A Smile Doesn't Have to Mean You are Happy

Sometimes we smile as a demonstration of what we are feeling inside.  Sometimes we smile as a reflection of what we see outside of us.  Both are true, genuine and valid.

A smile can say ...

"Good morning.  I hope you have a lovely day."

"I am so glad to see your face."

"I am thankful to be your Mama."

"That outfit looks great on you."

"Don't worry.  You are going to be OK."

"I am so proud of what you accomplished."

"It is good to be in church today.  This is what my heart needs."

"I feel comfortable and safe in your company."

"I appreciate how you have served my family."

"Thank you for letting me cross the street in front of your car."

"What you said was witty and amusing."

"I love what you made/brought me."

"I'm not upset that you were standing in front of the celery I was reaching for."

"Thank you for your hospitality."

It is alright to smile even when you are not feeling peaceful, fulfilled and happy in every sense.  It's not being fake.  It's giving of yourself in a way that blesses others - even strangers.  In fact, sometimes the greatest acts of love are when we give from our lack, rather than our abundance (Mark 12:43-44).  When you have nothing else to offer, you can often still give a smile.

Of course, the flip side of this is to remember that we can't always read those we love by how many smiles they have to share.  A person who struggles with emotional highs and lows learns how to continue on with life, how to encourage and comfort those around her, even if she doesn't feel encouraged and comforted inside.  She knows that her feelings may or may not reflect the reality around her and she learns how to reflect in her face what she believes to be truth, rather than just simply how she feels about it.

She smiles at a toddler with a scraped knee to say, "Don't worry.  We'll get you all taken care of.  You don't need to be afraid" even when she would like to cry from sheer exhaustion.  She smiles at a child and says "I am so glad that you are my son and I am your mother.  I am living the life I always dreamed about" even if she can't figure out why her emotions haven't seemed to get the message.

So please, take time to ask good questions and be ready to listen.  She who smiles much gives much of herself.  And maybe, just maybe, she might be in need of some re-filling.  It's not necessary (or sometimes even possible) to "make her happy".  It is only necessary to ask, to listen and to affirm that what she is doing is good, beautiful and valuable.  And to reassure her that you are a safe place where she can talk, cry and be refreshed in order to go back into the world and smile one more time.

Looking for Answers

Things still feel rough around here.  I still feel like I'm searching for answers.  I've made some progress on the track of practical solutions.  But I also have to admit that practical solutions are, at best, a temporary relief.  But (I should know this by now!) the answers that are of eternal good, that help despite the circumstances are the ones that transcend the circumstances.

Through a series of (super encouraging, life-giving) conversations with my brother and my mom, the Lord led me to 2 Corinthians 4.  I was looking for that "jars of clay" passage and I found more than I bargained for to nourish my soul.  This is what I am thinking on and praying today.


Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.

[Having this ministry.  It's a mercy.  That's a new thought.  And it's a reason not to lose heart.  Interesting.  Help me not to lose heart, Lord.  And to think of this ministry to my family as a mercy.]

But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

[I'm here for the gospel.  It's not my job to train my children to perform academic parlor tricks that make me look like an expert.  It's not my job to convince others that I've found the right or best way to homeschool so that I can gain a following.  It's not even my job to arrange things so that I feel successful.  It's about the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.  Help me, Lord!]

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.  For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

[I'm not here to seek my own kingdom.  I'm here to serve my children for the sake of Jesus.  Light of the Knowledge of the Glory of God ... in the face of Jesus Christ ... that sounds like it might be something important to keep in mind.  That sounds like the foundations of a purpose statement for our homeschool.]

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

[Oh, Lord!  Oh, Lord!  That thought both humbles me ... and raises me up.  I am a jar of clay, Lord.  Weak and broken.  And yet ... that isn't an accident?  The fact that you've entrusted these children, this task of proclaiming life-giving truth to real human beings, to someone who is so lowly, so insignificant and so, so frail herself ... that was a part of the plan?  I know what that means - as much as I don't like to admit it.  It means that I should stop holding my breath, stop longing for that day when I'm independent of your mercy, strong enough to cope without grace, too savvy to need to cry out to you in prayer.  I really do want the world to know that the surpassing power belongs to you.  And honestly, Lord, right now, the way you've got it set up, I don't think anyone would mistake me for the source!]

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

[How much suffering can I handle?  How long can I last?  How hard is too hard?  It seems like there must be this delicate balance, Lord.  This tiny margin between "afflicted" and "crushed", between "perplexed" and "despairing".  How could I find that small space?  How would I know how to measure out my own suffering?  How would I know how much my body could handle to have Jesus manifest in it today?  If I am afflicted, Lord, let it be from your hand.  Let no one else strike me down, Lord, but you, whom I trust to work death in me, and yet hold me back from being destroyed.]

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, "I believed, and so I spoke," we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

[This is the big picture, this eternal, kingdom goal - more grace to more people, more thanksgiving, more glory to God.  That is a big, big thing to be a part of.  That gives purpose and hope beyond what I can accomplish in a day, even in a lifetime.]

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison ....

[Is it overly dramatic, Lord, at age 37 to say that my outer self is wasting away?  Because it does feel like a wasting away.  And yet, if the counterpart to that is my inner self being renewed day by day, then no time is too soon to embrace that pattern.  Momentary.  Light.  Affliction.  Eternal.  Weight.  Glory.  I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief.  Keep me, here, from being crushed.  And then, in eternity, crush me with that eternal weight.  Smother me with your glory. I'll be ready for it.  I'll be desperate for it.]

... as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 

[See, that's just where my struggle is, Lord.  The "seen" is so much easier to "see" than the unseen.  But I suppose you're trying to remind me that how easy something is to see has a lot to do with where I am looking.]

A Very Simple Schedule

At the beginning of the week, I felt a moment of crisis because I knew that I needed to spend more one-on-one time with my new reader and my struggling reader.  The schedule already felt packed and scary and the thought of adding one more thing was daunting (to put it mildly).  Monday evening, I attended Part 2 of the Focus and Align class at the Read Aloud Revival and the beginnings of some ideas began to percolate.  We had two hard, rough days, followed by two good, smooth encouraging days, followed by one more hard, low, rough day (as viewed from my internal perspective, only).  And here, in retrospect, is what I think has settled out to be our new schedule*:

• Breakfast (sometimes while listening to a recorded book or story)
• Morning Chores, Joseph (1) to nap
• Read the Bible
• Talk about Math
• Talk about Language
• Meet one-on-one with Luke (10) and Robyn (6) to practice reading skills
  Emma (9) and Ruth (8) take turns doing things with Henry (4) and Hazel (3)
• Lunch
• Quick Straightening, Hazel (3) and Joseph (1) to naps
• Quiet Work Time (Math 5-A-Days, Latin and some silent reading)
  On Tuesdays this is replaced by "Latin Class" with another family
• Play Outside
• Final Clean-up
• History (on-line course the kids do as a group) while Mama fixes dinner

That's it.  That is all we can do in a day.  And some days we don't accomplish all of that.  If you look closely, you'll probably notice things that aren't included.  I bet your list wouldn't be even a third of the things that are on my mind.  But I'm setting that aside for right now.  Let tomorrow worry about itself.  This is what we can do right now.

* We do school Monday-Thursday.  Fridays are for laundry, housework and maybe projects.

The Next Thing

One of the things that I have recently found to be a crushing burden of homeschool (for me, for now) is the feeling of needing to "finish" something in a given time.  I fear that if I don't finish it, my kids will be "behind".  I fear that if I don't finish it, I will have wasted the money I invested in it.  I fear that if I don't finish it, I'll miss out on that break I was hoping to take when it is all done.

For some (and even for me, in other phases of life) the structure is helpful.  It's nice to have someone else plan out what a year's worth of work includes, how much to review when and what should be included in a day of work or practice.  It feels very tidy to have five days worth of activity and begin again on Monday.  When we are able to get it done, it brings a sense of completion and closure.  But those days are getting much fewer and farther between.

Perhaps I'm less able to accomplish something that would be good to accomplish.  Perhaps the new pressures and constraints of life at this moment are revealing "shoulds" that never should have been "shoulds" and I am now releasing myself from them.  But whatever the case (and in some ways, it really doesn't matter) there is only this: what can we - at this stage, with this present grouping of children and this present, tired mama - accomplish in one day?  That is it.  What has God given us to do on this day?  Let's do it.  Let tomorrow worry about itself.

And what if we get to the end of the day and it wasn't all done?  Then not all of those things were things God meant for us to do today.  Yes, maybe there was time wasted.  Maybe we could have been more efficient.  But on this day, at this moment, whatever the causes, the task is still the same - trust to the Lord what wasn't accomplished and wake up tomorrow to start on the next thing.

As much as possible, I have moved away from organizing our subjects such that they must be done on a daily or weekly schedule in order to "work".  I've tried to avoid setting up things such that if we miss a day we are "behind" and have to try to cram two days worth of work into one (or three into two).  Instead it has worked much better for us if Mama has a general sense of the next thing(s) she'd like to teach or work on with the children.  When we come to school time, we do the next thing.  And if we don't get to it, it is tomorrow's next thing.

Didn't read a chapter of our read aloud book?  It will still be there tomorrow.  Talked about place value but they didn't fully "get" the concept?  Talk about it some more tomorrow; try another approach.  Time to start school but not all the morning chores aren't complete? They can wait until the next slot of time for getting a little work done.  (Or, do a little more housework and some school things can wait until later.)

The only way to make this system a reality has been, as much as possible, to unchain activities from each other so that each piece can move forward (or not!) independently.  Since our math discussion and written practice are no longer directly linked, we can do one without the other, if needed, on any given day.  Since the children's Five-A-Days are all things that we have already covered and they are just reviewing, we can take more time than I expected to work on our current concept without interfering with the Five-A-Day work I picked for them.  Or, conversely, if we didn't get a chance to complete the Five-A-Days, they can wait for the next day and our morning math conversations can keep happening.

This week, my oldest was only able to finish three out of the five problems on his Five-A-Day one afternoon.  Rather than requiring him to "catch up" on those two and do five new ones the next day, I simply took those two problems, added three more and they were his Five-A-Day for the next day.  If we've determined that five problems in a day is what we can manage, then why plan to do seven?  There will always be more good things to discuss and practice.  What do we gain by "doubling up"?  What are we racing against?  More and more, for us, the answer is: nothing!

Note: The two subjects that still "need" to fall into a weekly pattern are History and Latin.  And for now, I'm going to let them stay that way.  I'm not at all convinced that Latin is something all homeschoolers must do, but I have a degree in Latin and, quite frankly, it's something I love to teach.  Plus, our pastor's wife and her two youngest come over on Tuesday afternoons to do Latin with us, which is a big plus in the be-with-people category (perhaps even more for Mama than for the kids!).  We began three years ago with Song School Latin and are now working through the Latin for Children series.  We are on Primer B out of C, so after next year we'll reevaluate what to do next.

Though it is not absolutely essential, our history program works best done in five-lesson-a-week rotations because every five lessons covers one topic.  I absolutely love the Veritas Press History for many reasons.  Content-wise, it covers history, including Church History, map skills and lots of historical context.  Each era of history has its own song which helps the children to have a mental framework for the order and relationship of historical events, as well as some key dates.  Another plus is that it is on-line, very interactive, and the kids can do it on their own (mostly) while I watch and listen from the kitchen as I make dinner.

Do the Next Thing

I just love this poem.  Some sites credit it to Elizabeth Elliot.  Others mention that she shared it as from an anonymous author.  I haven't been able to find out for sure who wrote it, so I'll leave it unattributed for now.  I have had a copy of this poem for quite some time and think of it often.  But recently it seems to have risen to the surface of my soul as a kind of "theme song" of our homeschool (or at least the theme song of my own processing of thoughts about our homeschool).

Do The Next Thing

From an old English parsonage,
Down by the sea,
There came in the twilight,
A message to me;
Its quaint Saxon legend,
Deeply engraven,
Hath, as it seems to me,
Teaching from Heaven.
And on through the hours
The quiet words ring
Like a low inspiration
 “DO THE NEXT THING.”

Many a questioning, many a fear,
Many a doubt, hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment,
Let down from Heaven,
Time, opportunity,
Guidance, are given.
Fear not tomorrows,
Child of the King, 
Trust them with Jesus,
“DO THE NEXT THING.”

Do it immediately;
Do it with prayer;
Do it reliantly, casting all care;
Do it with reverence,
Tracing His Hand,
Who placed it before thee with 
Earnest command.
Stayed on Omnipotence,
Safe 'neath His wing,
Leave all resultings,
“DO THE NEXT THING.”

Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
(Working or suffering)
Be thy demeanor,
In His dear presence,
The rest of His calm,
The light of His countenance
Be thy psalm,
Strong in His faithfulness,
Praise and sing,
Then, as He beckons thee,
“DO THE NEXT THING."
-Author unknown

Just a random picture that makes me smile.

Snuggle Number

So.  This has been a challenging week.  At some point I need to write a follow-up post to the very somber-toned ones I put up on Monday.  But right now I feel more like keeping it light and sharing something fun!

A couple of days ago on Instagram a friend shared a picture of her kids playing a game called Snuggle Number.  I asked her for the scoop and she sent me to this blog post (I am in love with the blog title, too!).  I had been thinking about making and laminating some hundreds charts to use with the kids as another thing they could write on with their dry erase markers and this took up just enough room to fill up the blank space at the bottom, so, on it went.

All you need is a chart like this (which you could easily create by hand on scratch paper in moments) and a 10-sided die or a deck of playing cards, minus the face cards and jokers (count the Aces as 1 and the 10's as 0).  Roll the die or draw a card, then record that digit somewhere in the eleven slots on your game board (the original above is two-sided to allow for two games before the paper has to be tossed; my board below is simplified for little learners and since it is dry-erase is already reusable).  The goal is to get as close to the "target" number as you can in each row.  My board includes spaces for the kids to write the difference between their number and the target number and to add the total because I felt like they might need a little more structure to understand the gameplay.  More thorough discussion of the rules is on the blog above.

Want a copy?

Here is a copy of Snuggle Number only (half-page sized, so you could print two on a page)

Here is a copy of the whole thing I printed for my kiddos: addition chart, multiplication chart, hundreds chart and Snuggle Number (Note: For the number charts I used a special handwriting font which I don't think will show up via a Google Drive share, so the formatting will be a little different.)

Beginnings of a Beginning

These ideas still need time to percolate, but before I headed to bed I wanted to jot down some of the helpful bits of wisdom I've gleaned at tonight's class that I think will move us in the right direction.

1. Make a schedule "for now" not "for forever".  The schedule can be revisited again later.  Not including it in the schedule now doesn't mean not including it in the schedule ever.  Still hard to see some things sit out.  But it's time to face reality.
   
2. You don't need to study all subjects every day.  You don't need to study all subjects all year.  Sarah breaks her year into "terms" (six weeks of school followed by a one-week break).  She only plans for one "term" at a time because it takes the pressure off.  I like that idea a lot.
   
3. 30-45 minutes one-on-one time with each school-aged kid.  Sarah has a neat way of scheduling this ... but she also has three bigger kids (the youngest of whom is as old as my oldest child) and only three who are school-aged and need to meet with her.  Worth looking into, though.
   
4. Looping.  This isn't something Sarah spent a lot of time talking about tonight, but she covers it in her book.  I've been meaning to write a whole post on it at some point.  The basic idea is that instead of scheduling things on a particular day of the week, you schedule them in a loop.  When you come to that slot of the day, you just do the next one in your loop.
   
5. The Six-Minute Journal.  The last page of the handout from the Focus & Align class was a journal page to give time for reflection each day.  It includes these prompts:
   
   
   Each Morning Before School:
   
   
   1. Three things I am grateful for ...
   
   
   2. One way we'll live our Rule of Six today ...
   
   
   3. One way I'll practice my Words to Live By [words that describe how you'd like your children to look back and remember their homeschool childhoods] today  ...
   
   
   Each Night Before Bed:
   
   
   1. A win from today:
   
   
   2. Noticing each of my children [lots of white space after this one]:
   
   
   3. Tomorrow I will ...
   
   Looking forward to using these prompts to reflect on some in the days to come.  And even now, thinking about a "win" from today reminds me that on the ugliest days, all is not lost.

This was a hard, rough day.  I won't burden you with a long play-by-play, but let's just say that Daddy came downstairs (thankfully he was working from home due to snow) at lunchtime and found me crying on the sofa, where I had been tucked in by a three year old who was telling me (her own, spontaneously created) Curious George stories and letting me hold her stuffed cat.  And yet, even on a day when I look back and see a landscape littered with the gray, twisted mess of emotional train-wreckage, even on this day, I see things that can fit into the category of "a win from today".  Starting with the Curious George stories and the stuffed cat.