From Beginning to End

April 13, 2010

From Beginning to End

Home is home. Simple.

Home is the place where you begin and the place where you end.

Home is warm and cozy.

Home is your home. Simple. Your home.

I am figuring out as a home schooler, there will always be areas I feel as though I am failing miserably. If, for a week, math and history are strong, something, for a week, has sat unopened, unexplored, unseen, unread and undone. And sadly, it is usually the fun stuff- the reasons why I love school at home- that falls through the cracks which I am finding are more like broad trenches in my house. "Stuff" like flipping through art books and finding out the stories behind the paintings or drawings, cooking together, reading about and then listening to hymns or classical music, memorizing, drawing in our nature journals, learning about manners and different social situations, gardening, writing creatively, journaling, lingering on poetry.... and the list goes on and on and on. This frustration leaks into my schooling and thus, my home.

"Failing miserably" might be a little dramatic, but there are school conversations with Jeff on the couch at night that call for drama. My latest realization which causes me to teeter on the "failure" side is that I haven't had Julia write near enough this year. My biggest enemy? Time. How do I fit in the three "R's" plus all the "stuff". Writing creatively and journaling rests comfortably somewhere down in that same ditch with so many other good things. I counted her journal entries the other night- a whopping EIGHT for the entire school year! So of course, I was sure to assign "writing in journal" as one of her bedtime activities for that night.

Why I am writing in the first place----After a particularly challenging school week a month or so ago, I wrote "home" at the top of the page on which Julia was to journal that evening. I just had to pick her thoughts regarding this house in which some hours she skips around so freely but others, she grinds out math problems that I want to check with a calculator and feels me pressing her to engage her brain and to stay focused. Sometimes I had to wonder did she really even like home! What she wrote that night, as short and plain as it was, gave me comfort. (She has grammatical and punctuational license in journal writing, right?)

I was grateful for what I read. Simple. Beginnings and endings. Hers. Cozy. I love her descriptions knowing that, by God's grace, she and I see things differently. When she sees "simple", I may see chaos. When she feels "cozy", I may be wishing for a day to myself. I love that she knows it's her home- not just mine and Jeff's, but hers. And her mentioning beginnings and endings---critical. This was my favorite. It could mean a few things to her, but, for me and possibly for her, it is that He is the Beginning and He is the Ending-- conversations happen, school happens, spats erupt, well made plans dissipate, prayers fly, laughter spills and tears fall. It is life and He's all in it-- from beginning to end.