Out with the Old, In with the New

As we bring this school year to a close, I'm full of mixed emotions.  This last year has been, by and large, a success, full of its inevitable downs and ups.  As only my second full year of homeschooling, I feel I am finally getting my "sea legs" -- I have found that the most valuable skill a homeschooling mother possesses is flexibility, and her most necessary virtue patience.  In light of those two things, a myriad of other considerations follow:

1. In order to be flexible, the curriculum must give a little.  I have discovered this year that the curriculum I am currently using is no longer what suits our family best, so I am excited to make some adjustments for next year!
2. Flexibility must be balanced with a sense of order.  I can't be so flexible that nothing ever gets done, nor so "orderly" that we become a cyborg family.  I think that not cramming our schedule will help us to move things around if need be.  Like those Cracker Jack games where you have to reorder the numbers in the square, you can't budge if you don't have any empty space!
3. In order for Mommy to be patient, Mommy requires time for enough sleep, daily prayer (and Mass if possible), daily exercise, and a little bit of quiet time in the afternoon.  Looking forward, these will become permanent entries in the schedule.  Mommy can't give what she doesn't have, after all!
4. Both patience and flexibility require that everyone carries their share of the household duties.  If I am overwhelmed with minutiae, it's so easy for the most important things to get lost in the shuffle!

I guess all of this goes back to my earlier post about order in the home.  Every family is so unique!  One of the real blessings of homeschooling is the ability to design a custom lifestyle that fits the gifts, charisms, and individual needs of everyone in the home, allowing each to grow and thrive in his or her own way.

So, even though I am looking forward to summer vacation, I am also already eagerly anticipating the joy and challenges of the next school year!

Order...Order in the Home!!!

It's a funny thing.  Order without kids is not the same as order with kids.  I know this sounds ridiculously simple and obvious, but it's something I have to keep reminding myself.  And I've realized something else, too: the idealized vision of a "home" that I have in my head -- which isn't really a vision so much as a collage of images and feelings that combine to form a whole impression -- is merely a snapshot.  It's like the glimpse you get when you walk past a window and glance out: nothing stirs, and nothing changes.  If someone asked you after that glance to tell him what it was like outside, you'd have to go back and take a longer look before you could answer accurately.  If you tried to describe what was outside from just a passing glance, you'd end up with a static and idealized landscape with no more life than a Grecian urn.

Would it have order?  Absolutely.  Would it be true to life? Not in the least.

When we talk about a piece of writing -- a poem, a novel, even an essay -- and discuss its order, the best works of literature always have an order to them which is organic to the work, not imposed from outside.  A Shakespearean sonnet could not be any other kind of poem than a sonnet -- the ordering principle, the structure, is integral and essential to the work and its meaning.  But, even farther than this, a Shakespearean sonnet could not be other than a Shakespearean sonnet: it has a totally different quality than a Donne sonnet, or a Petrarchan sonnet, or a Milton sonnet.

It is the same with life, I think.  Each family has an order that is all its own -- one that is totally unique, growing out of the intertwined personalities, loves, and beliefs of the individuals within the family.  And as it grows, it becomes something by which you can identify a family, a charism, if you will.  So why do I so often measure my family's "order" by some snapshot impression?  I should instead seek out our unique family charism and fortify the principles which form its foundation.  Our family's order will not be like anyone else's.

Okay....so now I need to discover just what that order is.... :)

Of brooding...in hens and otherwise!

One of our nine lovely ladies has decided she wants babies.  She sits and sits and sits on her little pile of eggs (until one of my rowdy crew moves her aside to whisk them away).  We have no rooster, so there isn't a chance that one of these eggs will actually hatch, but that doesn't stop her from trying!  When my seven-year-old went this evening to check for eggs and she took a swipe at him with her beak, I decided I'd better do it myself.

Once I moved her fluffed-out, protesting self off the eggs, I was amazed at how warm they were!  Warm may be an understatement...hot would be more accurate.  She really does a fabulous job brooding over these eggs.  It's too bad it's futile!  After reading up a bit on broodiness, it seems we'll have to coax her gently back into the flock, distracting her from her "nest" a bit each day until she gets over this.

This all led me to reflect on brooding...for we humans do it too!  And I'm not talking about the normal "nesting" behavior that happens in late pregnancy, either.  I'm talking about the brooding that happens when our minds latch onto something and we worry it and worry it, nourish it, spend time on it -- perhaps even though we realize that this something is useless and that our efforts to make it grow are futile.  When we brood over something, we behave just like my little hen -- we lash out at those who take care of us and love us, we lose interest in things that used to delight us, and we avoid social situations.  We prefer to isolate ourselves with our thoughts.

And sometimes we may not realize that we are withdrawing ourselves from others.  It's possible to just go through the motions: pray, eat, talk, bathe the kids, cook dinner, wash dishes, fold laundry.  Outwardly, we seem engaged.  But those who know us well can tell that our hearts and minds aren't in our work.  We are distracted and not at peace.

So don't become a broody hen!  It's easy to do when there are things happening in our world or in our lives that preoccupy us.  But dwelling on the same issue or mulling over the same event does nothing to change anything.  It's futile, just like trying to hatch an unfertilized egg.  Instead of wasting energy and time on such thoughts, commit all things to the Lord and then let them go.

Trust me. You won't regret your new-found freedom!

Spring is Here!

Spring truly is one of my favorite times of the year!  And I am particularly excited this year about spring because we are transforming our dirt plot (aka "back yard") into a true outdoor oasis!  We tilled the earth -- a backbreaking and shoulder-wrecking job, by the way -- and planted grass seeds, set up four new square foot gardens, and have been adding perennials and rose bushes to my modest flower garden.  And, wonder of wonders, it's all growing!!!  There is much excitement here, as I have been known before only for my black thumb!

Watching all these fresh green things spring up all over our yard seems to me to be nature's quiet but dramatic meditation on the mystery of the Resurrection.  Particularly striking to me is the gorgeous wisteria, which seems to produce scent-laden clusters of blossoms out of dry sticks.  One day, it is a gnarled, seemingly dead bunch of twigs -- the next, it flaunts its cascade of purple flowers!

Whenever I think of spring and growing things, I love to meditate on the lilies of the field parable from the Bible.  While the message of trust in the Lord is one that is dear to my heart, it isn't this that particularly delights me.  Let me just quote the passage here:

"And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin.  But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these." (Matt. 6:28-29)

What I love to consider is Our Blessed Lord delighting in little grass flowers.  The God Who made Heaven and Earth rejoices in the simple beauty of nature -- not even Solomon, whose apparel was probably crusted with jewels and gold threads, can rival them.  It's just so striking to me!

But should it really be so surprising that Our Lord delights in humble things?  After all, His own mother was the handmaid of the Lord -- no queen of earth, but a simple woman, betrothed to a poor carpenter.  And yet her beauty and glory are beyond compare!  The world paid her no notice, just as it is blind to the beauty of the lilies of the field, but God favored her above all His creatures.  Let us strive to imitate the humility of Mary by cultivating a simple and trusting heart!

Conversion

It's a glorious spring day here in Texas, and perhaps that's why the writer's bug has bitten me so hard!  This has been a year full of great trials and unexpected blessings, hard lessons learned and new windows opened. 

I know there are so many other moms out there like me, who have traveled a long, hard road to the discovery that home, kids, and, yes, even big hairy dogs that shed everywhere at the slightest provocation are the keys to happiness!  It was not until I started seeking spiritual direction from a humble, joyful, and holy priest that I began to realize just how far away from the heart of my vocation I had truly wandered.  After many tears and some very difficult self-examination, I have finally begun to disentangle myself from those things that have distracted me for so long.  It isn't easy, but shouldering the cross never is!  What has amazed me, though, is the joy that my new-found zeal for my vocation as wife and mother has brought!  I was truly searching high and low for something that I had in my possession all along!

I now understand why, during all that fruitless wandering, I would feel so frustrated that I was not doing the best I could as a mother.  Instead of abandoning projects and schemes that distracted me from my vocation, I delved even deeper into them and grew more and more miserable.  Like St. Augustine, I too had to learn to bow my neck under the yoke of Christ:

But where had my power of free decision been throughout those long, weary years, and from what depth, what hidden profundity, was it called forth in a moment, enabling me to bow my neck to your benign yoke and my shoulders to your light burden, O Christ Jesus, my helper and redeemer?  How sweet did it suddenly seem to me to shrug off those sweet frivolities, and how glad I now was to get rid of them - I who had been loath to let them go! (The Confessions, Revised, p.209)

Unhappiness, it seems to me, is the surest sign that our road is not the one paved for us by Christ, but rather some rough path of our own fashioning.  And while we might eventually find our way, through much undergrowth and tedious progress, to the Eternal Jerusalem, how much better is it to heed the Lord's call and follow in His footsteps?

If one considers the awesome responsibility that mothers (and fathers) bear before God for the raising of their children, it is a miracle to me that God entrusts them to us at all!  These immortal souls in tiny bodies are in our charge, but they are not ours.  They belong to our Heavenly Father, and a reckoning will be made of the care we took during our stewardship.  Teaching small ones to know, love, and serve God in this world so as to be happy with Him in the next demands so much of us -- because how can we teach what we do not practice ourselves?  So, having our own spiritual homes in order and fostering our marriage -- which gives us the sacramental graces we need to fulfill our God-given duties -- is so important.

So what do I mean to say by all of this?  Simply that being a mother is the greatest honor one could hope for... and that living in the world's shadows lets us bask in God's sunshine!