Homechooling Builds Character – Mine Mostly

As many of you know, I am approaching my very last year of homeschooling.  For the past two years, our college son has been living at home to save money while in college, but in a year plans to go to graduate school in another state.  In other words, in a year, my kids will all be moving ahead with the plans that God has for them.  This is all good news, they are wonderful young adults and I am so excited for their future.  However, it is also gut wrenchingly hard.  I am pretty sure this is the very definition of bittersweet.  It’s both bitter and achingly sweet.  I have been convicted to get my heart right now, so that I can send them off properly.  I want them to have the knowledge that while I love them, am so proud of them, and will miss them dreadfully, this is what God’s perfect plan looks like.  My job was/is to prepare them to move into adulthood and I will be successful in that if I can let them fly and test their own wings.  I have been contemplating what I have been successful at and what I really need to work on in the next year.

Things we did right –

1. This was not about me.  When my kids were little, I felt the need to make them look and seem like the perfect little people.  Perfect hair, perfectly matched, perfectly behaved and when they weren’t, I took it very hard.  I felt like every move they made was a direct reflection of me and I did not handle that well.  God had to really work in my heart to show me that it was not about me.  It was about what God had created them to be and my job was to be the Mom God needed me to be for their sake. He designed a little gifted boy who was infinitely curious, asked really hard questions at really inappropriate times, and felt the need to correct adults all the time. He created a delightful little girl who pushed my buttons, wore her shoes on the wrong feet, and liked polka dots, stripes and checkers all in the same outfit.  He molded an adorable brown eyed, happy boy who was more stubborn than I was, understood more about God than most adults, kept a grudge for a really long time, and who wasn’t afraid to defend his twin sister’s honor with his fists. My job was to mold them into who God wanted them to be, not to create perfect little automatons who perfectly showed off how good of a Mom I was.  It was not about me, it was about them.  Oh, the freedom it gave when I finally figured that out.  My relationships with my little people became so much better when I corrected them for things that actually mattered and not for things that only had outside rewards for me.
2. The freedom to fail. This was directly tied to the first.  If it wasn’t about me, then I could allow them to fail.  Failure is fine as long as we don’t stay there.  We get up, we try again until we get better.  We tried to instill the values of excellence and hard work.  Not perfection, but excellence.  We didn’t stop until we succeeded.  Got spelling words wrong?  Fine, but we will write them 5x and then add them to next weeks words.  Don’t know all your multiplication tables?  Okay, let’s learn them. Was unkind or rude?  That’s not acceptable behavior so let’s apologize and find out what God has to say about those behaviors.
3. Have yearly, and end goals for our children. Yearly goals helped us stay on track and end goals helped to remind me that I wasn’t going to have them forever.  It consistently reminded me that my end goal was to produce responsible, educated Godly young men and women who went out to change the world.  I would fail if I they never went out into the world and weren’t prepared.

Things I need work on. –

1. My worth isn’t about what I do or accomplish but in who I am.  Oh, how I am struggling with this. It’s bringing me to tears as I write this, and I hate crying.  I am a beloved child of God and He loves me regardless of what I do.  My worth shouldn’t come from being a successful homeschooler or from being a good Mom.  I am afraid that right now, that is where I find my worth, and I am desperately working to get my heart and priorities right.  God is convicting and working in me to get this perspective and it’s hard.  I grew up in a divorced family and my worth was very much determined by what I did, how successful I was and only then was their approval given. This is a hard paradigm to shift, but it is necessary.
2. Enjoy the moment. I am a pretty type A, let’s have a plan, and accomplish things kind of girl.  I am constantly looking towards the next steps, the next thing, the next hurdle.  That has its place and it has been really helpful in accomplishing a lot of things but sometimes, I need to live in the moment.  When my kids were little, I needed to stop and play tea instead of doing the laundry.  I needed to not push on to the next subject if my kids were amazed at how erosion happens in the sand box with a hose.  Now, I need to treasure the moments when my kids are laughing and enjoying each other instead of insisting that the dishes be done right now.  I need to take them for a walk and get an ice cream instead of insisting that they need to start writing their college essays 6 months ahead of time.  I need to just be and enjoy this season.  I need to just enjoy them being here instead of worrying about when they leave.
3. This is only a season and God has good plans for the next season, too. I love being a Mom and I love homeschooling.  I didn’t think I would love either, but I do.  I love looking at new curriculum, I love teaching my kids new things, I love learning alongside them.  I don’t love every single day or every subject (seriously, Geometry about killed me and Trig is next – horrors), but overall I love it.  I know not everyone loves it but I do, I feel like this is what God designed for me to do.  However, I need to remember that this is a season and as good as this one is, God has a plan for my life ( and my kids) a plan for good and for not evil.  A plan to give me hope and a future.  I need to trust in that and trust that God has a wonderful plan for the next stage for me, for my husband and for my kids.  I don’t want to fight it. I want to welcome it.