Blog Blahs

I have the blog blahs.  I don't have the time I'd love to really be creative and write beautifully.  I don't know how to make this blog look the way I'd like it to look.  I occasionally sit down at computer and check out other bloggers out there and feel even more frustrated.

Where in the blankity-blank do these women come up with the time to post so often?

Maybe if I'd finally cave and hire someone to clean my house I could use that time to blog.

Nah.  There'd be something else pressing to do.

Plus, I firmly believe that when my hiney (sp?) touches my desk chair and my fingers touch my keyboard, some kind of gravitational pull draws my toddler to my side.  Every.  Single.  Time.

Another thing.  Since I had my precious fourth child, my brain has turned to mush.

I'm serious.

Mush.

I'm trying to nurture it back to life.

It's not going well.

And another thing.  Facebook is so much EASIER!  It's so quick and I just have to come up with one good thought at a time.

Facebook is evil and must be stopped.

Who am I kidding?  I love Facebook.  I adore Facebook.  I'm definitely addicted to Facebook.

I might have to address that one of these days...

But for now I'll leave you with this...

Have a happy Tuesday.

Snowmageddon

Snowmageddon, SnOklahoma, Snowpacalypse...

If you've been on Facebook at all in the last nine days, those words will be very familiar to you.

Tulsa has been hit with the heaviest snowfall in its history in the last week and a half.  It's been CRAZY.

Speaking of crazy... I'm heading there.

The boys have been home from school now for SEVEN days.  Mark has been working from home for five of the last seven work days.

No schedule.  No routine.  No sanity.

I've seen so many posts about how much others have enjoyed this down time.  DOWN TIME?!!  Not in this house.

Toddlers and snowstorms simply DO NOT mix.

Still, being snowbound has made me mindful of all there is to be thankful for in my life.  The last time we were inundated with winter weather, it was in the form of heavy ice and power outages and accompanied by the death of my father.

This winter storm, though at times stressful and inconvenient, is full of life.  LOTS of life.

For that, I am thankful.

The Spin

I was the kid who loved to spin.

I would spin around and around and around, then collapse in the grass and let the world keep spinning around me.

I loved that feeling.

I also loved the way my stomach would drop as a roller coaster dropped on the first big hill of the ride.

I loved anything daring and thrilling.

One summer, my neighborhood friend and I decided we would jump off the roof of every house in the neighborhood.

We did it.  I have major back problems now to prove it.

Another summer was spent building and jumping bike ramps.  We did all kinds of tricks, but we mostly liked to jump for distance.  Measuring each biker's jumping length was a bit of problem.  We solved this by laying all the little kids in the neighborhood in a row from the ramp down the street and measured length by the number of kids we could clear.  I'll never forget the image of my neighbor running towards us screaming, "STOP!!  STOP!!!"

It's a miracle we didn't kill anyone.  It's a miracle we didn't kill my baby brother.

Sometime after my first child was born, I began to notice that my recovery time became longer and longer after a roller coaster ride, or a swing set ride, or even just some spinning fun with my daughter.  I felt a little sick.  I would get a headache.  Standing on a high ledge, bridge or building has VERY negative repercussions for me these days.

The spin isn't working for me anymore.

What's funny is that I still find myself often caught in a spin of a different kind.  It's like there's still something of that thrill-seeking, but reckless child inside of me that tries to perpetuate the feeling I craved so much as a youth.

The thing is this kind of spin is more dangerous.  This kind of spin keeps me in a place of restlessness, discontentment and anxiety.

Spinning is NOT conducive to peace.

This last year I've worked at intentionality in this area.  I try to make decisions throughout my days that keep me in or lead me to a place of peace.

It's a battle to be sure.  It requires me to create space in my days and nights for quiet, thoughtful reflection, reading, conversation, and quiet.  It requires me to "under" schedule rather than over schedule.  It often requires me to say no when I would rather say yes.

Not that my life can really be described as peaceful.  We are a very busy family and I am a very busy woman.  But I'm finding that my heart and mind are maintaining peace more often.  Because of this, I recognize the spin more readily and am learning to make choices that pull me away from it.

Getting there, but not there yet.

Won't that always be the case?

Why I Ever Homeschooled in the First Place

I never dreamed I'd be a homeschool mom.  In fact, I was adamantly against it.  

When Morgan reached preschool age and we started looking at the school options for her, I felt some outside pressure to consider homeschooling and I resisted - VEHEMENTLY.   But I felt the Lord challenge me and say, "You've never even considered it.  You don't know anything about it.  I want you to at least look into it."  

So I did.  I read lots of books and spent HOURS on the internet reading and researching and my heart began to change.  The Lord changed my heart.  

I homeschooled Morgan and later, Jackson and Charlie until the fall of 2007.  Morgan had completed fourth grade, Jackson, first grade, and Charlie, kindergarten.  

I'll tell ya.  I'm a good homeschool mom.  No, I'm a GREAT homeschool mom.

I pour my all into it.  We read, play games, read, play games, go on fun field trips and work really, really hard.  I even started a small co-op with some friends in 2005 to complement and enrich our experience.  It's still going strong.  

But by the spring of '06, I was depleted in every way.  My marriage was in trouble.  My parents were separated and my father's health was failing rapidly.  I was severely depressed and pretty much at the end of myself.

It was at that time that I felt the Lord say, "It's time for school."

I'll admit it was tough to let them go.  But off to school they went.  And they thrived.  It was shocking, really.  I mean, you get into this homeschooling groove and homeschooling community and you find yourself thinking that really the ONLY right way to educate your children is to home-educate your children.  I was quickly reminded BY the Lord THAT the Lord was, is and has always been watching out for my children - they're really His children, after all.

The year that the kids were in school was by no means a year off for me.  No, I spent the first half of the year caring for my father as his health continued to decline.  Then, after he passed away in December, I spent the second half of the school year trying to recover and heal from the trauma of his death, my parents' divorce, and the toll life had taken on my own home.

The time was well spent.

At the end of that school year, we began to pray and consider plans for the next school year.  All the kids had done well in school.  We decided to take advantage of a good situation and leave the boys there.  They were loving it.  I wasn't quite up to full running capacity just yet and so it seemed right.

But Morgan came back home.  I have homeschooled her through middle school and I am so thankful to have done so.  It's been wonderful to have her here with me as she's entered adolescence.  We have built quite a beautiful relationship and I'm grateful.  We believe she is ready to face the challenges of a big high school and I think she'll do so with grace and style.

So is it the boys' turn to come home?  They seem to think so.

I've said that it seemed right to have them home through the roller coaster ride of middle school.  Those three years are so formative - and can be so precarious.

Soooo, we'll continue to pray and trust that God is big and He knows what He's doing and will show us what's best - for everyone (READ:  "for me").

To homeschool or not to homeschool, that is the question

So, Charlie came home after school on Monday and dropped a bombshell in the midst of my only recently well-ordered life,

Charlie:  "Mom, I've been thinking about this for a while and I've made up  my mind."

Me:  "What are you talking about, Charlie?  Made up your mind about what?"

Charlie:  "I'm SURE I want to homeschool next year."

Silence.

More silence.

Awkward silence.

Charlie:  "Mom?"

Me:  "Ummmm..."

Charlie:  "Mom?"

A little more silence.

Me:  "Where is this coming from?  You've been so happy in school!  What's going on?"

So then for the next 45 minutes I listen to him pour his heart out about what's going on at school.  What's REALLY going on at school.

Man, being a kid is tough.

At the end of the conversation, I took him in my arms (not so easy to do these days) and told him I loved him and asked him to be patient because I simply couldn't give him an immediate answer to this.  He was frustrated.  In his mind, it's simple.  In mine, not so much.

I've been homeschooling at least one kid for all but one of the last nine years.  Morgan's become a very independent learner and will be going off to the big high school next year.  Jackson will be in sixth grade next year and we have planned to bring him home for middle school.  I thought for sure Charlie would want to stay in school and take part in all that the system has to offer.  I've kind of reveled in that thought because it meant my day-to-day life would be that much easier.

He is officially ROCKING THE BOAT.

Pray for me, people.

Dancing with my baby

Yesterday things got back to normal after a wonderful Christmas break.  Truly wonderful.  I haven't experienced a restful holiday in years.  This one was.  I'm so thankful.

After the boys trudged off to school and Morgan settled back into her homeschool routine, I turned on David's favorite music - Jared Anderson's live worship album, "Live From My Church."  I don't know why he loves it so much.  He's just a baby, but if he is upset or fussy about something, one sure way to settle him down is to turn on this music.  He loves it.

I turned it on and he toddled over to me, raised his arms up and said, "Uh."

This means, "Dance with me, Mama."

Don't ask me how I know.  I just do.  He says "uh" for everything but somehow I always know what he means.  Maybe that's why he's not talking yet.  He doesn't need to.  I understand him perfectly.

Anyway, we danced.  I love dancing with David pretty much any day of the week, but yesterday was special.  He laid his little head on my shoulder and let his body kind of melt into mine and we danced.

Within a minute or so, I felt a sudden surge of emotion and remembered a promise God made to me in the summer of '07.

"I can redeem anything."

I began to cry while I danced with my baby because this baby is one fulfillment of that promise.

In the midst of the brokenness in my heart, mind and marriage, the Lord spoke to me and promised me that things can not only get better, but the brokenness and the hurt and the despair can be redeemed.

This little boy is a DAILY reminder that God does redeem.  He took back what had been stolen from me and from my husband and brought LIFE to it.

And I'm grateful.

The Reasons Why

It's been a while since I last blogged.  There are some good reasons why.  I'll list a few here:

I have four children.

One of them is a toddler.

I homeschool another one of them.

The other two keep me bouncing the minute they walk in the door after school.

My husband owns and runs a successful business and although I'm incredibly grateful for this business, I will say that his work is often like a very fast train and it's been a while since he's been able to get off that train.

Another reason I haven't blogged lately is that I got stuck.  I began this blog as a series of little devotionals and while that's all well and good, I found that I wasn't writing at all unless I had a sudden inspiration and the time to flesh it out, meditate on it, and polish it.

Well, for all the reasons I listed above, you can see that my blog was going nowhere.

And I wasn't writing.

So I'm changing things up.

I'm going old school and am going to just begin "journaling," if you will.  If that results in something of value that I can share with someone, then great.

If not, well, at least I'll be writing.

God does something in me when I write.  I can't explain it.  I just feel Him more when I write.  It brings me to places of understanding - and maybe not even understanding, but acceptance.  Peace.

So here I am again.  Choosing peace.