Homeschooling Through Grief

I'm putting together an outline for a series of articles or maybe a pamphlet or maybe it will turn into an ebook. Who knows? But I'm thinking through my walk through grief which impacted every single area of my life, one of them being homeschooling. I darn near gave it up. Seriously, I was *this* close to calling it quits and dropping my kids off at the local private school which would have required me to go back to work because private schools require a private fortune! Can I get an amen? That's how burned out I was. I was willing to work a 9 to 5 job outside my house in order to NOT homeschool my children. It was a hard time.

But at the last minute, after the decision had been fretted over and prayed over (more fretted than prayed, if I'm being honest) a co-op opportunity was dropped into my lap and it was the answer to every one of those fretful prayers. So I'm still a homeschooler! But the better thing is that I *want* to be a homeschooler. THAT'S the real miracle here.

What I've discovered as I've walked through five years of multi-layered grief, which was primarily the illness and death of my mother but there were other ugly side issues swirling around lapping at my ankles regarding a pedophile at our church and the subsequent fallout from that, is that it's OK to not be OK. It's not a lack of faith or a lack of holiness to curl up and say, "I'm going to need a minute." And those are the sorts of things I want to write about in my series/pamphlet/ebook. I want to talk about what it looked like for me, what my coping mechanisms were, how it affected my marriage and other relationships, and the guilt and feelings of failure that accompany it all. But mostly I want to talk about what it feels like coming out on the other side.

It's been 18 months since I lost my mother. I'm getting better, more myself, my passions are slowly returning. Colors are brighter, food tastes better, and I smile a lot more than I used to. I'm not there yet but I'm confident I'll get there. In the meantime I want to write about what I've been through and how I navigated that tumultuous time especially as it relates to homeschooling in order to hopefully help some other hurting mom who is in a deep, dark pit of grief and thumbing through the local schools section of the yellow pages. I want that depressed, wiped out, exhausted, sad homeschooling mom to know that this is not forever. The sun does come out again and the Lord heals wounds. Scars remain, but healing does eventually come.

Stay tuned!

I'm a homeschool mom again!

Have you ever noticed the Lord's sense of humor? He has one, you know. I probably mentioned that I lost my love of homeschooling these last three or four years - the last two I mostly hated it and did a pretty terrible job. My poor self-educated children can attest to that. Well, I decided after much prayer, thought, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments to put my kids into school. We have a wonderful private school here locally that I love and where I know a good many people. The cost is high so this decision required me to go back and get re-certified to teach public school. I began that process because I was going back to work and I was putting my kids in school. There. It was finally decided after two years of indecision and angst.

THE VERY NIGHT after I made that decision for once and for all, I attended a get together of homeschooling moms. I was acquainted with one and the others I had never met. Odd meeting for me to attend the evening after I announced to the world I was punting homeschooling forever and changing the entire dynamic of my world and my identity for the last twenty years, right? Well, the curriculum company I have used for the last 18ish years had a representative coming through town that I had up to that point only met and talked to online. I was excited to meet her face to face so when I found out about the meeting I decided to go - but not say, "Hey, nice to finally meet you. Yeah, I love your materials and I've used them exclusively for nearly two decades but I'm tossing it aside and I don't want to do this homeschooling gig anymore, mkay?"

The meeting was great fun and the ladies were phenomenal (as are all homeschooling moms, fyi) and one of them said she sure wished there was a co-op using our curriculum for her kids. Another said the same thing. I said I had been looking for such a co-op for four years. I have NEEDED such a co-op, especially for the last two years. One discussion led to another and just like that a co-op was born! It will provide the very things I have wished for and prayed for and needed to make me homeschool-whole again! There will be sciences with labs and upper level maths and P.E. (Noah's personal favorite). And I have the fellowship of homeschool moms again! All my long time homeschool mom friends aren't around anymore. (*an odd thing happens when your oldest is 26 and your youngest is 4... your original homeschooling mom friends graduate all their children and you are the elderly grandma in a room of homeschool moms the age of your oldest daughters. Good times.)

In the course of a few hours the Lord answered all my prayers, prayers I prayed for years. He let me get all the way to the end of myself when I had nothing left so I gave up homeschooling. But just like that, He gave it back to me.

I love how He works.

Finding my voice again

Hey dusty old blog. Sorry for the long ignore but I'm still trying to find my way back up onto my feet and into productive life again. I've made good progress, you'll be happy to know! I made it through the first year without my mom. That first anniversary painfully passed but now I feel like I'm gaining some momentum. I made it through the whole church situation, the betrayal, the misunderstandings, the real pain of all that and came out the other side in a new church home that has embraced us and ministered to us through a lot of crap. They are good people. Hands and feet of Christ people. The Lord pulled us out of a mess and put us in this place at exactly the right moment. Isn't it amazing how He does that?

I'm still struggling with homeschooling. I hate it. I think it represents something bad/painful/evil to me for several different reasons, rightly or wrongly. I have been working through why I feel this way and I've gained a lot of understanding but some decisions have been made and others I'm still working on. What I do know is that I'm going to phase out of homeschooling and into private schooling. Not quite sure how that's going to look yet. Details are yet to be determined.

I joined a fitness challenge in January at the encouragement of my sister-in-law and I'm SO glad I did. I think I've mentioned this before but the last four years have been really bad for my health. I gained 40 pounds and was under tremendous long-term stress which took a toll on my physically. Time to get back to the fit healthy person buried under a few tubs of lard. I'm also converting my schoolroom to a home gym. I know, right? Maybe this is what a mid-life crisis feels like.

One thing is for sure. I'm finally happy again. The Lord has been so gentle and faithful. He took me through a severe series of trials that all providentially happened right on top of each other. But He taught me an enormous amount about my own sin, narrowmindedness, judgmental attitude, and ignorance. Ouch. Those lessons are some of the most painful but also some of the most important. I feel like a chapter has closed and a new one is opening. It's going to be a good one. Very different from the life I've been living, but better and more joyful and with a clearer perspective. And I'll talk about it more because I think I'm getting my voice back.