tough cookies

I posted this picture, on Instagram, with the following caption:

// The day you decide to homeschool: "I'm going to be amazing and teach my child to read and write and speak Latin and my house or waistline won't suffer at the hands of home education!" // 6 months in: "I hope my child learns to spell their name and all I want is Oreos before I have to clean up glue and glitter from the carpet." //

Apparently it resonated with MANY mothers and for that, I was grateful.

I won't lie. It's hard. And my kid's only 4. And I only have one of them to teach. And sometimes I want to go back to an office job, with a lunch break.  And sometimes I just want to drop them off at school and go to the gym or to sit on a park bench. And sometimes I cry and feel like I'm a bad mom and a even worse homeschooler and convince myself they will most certainly grow up awkward and maladjusted at the hands of their very ADD/OCD mother. And sometimes I get mad at myself for even complaining because I'm lucky to have this option at all.  And then sometimes I get to 10am and haven't had one solid thought all morning, from which I could pass along any intelligence to my children.

And then....sometimes....I witness my daughter realize something.  Like a lightbulb going off in her little brain and I see it.  That glimmer of amazing realization that she understood. She learned.  Grasped. I was able to see it.  I was able to watch.  I tear.

What's funny is how, at the onset of so many things, we allow ourselves to form an idea about "how" it should look and then we are curiously puzzled when it doesn't look that way.  Ultimately deciding that it was a failure, of sorts.
I haven't allowed myself to do that with homeschooling {often} and that has been much to my benefit.  As with many things in my life, I didn't appreciate the journey because I had already lived it, within the walls of my mind.  It was no longer a pleasure or adventure.  Merely a task to complete.

Certainly there are going to be difficult days.  Many more difficult days the more children I teach and the older we all get {I mean, what could be easier than teaching my four-year-old letters?} Hardships, misunderstandings and frustrations will always come.  Always, always. As they will for any parent, in any situation.

But I wouldn't change this, because I don't even know what this is, yet.  It's yet to be seen and how could I walk away from something so mysteriously intriguing?

So, basically this isn't just about homeschooling.
It's for you, no matter what you are encountering.

Don't write your story just yet.
Live it and let Him {who has already authored the entire novel} unfold the moments in front of you.