning the most about who my kids are, how they can thrive, what they are passionate about and what sorts of choices (and friends) they are making, I am incredibly grateful for this.

Just a part of the iceberg here, more thoughts are mulling about but for now, I’ll just say that the (official) new school year is upon us and I can’t wait to dive in when the day is here.  But for these last few days of summer, you’ll find me sleeping in, drinking coffee on the front porch at 10 am in my jammies with my kiddos hanging around…

loving

every

minute.

Finding order – with a houseful of kids

Yes, I realize that five kids between 18 months and 9 years of age is not a houseful to some, but it is to most.  And I most certainly have felt a big pull to make some strides in the area of organization and planning our days to work better.  When we moved this spring I thought I had this great chance to implement 52 grand ideas on ‘how-we-can-do-things-better’.  Turned out we actually had this great chance to clean out, give away and somehow survive moving.  That was about it.  And it was plenty.

I emailed a few veteran mama friends towards the end of May.  We were (barely) crawling to the finish line and may or may not have finished our grammar work before calling it ‘summer’.  My email went something like this:

I have a lot of small people at my house.  I love them.  They are messy and loud and imperfect (darn it!).  I am feeling pretty overwhelmed.  I want to be able to manage my home better, spend more time doing fun stuff with my kids, train them to help more efficiently and effectively and to PUT THINGS AWAY AFTER GETTING THEM OUT.

So those may be the main bullet points but in reality my honest email was much longer and was a plea for some direction, inspiration and encouragement.  This stage with young ones is just plain hard.  No way around it only one way, through.  I trudged forward and packed our years school materials away for summer and took a deep breath.  There was so much I loved and I am ever so thankful to get to have them with me instead of sending them off every morning.

There were several approaches to getting organized but some basic principles, that I’d seen pay great dividends even when I merely dabbled in them, continued to surface as I searched for ideas and help.  Themes like:

• get up before your kids and get ready for your day before it gets away from you
• assign chores to your children, stick with the same ones so they get in a groove and do them well – to learn a good work ethic, everyone needs to learn to help out
• expect EXCELLENCE – show them what a good job looks like and challenge them to greatness
• children thrive on structure and routine, it makes them feel safe
• mom’s need to model discipline and self-control (and sitting on the couch/computer/facebook on a smart phone/etc need serious boundaries)
• one can schedule and still cultivate free play, creativity and other lovely things (I did not know this, really!)

Early June I wrote a friend (who I knew was struggling in the same ways) and suggested we read and brainstorm how we could plan better and make our life at home with our kids run more smoothly.  She said a quick yes.  We read and made lists and bounced ideas off each other and our husbands and made more lists.  Our goal was to, by summer’s end, have a workable schedule for our entire days during the (home)schooling year.  We would meet up late August and spend a few hours (celebrating her birthday) and hashing out all the details to form our many lists and thoughts into a master family schedule.

Today was the big day.  We woke with the sun and I drove a long ways while she took a ferry across the water to get to our meeting place.  After a hearty breakfast we broke out the gelly roll pens, the mechanical pencils, the plethora of lists, big erasers and a lot of determination.  We spent hours working and planning (and talking).  I think I drank 4 cups of coffee and 6 glasses of ice water and 2 mugs of tea.

We interrupted each other a few dozen times and erased what we’d written more times than that.  Though this part seemed hard, it was easy compared to the work ahead.  We have patterns that need changing, habits that need breaking and it won’t be a piece of cake for sure.  In a few weeks, I’ll be sure to post again and update on how the implementation all went down.  I expect it to be more than rocky.  But we will persevere and adjust when needed.  For now, we’re soaking in these summer days and spending every extra minute at the fair and in the sun!

Hard lesson learning

There are always things in life that would really nice if we could learn earlier than we do.  And for me, I seem to learn lessons slowly, painfully and the hard way.  It’s been this way since I was 12 perhaps, throwing tuna fish sandwiches at a wall yelling at my mother.  Occasionally I would heed the advice of older, seasoned ones.  But more often I sought to determine for myself if they’d really meant it.

Fast forward to 18 years old when I was mature enough to throw a shoe at my sister’s head while on a lengthy road trip in our small car.  All because she told me I was “cute”.  She demanded to be driven to the nearest airport and I stewed.  My poor parents drove us all home in one piece and years later we think it’s pretty funny.  But again during that season, I continued to learn my way.

We married young, didn’t get a great deal of marriage advice, at least that I remember.  It’s possible I was blinded by the burning love in my heart.  But the theme continued of learning hard things hard ways.  In the first year we were married I stormed out the door many times in frustration and immaturity, if my memory is correct I think I even ended up on my parents doorstep one night.  Oh the injustice and imperfection I cried!  I was pretty sure things were supposed to be dreamy for at least a couple years.  I made my best effort to prove that the world, marriage and all should revolve around me.

I learned to care more about what my parents thought about things that my husband.  I’d call them for ‘what to do’ about life stuff.  Them or a friend.  It seemed totally normal and good to me at the time.  But it wasn’t.  It was one more ‘hard life lesson learned’ for me that was the opposite of good for our marriage.

There was a season, about three years ago that I was 99% convinced that there was greener grass to be had.  About that time someone said to me

The grass is green where you water it.

I’ve never forgotten those words.  And the more time passes, the more I believe they are true.  Though we haven’t arrived or ‘met the mark’ at this point I just wanted to share that the fruit of sticking with your lifelong companion when things are not so wonderful is sweeter than any fresh start or greener grass you may think you’ve discovered.

Last night I arranged for a babysitter and set up a date night with my husband.  We slipped out the door with no one in tears, a huge feat.  We spent the next two hours enjoying food but more enjoying precious face-to-face time.  We chatted about little things.  Then I began to ask his input and brought out my notepad.  I needed help deciding on some things with the kids.  I needed his level head to weigh in on my emotions.  I needed his direction and leadership on several accounts.  I didn’t argue or think of what smart thing I could say.  I scribbled down notes and by dinners’ end felt a huge load lifted.  I didn’t ask him, but I’m pretty sure he felt valued, respected and important-which he is.

It has taken seriously just about all of these past eleven years for me to figure out that this is the way it’s meant to work.  That life isn’t all about me, it’s about the us we formed the day we married.  It’s about God pouring grace out all over and us finding our way through it.  The dividends of some heart wrenching work are paying off.  It might sound old-fashioned to you and that’s okay.  We’re liking it…