Following joyfully?

    My children and I have been talking a lot about virtues lately.  I’ve decided we will focus on learning more about virtues in school this year.  We even read about the four cardinal virtues in the Catechism the other day.  I decided to focus on virtues with my children not because I observed a lack of virtue on their part but because I desire so much to grow in virtue in my own life.  My hope is that my children and I will learn together how to be more virtuous and more holy.  
    There are many virtues I struggle with.  But, perhaps the one I struggle most with is joy.  Over the last year, a good friend and I have discussed the importance of joy in following Christ.  She has reminded me that we are called to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church and to try to imitate Christ in all things and to do so with joy.  I am not naturally a joyful person.  I am relatively happy, I am mostly content with my life, but I am not filled with joy.  Instead I am often filled with anxiety, worry, fear, and insecurity.  I try really hard to do as Christ wants me to but I do so with a heavy heart at times.  I walk around overwhelmed and bogged down with the stresses in my life. 
    In my spiritual reading and my prayer time, it has come up lately that I should try to embrace my suffering.  Now, I really do understand that in life we must suffer.  I see that it is unavoidable, and even that it is redemptive to suffer.  Suffering unites us with Christ.  I know that, I believe that, but still I have not figured out quite how to embrace it.   When life gets difficult, when I am suffering, I cannot seem to rise above it.  I endure it surely, but not with joy.  I have been told that, in addition to embracing our suffering, we should praise God in everything.  In everything!!?!?!?  I praise God often when life is going my way.  I thank Him for the blessings in my life and for the good things and good times.  When life is  not much fun though, the last thing I feel capable of doing is praising.  I turn to God in my struggles but usually to complain to Him or simply to beg Him to take away the difficulties and make life easy.   I never turn to Him in praise when life has gotten me down.
    I do really want to grow in virtue.  I want to exude Christian joy and peace but it is so hard to do at times.  Maybe I should go back to the Catechism and those 4 cardinal virtues…. maybe if I can master grow in fortitude, justice, temperance, and prudence the other virtues will someday follow…..and, of course, I'll keep praying, praying, praying….

More special memories...

    My last post was about my oldest child’s 1st memories and how (pleasantly) surprised I was at what stood out in her mind from her younger days.  After her special treat of staying up late with just Mommy and Daddy, her ten year old brother wanted a turn too.  So, last night, he had his “stay up late” night.  We talked about other things for a while, but then I posed the same question to him as I had to his sister.  “What is your earliest memory?”  I asked.  His answer?  The time a lost puppy dog found its way to our backyard.  He and I sat by the window watching the confused pup for a while wondering what to do when finally, all on its own, the dog re-discovered the hole in the fence that had facilitated its coming and it left.  At most, this took 5-10 minutes but it was the closest we ever came (or ever will come) to having a dog.  My son was probably not even 3 years old at the time but he remembers  watching the little dog wander our backyard.  He remembers going to the neighbor’s house afterward to borrow some dog food just in case the dog came back. 
    Like his sister he remembered an ordinary day at home with Mommy.  He did not remember his little sister’s birth when he was 1 ½ years old or his little brother’s birth two years later.  Going on long car trips to visit his grandparents and cousins in St. Louis did not come to mind.  Instead he remembers a regular day when something, a very little something, special and unusual happened.
    We have had so many significant moments in our life, so many life changing events, but it is really the little things that just happen in our everyday moments that make life something special.
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    Incidentally, I was curious so I asked my 6 and 8 year old’s the question this morning.  Their answers were just as surprising, but only because they were so different than the older two.  My 6 year old son said, watching his dad, brother and sister canoeing down a little stream while camping at Disney World. My 8 year old daughter said, a surprise weekend at a resort with friends.  It is quite ironic to me that they would remember the big exciting moments we had saved and prepared for, while their siblings remember such mundane things.  Maybe it is because the younger children have had so many fewer vacations and trips, so they mean so much more to them.  Whatever the reason, I guess it is good to have a balance in life.  Those rare excursions to fun, exciting places are worth saving up for and enjoying when you can, but real life at home is just as important and special.  As for the little one’s 1st memories-- I am pretty sure if she could truly understand the question, her answer would be the time she got a bug on her arm at Wal-Mart.  It happened a few months ago but she still tells us quite often, “bug, arm” and points out the spot where he was.   

Making memories

The day we moved into our "new" house.

        A long time ago, back when there was only one little child running through our house, we used to do lots of fun things.  Not that we don’t do fun things now, but back then, in those early years of parenting, we did things like go to Disney World, go on trips across the country, and go out to dinner all the time.  Money was tight but we were able to find enough to treat ourselves fairly often.  The other night, Tim and I were talking to our oldest child.  Our first born was the only one to ever have our completely undivided attention for years, the only one to know the joy of being the center of our world, all alone in the limelight of parental love.  Its been a long time since she’s had us all to herself, but for once, we let her stay up late without her siblings and it was sort of like going back in time for a minute.  Somehow we started to reminisce, reliving those old days of her infancy and early toddler years.  I asked her what her earliest memory was.  She thought and thought and had trouble remembering anything from her only-child days.   She remembered pre-school, but by that time she already had a little brother and a little sister.  The first early memory she had was the time we brought her best friend a fortune cookie to try.  We had to give it to her friend’s mom in the morning before school because there was a rule against sharing lunches.  As she thought some more, she remembered one little thing from before the other kids came along.  She vaguely remembered laying on the couch in our kitchen while we moved into our house.  We moved in when she was 2 ½, just a few months before she became a big sister. 
    It is so funny what our kids remember.  She does not remember going to the Pacific Northwest and seeing Mt. St Helen’s and the Pacific Ocean.  She doesn’t remember meeting Mickey Mouse at Disney World or her first birthday party with the whole extended family in attendance.  She remembers the fun of watching t.v. in the kitchen because the house was a mess of boxes and disorganization.  She remembers sharing a cookie with a friend at school.  It makes me wonder why we, as parents, bother making fancy plans and doing big, exciting things.  The moments that stand out in our children’s minds are those simple things that we don’t even really plan but just happen in everyday life. 
    A few of my friends and I were recently discussing that old debate about quality time vs. quantity of time.  We all agreed that the idea of quality time being enough was a little bit of a delusion on the part of super busy parents and child-rearing “experts”.  In our experiences, as home schooling mothers, many most of the quality times with our children come in the midst of our long, busy days, completely unplanned and unexpected.  Quality time comes out of a quantity of time spent together, and only out of quantity.  It cannot be planned, it cannot be forced, it cannot be manufactured.  I don’t doubt at all, that once my children are all grown and on their own, they will remember the simplest and most ordinary days much more vividly than the vacations and trips to amusement parks.  It is in the ordinary days, we build memories that are not artificial but real.  We have fun that is not planned out and organized ahead of time, but spontaneous and natural.  We seem to laugh so much harder and act so much  sillier on our ordinary days than we ever do on vacation.  It is in the everyday that we build memories of being together and talking together and living together, sharing our lives and our time and our love.  So, though my daughter’s earliest memories were not what I would have expected, I cherish them as she does, for they are the memories of what life was really like when she was little. 

Chocolate-covered Saturday

    Hershey’s, Godiva, Ghiradelli, Wonka, Cadbury, Nestle-- all this and more, laid out before me for my tasting pleasure.  No, it wasn't a dream, it was school.  Really.  A few weeks ago I asked what my children most wanted to learn about this school year and my younger children all answered with subjects they knew I planned to cover.  I heard, “astronomy,” “writing,” and “reading.”  Then, I turned to my oldest for her answer.  She smiled and said, “Chocolate.  I want to learn about chocolate this year.”  She may have been joking at the time, or testing to see what my reaction would be, but who am I to stand in the way of my children’s academic interests?  If the child wants to learn about chocolate, then let her have chocolate…. 
    I told her she would have the wonderful privilege of diving into all things chocolate and leading her willing, anxious (and, very possibly, salivating) family along the sticky, sweet path along with her.  She was to put together a unit study on chocolate.  I wanted to know the history of chocolate, the science of chocolate, the geography of chocolate.  I wanted to see her reading chocolate literature and writing essays about chocolate.  She has happily taken up the challenge.  First, we scoured the library shelves checking out books with titles like Chocolate: A Sweet History and The Official M & M’s History of Chocolate.  She has taken notes and made fabulously delicious discoveries and some not-so-appetizing ones as well.  Did you know the first chocolate consumed, was in a drink that was thick and bitter? 
    As part of her research, she insisted we had to have a taste test.  Yesterday, I took her along on my weekly shopping trip and together we picked out 10 different types of chocolate.  As long as we were going to sample chocolate all evening, I figured we might as well make it a chocolate themed night.  So, we also picked up some mole, a Mexican sauce made of unsweetened chocolate, and the old Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie.

    Once home,  my daughter sat down and wrote out a survey for us all to fill out as we taste tested all the wonderful chocolate.  With her dad’s help, she created an Excel program to tabulate the results.  After our lovely dinner of Chicken mole, which all the kids (but the ever-picky littlest one) enjoyed, we turned the kitchen table into a market research facility and commenced with the sampling.  I went first and was surprised by the difference in flavors and the ultimate results.  Who would have thought I’d like the plain old Hershey’s milk chocolate bar better than all those fancy expensive ones?  The whole family took their turns eating chocolate and filling in their paperwork, and the results were processed.  Then (after a quick family walk around the block to promote a healthy balance in life), we sat down to watch our movie in a state of chocolate bliss.  Here are our final overall scores:

     She has just begun her unit study on chocolate but already my daughter has learned so much.  She has collected information, organized her plans and ideas, and conducted a well planned research project.  She has learned about the Mayan and Aztec cultures, read about the first explorers to visit South America, found out about rain forests where cacao trees are native, the difficulty of growing the fragile trees, and the challenge of introducing them to different parts of the world.  She has read about the process of turning the bitter cacao beans into sweet, rich chocolate, and found out the countries that produce the most.  She has sampled the wonderful results of the long process of chocolate production and shared the yummy-ness with her family.  And, I’m pretty sure she has learned that education can be a deliciously rewarding process.

Practically the same

    Tim’s 1st week of teaching!  So far, he loves it.  Our 2nd week [of our 7th year] of home schooling.  So far, so good for us, too.  For the first time ever, Tim and I are spending our days in similar fashion.  So I was thinking about the things that are the same and the things that are different....

    Tim teaches middle school, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, at a Catholic school.
    I teach multiple grades too, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and a toddler, who though she may not have a corresponding grade level is learning a whole bunch right along with the rest of us, at a home which strives to be authentically Catholic in all we do.

    Tim works long hours, getting up at 5:30 am, driving 45 minutes to school and not getting home until after 4pm (when he then heads to job #2 for the evenings).
    I put in lots of hours too, getting up a little later but spending all day with my “students” and not getting “off duty” until around 9:30 pm, that is assuming there are no bad dreams, no little voices crying out in the night, no illnesses etc…  that require me to “work late”. 

    Tim teaches religion, passing on the truths of our beautiful faith.
    I teach religion also, but not always out of a textbook.  We pray through math, spelling, history, etc…. relying on God’s grace and strength to make it through each and every crazy, chaotic day.

    Tim has to deal with distractions like: the bell ringing before he is quite done with a lesson, fire drills, and disruptive students talking in class.
    I have very similar distractions-- like the phone ringing, diaper changes, and disruptive children laughing, crying, or even climbing on the table spilling crayons and screeching, “done, done, done!” (that would be my 2 year old)

    Tim has to shift gears going back and forth between the various lessons for each grade level. 
    I have to shift gears constantly too-- slow down enough to sit and read with my 1st grader, be quick enough to grab the glue stick out of the 2 year old’s hands before she decorates the wall with glue or sticks all the pages of our books together, wrack my brain to figure out how to solve pre-Algebra equations with my 7th grader, explain sentence structure to my 3rd grader, discuss once again why playing Legos cannot constitute an entire curriculum, even though it could possibly encourage a future career in architecture, to my 5th grader.

    Tim has to attend open house tonight, meeting his students’ parents and going over his plans for the year.  He will have to have parent/teacher  conferences throughout the year, as well, keeping them informed of all they do in the classroom. 
    I had to attend a meeting for our umbrella school last night, making sure I know how to stay on top of record-keeping and learning about tons of great resources at my disposal.  Throughout the year, I constantly question and re-assess my teaching methods and parenting abilities especially when the atmosphere of the classroom is somewhat akin to the monkey house at the zoo.

    Tim is excited about his year.  He has a great group of students and the support of his co-workers and principal.
    I am optimistic about our year.  I have the very best students in the world, who I love more than words can express.  I have the support of many great home schooling friends and, of course, my fabulous husband who understands what I deal with now better than ever…….

An answer to prayer: a rich young me?

    Tim and I have been a part of “Teams of Our Lady” for about 7 years now.   It is a wonderful faith sharing group for Catholic couples.  Last night we had our monthly meeting for August and somehow during the meeting, in the midst of discussing the convenience of following the teachings of the Church and whether or not we allow selfishness and misunderstanding to cloud our relationship with Christ and our spouses, the topic of Facebook came up.   I have had a love/hate relationship with Facebook since joining the sight in 2008.  I love that it connects me with friends I would otherwise not ever hear from, and I love peeking at it throughout the day when I am feeling bored or lonely.  I hate that I feel the need to peek at it throughout the day when I am feeling bored or lonely and that it seems to stir up feelings of inadequacy quite often as I see what is going on in everyone else’s life as I am feeling bored and lonely.  Anyway, I was sharing my internal emotional battles concerning Facebook and one of the members of our group, who incidentally is not at all involved in Facebook, asked me if the positives were really as positive as they seemed.  “Are you really connecting with others?” he asked. 
    After the meeting, Tim and I always continue the discussion.  So we drove home, once again talking about the pros and cons of social media.  I decided I really needed to just pray about it.  In all my stressing over whether I was keeping my internet usage in perspective and had a healthy balance in life with it, I had never really asked God what he wanted from me.  When I sat down to pray last night before bed, as I always do, I just ask God to enlighten me.   “Help me to know what you want for me concerning Facebook, God”  It was a strange prayer, I suppose, but one I think He has been waiting to hear.  I, then, looked down at the list of scriptures given to me by my spiritual director and opened up to the next one on the list.  Mark 10:17-22.   Now, God does not often answer my prayers so definitively or so quickly but the Bible reading was about “The Rich Young Man.”   The story tells about a man who comes to Jesus asking Him what to do to gain eternal life.  Jesus answers that the man must give all he has to the poor and follow Him.  The man leaves sadly, not willing to make the sacrifice.  He is too attached to his worldly comforts.  I’ve read the story many, many times and it is one I really like.  This time, it spoke to me even louder than ever.  God was clearly asking me to sacrifice my Facebook usage because somehow it was keeping me from completely following Him.  I knew I had to quit.  I went to bed resolving to deactivate my account in the morning. 
    I did not sleep well.  Somehow in my sleep, and the waking moments in between, I was thinking a lot about giving up Facebook.  I kept thinking about all the good things.  The friends who I only ever communicated with through the internet.  The ones I had found after losing contact for years and years.  The encouragement I sometimes got, or gave ,when life was hard and struggles were shared through status updates.  The joy of seeing new babies and wedding announcements and milestones in life on Facebook.  The cool videos and pictures and website links I had learned about.  Did I really want to give it all up?  It certainly wasn’t all bad.  But, in my heart I felt like the rich young man.  Jesus had told me what to do, after I had come to Him asking, and now I had a choice to make.  Would I go away sad, or would I leave it all behind and follow Him? 
    I woke up in the morning to a list of notifications on my Facebook page.  People had responded to things I had shared and said nice things to me.  Yet, with Tim’s help I deleted my account.  I did not just de-activate, with the option of logging back on at anytime I wanted.  I deleted.  The account is gone, with all the cute little pictures of my kids, all my status updates and message history, and tagged notes, and videos, and friends list and more.  Instead of feeling relieved or spiritually uplifted. I felt sad, like the rich young man, even though I did what I felt like I was supposed to do. 
    In my sadness and unsettledness I went back to the Bible story.  I just needed a little reassurance, and since I could not put it on Facebook and get the feedback of my friends, I went to the scriptures for the comfort of my Lord.  I re-read the story.  It says, “Jesus looked at him (the rich man), loved him, and said to him, ‘You are lacking one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give it to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven;  then come and follow me”  (Mark 10:21).  I read it more carefully and noticed, Jesus loved the man.  Before He spoke and asked the man for his sacrifice, He loved him.   He said to the man, you will have treasures in heaven.  Jesus was not asking the man to make the sacrifice as a test or as a punishment.  He loved him and wanted what was best for him.  Jesus knew the earthly treasures, though they in and of themselves were not bad, were not what was best for the rich man.  The treasures in heaven would have more than made up for the sacrifice.  He wanted the man, and me, to sacrifice the good things in life for the better things Jesus has to offer.  It is never easy to sacrifice, at least not for me, or apparently the rich young man, but it does allow God to fill our lives with better things.  So good-bye Facebook, if you need me you’ll find me right where God wants me, trying to follow His Son, Jesus, without my earthly treasures….

Just dibby dabs....

    My mom has a language all her own.  Growing up I, of course, did not realize that many of the words we used at home regularly were not, in fact, words in the English language at all.  It was strange, the looks I got when I said something was pa-cucked, or someone was acting nerky.   Apparently my friends had never used such phrases, never even heard them.  Dibby dabs was another one.  On leftover night at our house my mom would lay out the dibby dabs of this and the dibby dabs of that and we would finish up what was left.  In case you, too, are unfamiliar with my native language, dibby dabs means little bits of things. 
    Today, I thought about dibby dabs and how, now that we are back to schooling and I am consumed with academic endeavors and educational pursuits again, my blogging is probably going to be reduced to dibby dabs.  As we have been absorbed in our busyness this week, my mind has been composing lots of long fascinating and meaningful blog posts.  Now that it is Saturday, and we do not have school work to tend to, I would love to sit and write all day.  But, of course, there is grocery shopping to do, bathrooms to scrub, floors to mop, laundry to catch up on, and countless others things that also fell by the wayside this week.  So all that is left for blogging is dibby dabs.
    So, with not much time left for writing, here are the dibby dabs from our week:

    Tim started his teaching job on Monday.  It was “teacher work week” so he did not have any students yet.  He came home from work feeling a little overwhelmed and a little lost.  He asked my opinion on decorating bulletin boards and classroom rules. That was certainly a first.  On Friday, the kids and I went to see his new school, which is about 45 minutes south of us.  He did not happen to take my advice on the bulletin board design but....still, his classroom looked great, all ready for school to start on Monday.  The smell of the buildings reminded me so much of my own first days of school so many years ago…..
    My oldest daughter started a co-op type math class this week.  A wonderful friend of mine, out of the kindness of her heart, offered to teach pre-Algebra to any student in our home school group who was interested.  Math is not my strong point, and my daughter and I struggled a lot last year trying to make sense of the numbers and formulas in her textbook, each of us as confused as the other.  My friend’s offer was truly a God-send for me.  My daughter was not feeling as blessed though.  She was a little nervous.  She has not had a “classroom” class, or been taught anything besides art and church history from someone other than me since kindergarten.  She came home on day one smiling though and has not had any trouble with math yet.  Of course, it is only week one but it looks like this is going to work out really well….
    My littlest one got a potty.  Again, thanks to the kindness of a friend, whose three year old was finished with it, a nice shiny plastic potty was dropped off right in time for baby’s 2nd birthday.  She is having such fun with it.  She sits on it whenever anyone is in the bathroom.  Usually fully dressed, though she inevitably asks to be “nake, nake”.  If her 8 year old sister happens to be the one currently using the bathroom, she can usually get the help she needs removing her shorts or if she happens to be wearing a dress when the desire to sit on the potty strikes her, she has discovered the joy of pulling off her own diaper.  I keep looking up and seeing a little tushy (is that a mom word too?) running down the hall and a little voice saying “pee-pee potty.”  She has not peed on the floor during these little escapades….yet. She has also not succeeded in peeing in the potty at any point.  I have come to realize that though she may think she is ready for potty training, I know I most definitely am not.  Maybe around Christmas break.  In the meantime, I might start using duct tape on her diapers.  I‘d like to see her rip that right off...
    So much more in my head….but no more time, the cleaning and errands await…..