Reality Check

When my children were all very young, too young to help with the housework, too young to help entertain anyone younger than themselves for more than a couple of minutes at a time, I remember thinking – Am I crazy?  How can I homeschool?  I can’t even find clean socks that match.

At the time I was reading a lot of homeschooling books and although I got a lot of great ideas I also came away wondering why my home didn’t seem to look like these perfect homes in the books.  Sometimes I would look at other homeschool Moms who had mentored me along the way, and shared many great ideas with me, and I would think – Why I can’t get it all together like them?

I am much older now – I won’t tell you how old – but I do have a 21 year old.  I am also much wiser.  I realize that we all have glorious days when everything seems just perfect – someone’s practicing piano, someone’s reading to the two year old, the chores were all done before breakfast, supper is already in the crockpot and I am sitting on the couch getting in a little reading of my own. Those are the days that people write about in their books and on their blogs.   But we also have days where I am lucky to find a chance to get dressed (I’ve been known to drop a child off at a class in my slippers and scrubs which I sometimes wear for pajamas), let alone take a shower, days where I feel tired and grumpy from nursing a sick baby all night.  Most of our days are somewhere in between the two.

I have learned that while homeschooling and motherhood are not perfect experiences, I can find perfect moments in every day….and when I take the time to cherish those moments, nothing can describe how wonderful that feels.

I read a phrase in a book by Linda Eyre (Joyful Mother of Children) .  This is one of my favorite books  that has an almost permanent home next to my bed  The phrase is – You can eat an elephant.

An elephant is a huge animal.  Even imagining eating something that size is absolutely ridiculous.  But what she says is, “It can be done – one bite at a time”  Raising children can sometimes be overwhelming - but we can do it – one bite at a time – every story we read, every song that we sing, every family activity, every time we lovingly teach a new chore, every prayer, every heart to heart chat we have in our bed late into the evening – all of these little bites bring us closer to our goal of helping our children become all that they are meant to become.