I worry if homeschooling is the best thing for them. I get worried that I am going to ruin them and that their will be no one to blame but me and maybe Dylan just slightly. I worry that they will one day look back and be sad that they missed out on some of the opportunities in life that they won't necessarily experience through homeschool. I have days where I doubt everything. I get overwhelmed and frustrated. I feel like a huge failure. I know that if God put this journey on my heart then he will see me through it. That all I have to do it seek him and show up daily and he will work through me. I know this...... but I am human and I have days where I feel less than worthy.
Then I have days where I look at what we are doing and think just how amazing this opportunity is that God has called us to do. How wonderful it is to get to spend all my time with these little souls who teach me even more than I could teach them. I love that I get to be there for all their milestones. They get to be little kids and play all day long. They don't have the pressures of the world and get to preserve their innocence a little bit longer. I love that we get to live out the bible verse Deuteronomy 11:18-19:
"You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. "You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up."
Lately we have been struggling as a family to really live our life the way we know Christ would want us to. We fall back into old habits and we realize that life is so much better when we put God first. Like ridiculously better. Noticeably better. It is so much easier to get on Facebook for a minute than it is to pull out the Bible. It is easier to be mad at the kids for mistakes than it is to show them grace. In order to teach our kids about forgiveness and to ask them to work hard daily to be like Jesus, we as parents have to be the models. I struggle with that daily.
Clay has been asking about Baptism a lot lately. He says he is ready. Dylan and I don't think he should do it yet but at the same time who are we to say what God is impressing on his heart. He is so much wiser at 5 than I was even 5 years ago. Either way we have been talking about it a lot with him and the other kids and really trying to explain and help them to grasp what it truly means to follow Jesus and make that commitment.
I found this little experiment accidentally the other day and loved it. It shows how sin makes us dirty and Jesus is the only thing that can make us clean again. I love showing the kids visual things to help them understand concepts. They loved it! Sometimes I need a visual and a reminder also.
We had to do it over and over and now they can't wait to show Dylan when he gets home from work. When you watch it notice how Carly is a little mother hen. She likes things done just the right way. :) She may or may not have gotten that from me.
Are their any other cool visuals that we need to know about??!!
It's so hard to NOT worry about our kids. I totally understand and second guess everything I do. You are an awesome mom and your kids are so loved -- the most important thing!
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