Oh My Goodness, What Have I done...

My Beautiful Babies!

Oh my GOODNESS what have I done.. I sat there terrified as I gently stroked my daughters head. I’ve done it. I stepped off the cliff. For a long time now I had been moving closer and closer to the edge. Should I do this? Is this the right thing for me and my family. I had friends who had taken the plunge before me. At first I had said all the things others said after me; “I could never do that, I would kill my kids” or “I am not a really good teacher” or “I don’t have the temperament/personality to homeschool” or the dreaded “What about SOCIALIZATION?”. I said them all, and yet there was still this voice inside of me, each year as we approached a new school year…”Should I do this?”. There was even a year that I had "shown” my son what it would be like if we homeschooled. In essence I torpedoed the poor boy. I threw tones of work at him, essentially sabotaging him (and myself). Of course he said that wasn’t for him, and then I felt like I had made the right decision for him to return to school another year. But then my daughter became sick. My kids hardly ever got sick. My kids were the “Everyone on the block is sick, and sharing the same Freezie” kind of kids, and they NEVER got sick kinda kids. My daughter was laying in my bed, and not recovering. It is those moments, the moments when everything slows down, and almost goes into slow motion. That you look. You stop avoiding what you have been pretending isn’t there. Was being in the system actually harming my daughter? I had been afraid to take that step, that I now know God was calling me too because I was afraid I would hurt her and my son by home educating them, because who was I? I didn’t have a degree? All I had ever known was you send your kids to school. That’s what you do. Even if they are screaming and holding onto you and begging you to not let them go. Even if at the age of six you are putting them on a bus wondering how it was possible that those beautiful days are gone. They were so young and so little and now their days were given to someone else. That’s what you do. That is how it is supposed to be, or…you could wreck your kids, and it would be your fault. But was the thing I was sending them to, to avoid hurting them…harming them? Here she was, my daughter on a school day, in my bed sick, and not getting better. It was in that moment, that I stepped over that cliff. I was going to bring her home, and keep her there. It felt strange, the shift. It felt like everything had changed, …because it had. Even though I hadn’t moved from that spot over my daughter, it was like in that moment everything had righted itself. This was no “I am entering into this to sabotage you and me”, it was the reality that we had entered a new life, that would alter the path, the course of our lives. And it did. I grieve for the years I had lost with them in the system. The damage that in some areas was a seed that they still carry. I wish I had understood from the beginning what homeschooling was, and what it would mean in my family, in our relationships, in our identity. But I didn’t. I had grown up in a world that is openly hostile to educating at home. TV shows mocked it. Most of my peers said “No way”, and the “Professionals” their Principal and Teachers discouraged it, with looks of disappointment, and a “You’ll be back” or “If you need to return”. I never did. That was over 18 years ago. I homeschooled my children for over 10 years, and I could NEVER thank God enough for the gift of bringing me home. Because that is what He did! He brought me home in every sense of the word. Home to my children. Home to myself. And home to my call, purpose. I look forward to sharing with you this journey that has changed my life. And if you are like I was, standing on that cliff of decision, know that it does change things, like having a child changes things, but like having your baby, you can't EVER imagine not having them. You are forever changed by their existence, each birth a paradigm shift that changes the planet and you. I thank my Savior for the catalyst. As always His heart is to bring life. Through that catalyst I was able to chose to embrace the fullness of this experience, and our lives, how about you…