Yesterday I realized...

...that I was entering my 5th week of homeschooling.  WOW!!!  I hadn't blogged all summer, but that was kind of the plan since I was trying to have fun with the kiddos & I was preparing for a whole new journey.  But...I had planned to blog through my homeschooling journey & now that I'm five weeks in I think I better get started. 

Let me start off by saying that hardly ever do things go as I expect & homeschooling is no different.  The difference is that usually things are much worse than I anticipate & life is seldom easy for me.  Homeschooling has been this amazingly, wonderful, beautiful journey.  It is so blessed by God that I sometimes I look in the mirror & I can't believe that this is me or that I am actually doing this.  Like for instance, it's lunch break right now.  I am sitting at my computer typing my thoughts (while eating some noodles) & the kids are watching a show eating their lunch.  There is no yelling, no screaming, no fighting.  It's just a quiet, peaceful sound.  For the most part this is how our days have been.  Not the watching TV part, but the quiet, peaceful sound part :)  Now, let me say right now, upfront, I am in NO WAY, NO HOW trying to say our days have been perfect.  We have had our ups & downs.  We have had changing it up a bit, changing what we are learning & changing how we are learning for that matter.  BUT...it has all been smooth & much easier than expected. 

For those that read my blog, you know Logan has "those days" where things are difficult.  Well let me confess, I anticipated many of "those days" & even rougher days than that for the first several months while we adjusted.  I expected him to fight me, argue with me, beyond test my limits.  I anticipated that he would tell me how much he hated homeschool and that he wanted to go back to school. (We had previously agreed this wasn't happening) The kid hasn't lived up to the first expectation I had & that is a GIFT FROM GOD!  That is God saying "I told you I would take care of things if you just let me lead".  Logan has been amazing, in fact so good that I can't believe it's my boy most days.  Its such an affirmation that this was the best choice for Logan.  He needed this, he needed homeschool.  He is so not afraid to work & work hard he does.  He just needed to be allowed to work hard the way he works.  I am learning so many new things with him & just seeing him in such a different light that it's blessing me in ways untold.  As for Emily, she is doing amazing.  She is so stinking smart that some days she amazes me in ways that I can't believe.  We really struggled with the homeschooling her vs. putting her in VPK this year.  We made the decision, but then I went back in forth several times in my head & in my heart.  I just worried that I was pushing her too hard by starting Kindergarten when she hadn't been to preschool.  But I heard the voice pushing us in this direction & so I stuck with our initial decision.  (Shh...don't tell, but I still didn't cancel her VPK enrollment until the start of Aug) I am so glad that I listened to the voice because she was so ready for Kindergarten.  She is doing so much, writing so much, reading so much, spelling so math, getting ready to start addition, she's learning all about herself & her community.  Most importantly, she is comprehending everything and retelling to others what she is doing.  It makes my heart smile.  I can't believe how much she is capable of & I know that there is no other way to educate her than to homeschool her.  I know we have made the right decision for both of our children & I can't wait to see what the rest of the year holds.  As for Kolby, he's doing great & he's having an awesome year.  He loves his teachers, but then again who doesn't.  Ms. Gibson & Ms. Hernandez, simply put, are the most amazing, loving, thoughtful, God fearing ladies I have ever met within the school system (but also in life).  Trust me when I say, children are blessed by them teaching.  But, it's been hard on Kolby & on me that he's not home with us.  We did a special for 9/11 and I let him stay home with us.  He really flourished in that environment too.  He has asked to stay home this year, but I prayed and I know in my heart that God wants him in school this year.  My plan is to homeschool him next year, but when the time comes I have to have faith that God will tell me where Kolby needs to be, regardless of what Kolby or I think. 

The main thing I have realized this year so far is that I really am capable of doing anything through Christ & that with him I am made strong.  It's hard to believe that I am doing this, but I am & it's working amazingly.  I don't know why I ignored this calling for so many years.  I don't know why I felt so fearful.  I realize that God just kept putting more & more things in place so that I could no longer deny this calling.  I feel at peace with our choices & I feel at peace with who I am right now & who I am becoming.  I realize that all the trails & struggles were preparing us for this moment.  They were preparing Logan so that he would be ready for this.  All the struggles with Logan prepared me to be even more confident in my choices with Emily.  I've always said raising Emily was like raising a female version of Logan.  They are so much alike that it can actually be scary.  In some ways it breaks my heart.  I see how well Emily is doing.  I see how much she is learning, how she is growing & how her confidence is soaring every day.  I know that's because of how she is learning & the way I am approaching her in lessons.  I realize that Logan would have done so well at home from the start.  He should have never entered the school system.  They beat him down, they broke his spirit, they took what could have been amazing and turned it into hurt & sadness.  I see my little girl & I think what he might have been.  I think how sad he must have been in class when he was in trouble, for being himself & for being to smart in a system that can't handle it.  They tore away at him piece by piece & they made him hate school & learning.  They made him think questions weren't okay.  They broke him like no child should be broken by education.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry over these thoughts.  I feel in so many ways like I failed him.  I know that in the end he will be okay.  I know that because he had those really amazing teachers I mentioned above, Ms. Gibson and Ms. Hernandez.  They loved on my boy, they told him he was so smart, that he could do anything.  They built him up with such love & belief that he could do it.  They made him want to learn, made him want to ask questions, made him see being smart was really okay.  They made him understand that being him was also a really good thing.  They helped fix what had been broken.  So I know he'll be okay & I pray that through homeschooling we will help him become all that God wants him to be.  And though our future looks bright, I still have a hard time not looking back and thinking  what if?  But with God we have to keep our eyes forward & on the cross. When we do that we remember that he has always loved us, that he will always love us & that he has the perfect plans for us when we allow him to dream for us. 

While I realize that there were some people out there who doubted my ability to do this & do it successfully, there are also some pretty special people out there who were rooting for me & praying for our success.  The difference between the 2 groups of people, the first group didn't account for God & his calling me to this.  The number one lesson I keep learning over and over again is, if God calls me to something then he is going to qualify me to do it.  That second group of people, well, they kept preaching that lesson to me over & over again.  So here I am, successful because I am being qualified by God who called me here & blessed me for following his path. 

So that's a little bit of the ups.  Tomorrow a little bit of the learning curve that we have experienced &  a whole lot of pictures of what we have been doing.

Walking this journey with Christ by my side,
Andrea

That Something Big....

is finally becoming apparent to me.  A couple of months back I started really researching churches in our area.  As I am really quite embarrassed to admit we hadn't been to church in over a year & really in the couple of years before that only once or twice.  I just wasn't getting anything from church & I was dragging the boys kicking & screaming to sit in a cry room during a mass that I could barely pay attention to because I was dealing with the kids.  Some people hassled me to find a church we liked, while others told me not to worry about it.  They tried to explain that as the kids got older it would be easier to go to church.  The truth is that at first I would use the kids as an excuse, but in reality I just wasn't getting anything out of church.  I was annoyed in a big way.  I could feel something in our lives missing & I couldn't find what I was looking for.  So back to a couple of months ago.  I had been doing a lot of reading & I was listening to a great podcast from a pastor in TX so in a lot of ways I was getting church.  I started to realize that my family on the other hand was not getting what I was getting & it was something that we all needed.  So I started reading websites for all the local churches.  I wasn't going to limit myself to Catholic Churches & I was really going to let God lead me to where he wanted me to be.  I prayed & prayed about it and finally I felt guided to start really looking into churches.  I didn't know what I was doing, I had never done this before.  I figured that if a website turned me off  then most likely I wasn't going to like the church.  If I like the website, I gave the number a call.  I figured if I was totally turned off by the person on the other end of the line then I was most likely not going to like the church.  I did this for a couple of days & finally I found a church.  Starting Pointe Church is a small non denominational church that is held right by our house.  I liked the website, I liked it a whole lot.  I felt pulled to the website, like I had to keep going back and reading the same thing over & over again.  I finally called the pastor, Pastor Jeff.  I don't know what it was, but I felt like I had found a home.  I felt peace talking to him.  I felt God talking to me in my heart.  I knew this was the place that God had been leading me to, but now I had to break the news to Eric.  I wasn't sure how it was going to go over with him.  He's always been pretty darn serious about the fact that we are Catholic & that we are staying Catholic.  I prayed that God would just open his heart & mind to this new experience because I really felt in my heart that this is where God was leading me.  I finally felt ready to tell Eric....& to my surprise he was really, really open to this idea that I had.  He was willing to give it a one time try.  We decided to try this new church on Easter Sunday.  I figured that if I didn't like you on Easter, I wasn't going to like you the rest of the year.  So we told the boys about this new church & I really talked it up to this awesome wonderful place.  Lucky for me, Mrs. Tracy makes it such a place.  And even luckier for me, Easter Sunday was awesome & Eric walked out of there offering to give it 4 more weeks.  What the heck he said, it's a five week sermon series, RIGHT???  My prayers were being answered right before my eyes.  From the moment we had walked in I knew we were finally home.  Maybe it was the lady at the door, who forgive me I can't recall her name, who was so very friendly & welcoming.  Maybe it was Mrs. Tracy who leads the kids church who was so warm & welcoming.  The way she took my children & eased my greatest fears when I mentioned that Logan had ADHD & Aspergers.  She didn't flinch, she didn't seem disturbed...no instead she said don't worry about it, he'll be fine with the most reassuring smile I have ever seen.  Maybe it was Pastor Jeff and the way he shook our hands & welcomed us to his church.  Maybe it was the way Pastor Jeff preached & just how real he really was.  Maybe it was the way that I finally felt like someone wanted to talk to me & not down at me.  I don't know why within minutes of being there I felt like I had finally found a home for our family, but I did & that's what is the most important thing.  I am not going to lie, it was a huge change for us.  I loved it, Eric looked a little disturbed.  I prayed & prayed through that entire service that God would just continue to open his heart & mind to this new experience.  By the time we had left, I knew that we had to come back, I couldn't wait to come back.  We collected our kids & they begged to come back...the very next day.  We explained that we couldn't & only a promise to come back next week settled them down.  It was all coming together.  The next week was just as great, even better.  They remembered our kids, they remembered our names.  They were happy to see us again.  We felt welcomed, like we belonged.  On my birthday, Pastor Jeff remembered it was my birthday & when he wished me a Happy Birthday I knew why I loved this place so much.  So here we are five weeks later & Eric loves it just as much as me.  Okay well maybe he's not as in love with it as I am, but he'll get there.  I can tell that he's getting something out of it & for a man of such little words sometimes he says some pretty interesting things about church & Pastor Jeff.  The kids hearts are on fire for the Lord & they can't get enough.  They are always looking to learn more.  Kolby loves listening to The Message with me on XM & he is always singing the songs that he has learned.  We are going to dedicate Emily to the Lord at the end of July.  I just feel like everything is right, like things are falling into place for us as far as church life is concerned.  I've always considered myself a Christian, but I was always a little jealous of those that were so consumed by their faith.  I am starting to understand what it means to live like Jesus.  I am starting to understand how one's heart can be on fire for the Lord.  My heart is open to the Lord & to what he telling me.  I am listening to him & he is guiding me.  I am following him blindly.  Don't get me wrong, I am so far from perfect & I slip all the time, but I am trying with all my heart to be as the Lord would have me be.  I don't know why he has placed me here at Starting Pointe, but I know that eventually he will show me the rest of his plan.  I do believe that this is just the start & he has so much more in store for me.  I know that if this is just a piece of his plan then the rest must be so much more than I could ever imagine.  He has great things in store for us & just knowing that he loves me & will lead me where he wants me to be is enough to keep me going until he is ready to reveal the rest to me.  I am blessed that we found Starting Pointe & that we now have a home to grow our children & ourselves in the way of the Lord.  We are truly blessed.