My dc announced to me and dh yesterday evening that they had a surprise for us. My dc are 3, 6, 8yo. So me and dh (remained patience with the mess we knew we’d have to clean up or at least oversee them cleaning) walked downstairs only to be met with cries of HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!! We were directed to sit down at the makeshift dining table made out of their toybox and the lid to the toybox was the tabletop. The dining area they made consisted of chairs from our computer table and one pink chair with fringes from my dd’s room. The toybox was covered with one of our couch “throws” for the table cloth.

My eyes were met with bowls of prepared food which were the following: Chef Boy R Dee Spaghettios, Marshmallows, Ritz crackers and raw “diced” tomatoes and baby carrots. My dc served me and their father first as we spooned the desired amounts of each dish onto our plates. My dc then served each other.

Dh commented to the children this was a wonderful surprise, them throwing us a surprise New Year’s Day party like that!!  They chose the food and everything, even warmed up the spaghettios in the microwave and brought it downstairs to the party to await our arrival.    So after everyone was served we then went before the Lord in our first family prayer for 2008 as me and dh thanked the Lord for these our children and for their servants’ hearts to want to serve us and each other. Dh prayed blessings upon each one of them and my heart swelled with love, devotion, and thankfulness to God for working patience out in me…for breaking me the way He did….so that I could see the blessing of His miraculous power working in the lives of my children. You see impatience would have just seen a mess that had to be cleaned up and while I would have eaten the morsels of food they ‘cooked’ my mind would have been on how tired I was and how I longed to lay down and how this was just prolonging my relaxation….but I didn’t feel like that at all.

I continue to pray for and thank God for what little bit of discernment I have to see the almost imperceptible ‘movings’ of His Spirit. I long for more discernment and more patience and more of learning how to live and conduct myself in God’s agape love.

So that was our 2008 New Year’s Day Celebration and I thank God for it!!!!!!!!!!!

It is now the first day of 2008 and for the first time in many days and weeks (even months) I woke up bright and early (before anyone elese in the house) with a lightness in my spirit. I have not blogged very often the latter part of 2007 but today I feel I want to share how our lives have been going and what God has been doing.

Around the 3rd week of November I decided to stop all ‘formal’ lessons and let me and my children just “be”. I had been having a hard time with homeschooling and my dd’s attitude reflected that she was having a hard time too. Our quarter ended the first week in December so we trudged along the last 2 weeks in November and covered our “school” material to my satisfaction and then took a break. It was a scheduled break for the month of December. When our quarter ended the first Friday in December I finally cried out to the Lord that I didn’t want to homeschool anymore!!!!! What!!??????!!!! I was sick and tired of my dd’s attitude toward “doing lessons” and I was felt like I had given all I had to my dc and could not give anymore but they kept demanding and needing me and I felt like I could not put up with another day of homeschooling. I knew the only other option was putting my dc in public school so that made me press into God even further and harder in prayer to find out what was wrong with us.

The long and short of what I realized is that God was taking me thru a breaking process. My flesh had to be dealt with. My impatience needed to be done away with and I needed to learn and grow more in knowing how to walk and live in the Love of God. I realized God was doing something in ME…that I was the problem and NOT my dc. I realized(not too long ago) that God had been trying to “break” the rule of my flesh for the longest. I ate, slept, and breathed “breaking”(didn’t know it at the time, though). It was my first, middle, and last name!! And that has been in several different areas - the most recent has been in letting go and learning that it’s ok not to be “in control” of everything and everybody that way I thought I should be and in opening up my heart(and my time) more to my children….

I had a conversation with my mom about it and she relayed something to me that my dad said he observed. He said that dd wants u as a mother and not as a teacher. That was a giant wakeup call and began my quest in realizing that I’m not a teacher first but a mom…who is mentoring her children when I sit, when I lay down, when I rise up(according to Deut 6). That is what God commanded and that is how He wants it to flow…. God had been trying to show me a “better” way, and easier way which is the Way of Trusting in Him!!! Obviously, I had not been trusting in HIm to the degree I needed to b/c I was stressing myself and my dc out..:-)

After I came thru that trial God began to whisper to my heart about just being a family and for me to begin to connect with my daughter. I could tell she had things on her 8 year old mind that she was not talking about. She’s always been very obedient but still had this attitude that would infuriate me at times.

So that began my quest of stopping all lessons and start loving. I re-read many of my homeschooling books trying to find out how to do this. THE JOYFUL HOMESCHOOLER helped to put me back on the track of realizing that I’m a mom and not a teacher first, also. So I started just being a mom and concentrated on us just being a family and it feels sooooooooooooo good and sooooooo much better. My daughter said to me one night while lying in my bed almost nose to nose with me about me being a regular mommy. I asked what does a regular mommy do. She said a regular mommy loves her children and let’s her children love her. How awesome and convicting and confirming was that!!!

Things have improved so nicely around here AND my children, on their own initiative, have begun to take their own initiative on certain things.

My 8yodd started teaching herself division. I explained the concept to her with pictures and with living math books and she has taken off from there. To my utter surprise I found out that she has learned her 3 times tables. I never taught it to her and to my delight I found that she has figured out her own way(the way the makes sense to her) to calculate and remember her 3 times table. In our quest to just ‘become a family’ again, right before bedtime, I would giver her her math book from Ray’s arithmetic and told her to study the 1’s , then the 2’s and then the 3’s times table. We are now working on her knowing her 4’s times table. She has also requested that we do more art. One morning she woke up and it had snowed during the night so looking out the window was a beautiful sight that morning. She didn’t even ask to watch tv. (I try not to allow much tv) and I guess because of that she found something else productive to do. But I heard her taking to herself about the snow one morning before I even got up that morning and by the time I got up and got breakfast going she had drawn a picture of what she saw outside our living room window and it was a tree with a squirrel climbing up with the snow falling. Talk about nature journaling!! I found some paint by number kits at this dollar store of sorts and bought about 8 kits for .99 each. These kits are a little more complicated than what I know of…u have to mix colors to get the correct shade on the picture. What a terrific art medium and lesson!!!

My 6yo ds has asjked me to start teaching him his phonics again. We used to drill the phonograms from Spell to Write and Read Spelling program. He has learned to read from that program. He is now asking me to spend time with me by himself at bedtime and wants me to read and pick out words for him to read. One night I chose a reader I had and he read thru it so quickly and fluently I was amazed. Again the awe I was experiencing is because this progress I see in my dc have come during days and weeks of no formal lessons but just giving me, my children, and our homeschool to God. We’ve just been living life and if they ask to do something we do. There are times I would initiate some work or activity for them to do but not much.

My 3 yo ds, of course, wants me to “TEACH ME, MOMMY”. I’m also noticing my 3yo is giving me more kisses now that I don’t have to ask for anymore. He grabs me around my neck thruout the day and tells me “MOMMY, I YUV YOU”. And I’m finding all of these things are occurring without me telling them to do it or my prompting anything.

I’d like to share some things I believe God has given me recently.

The first thing was Deut 6:6-7…

6And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up

This speaks to me that we are to bring our children alongside of us as we live life and they will be mentored and learn from us…there will be an impartation of our spirit into theirs…but is comes thru relationship with them..a good, solid, loving relationship with them…one where they can trust us to love them unconditionally…one where they don’t have to keep pulling their hearts back in because we stomp all over them I am still seeking God as to how to implement this in our home. At this point, I am leery about implementing the schedule we had going and I am learning from the Lord that a more ‘gentle’ approach is more in line with the Spirit of Christ(especially for young children). Also, what I see here is the principle of discipleship. We are to disciple our children in the knowledge of God..teaching them to love God and encouraging them to enter into their own relationship with Him…that comes first…in order to do that thought they need to know how to read(so they can read their bibles) , how to manipulate numbers so that they can walk in the dominion that God commanded in Genesis.

The second thing that I was reflecting on was that I’m trusting the Lord that my children will know what they need. I wondered if Jesus learned carpentry from sitting in carpentry class or from working alongside his father Joseph. I”m sure Joseph mentored Jesus and taught him as a boy and beyond the physical skills he needed in working with wood and crafting things. Jesus learned carpentry skills in a natural setting, in it’s proper environment

Also, the scripture came to me one day of Psalm 1:3-—

...And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water THAT BRINGETH FORTH HIS FRUIT IN HIS SEASON.…….

Eccles 3 says that there is a season and a time for everything and every matter under heaven.

And also Eccl 3:11 says that God will make everything beautiful in his time.

There is also a scripture in Psalms that says My times are in Your hands.

Psalm 31:15

My times are in your hands; deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me.

I believe our children’s times are in God’s hands. Each child develops at his/her own rate and time…they will bring forth fruit in their season…at the time that God says is right for them…and it will be beautiful b/c God is the One doing it. So I’ve had to completely let go of national standards and grade level expectations because my children will ‘get it’ when they get it. Some babies walk at 6 mos. others at 18 mos. and others still later. We don’t make a baby who walks at 2 years feel like they are stupid. We don’t put them in special needs class .. we loving wait and pray for them to develop to where they too will walk.

I realize another thing God was doing in all the “breaking” was “breaking” the bondage in my thinking of being enslaved to the homeschool regulations in our state. In our state we have to document everything up the gazoo…but I’ve found freedom in Christ re: that b/c learning is still happening in my home without be chained to lessons and textbooks all day. The house is still able to be clean b/c we pitch in as a family as I “mentor” my children in learning how to care for a house and how to make it a home.

So as these tender plants live in the soil of our love..only as we, as more mature plants, abide in the soil of God’s love… and as we keep tending and watering and praying and trusting God we patiently wait for the flower of understanding to bloom.

Proverbs 2:6-7 says

For the Lord gives skillful and godly Wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He hides away sound and godly Wisdom and stores it for the righteous (those who are upright and in right standing with Him); He is a shield to those who walk uprightly and in integrity

—so God is the One who will give them the understanding of anything they study and of anything on a test. We are required to test in certain grades here in our state and report the scores to the district. If they scores fall below 33rd percentile our homeschool is on probabtion. But I’m trusting God with that.

And then finally Isaiah 54:13 says that God will teach our children...even starting from verse 11 it such a blessing to me b/c I was sooooooooo tossed and afflicted and had NO comfort or peace for a while as I walked thru this processing

One more thought: The key to our children budding forth their fruit in their own season and their leaf not withering is that they get and stay planted by the rivers of water which is God and HIs Word as we teach them. I take this as a promise that as I keep my children saturated with the Presence of the Lord in our home and teach them His Word and teach them to love Him and each other then they will develop beautifully in God’s timing for them.

I see now why the Lord impressed upon me earlier to change the focus of this blog…because it is not about Biblical Principle Approach, although I teach my children biblical principles…it is not about any one approach that we can put a “label” on. It is about God and how He directs me(us) to disciple our very unique and individual children and household. It is about following Him in our efforts to offer back to Him godly seed. It is about HIS WAY and about being in a ‘place’ for Him to reveal what HIS WAY is for each of us as we walk out this journey and HIS WAY may not mean we do the same things or teach the same way for the next 365 days. It is about being sensitive to mid-course changes and the gentle nuances of the Holy Spirit as He ultimately teaches our children and as He shows us how to minister to their needs…for they are constantly growing and changing and their needs differ depending on where they are in their development and on what is happening in our family. It is about God and God alone.

And so begins our New Year and our New Start in our homeschooling being led by God…as we will always…LOVE HIM 4 EVER