Writing Your Homeschooling Epic
I sit in the rocking chair, feeling it envelope me with its cushiony softness.
As my foot gently pushes the chair, back and forth, back and forth, I wrap my cold hands around the warm coffee mug. The sunlight is streaming in, blanketing me in warmth.
As I look out the window, watching the trees sway in their melodic way, memories form. Pictures of the past, moving in front of me like a movie. I watch, reliving the moments of my life as they surround me.
So many memories.
And the ones I’m most thankful for are the homeschooling ones.
I see myself with my children, all day, every day, with some of those days hard, but every day wonderful.
We were together.
As the chair moves beneath me, regulating my heart, my knees creaking with old age and my hands not as nimble as they used to be, I am filled with gratitude for these long lost homeschooling days.
These are precious and they have become a part of me, so much so that I am the woman today because of my homeschooling years. How I long to jump out of this quiet solitude and transport back into those loud days, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, but always loving.
Raising up babies is no easy task, but homeschooling made it easier. As I rejoice in gratitude for what I was allowed to do, I also feel some pride welling up. Not the idol kind, but the satisfied kind.
I let myself sit in that for a bit while the memories wash over me, comforting me.
The babies grew up, as they tend to do, and left to live their own adventures. And now I have my own adventures to relive and how thankful I am for that! I have these stories, stories of a life created.
And these stories are sanctifying, yet comforting, as I wrap them around me like a warm blanket. For the rest of my life, I will have these stories, these memories as a part of me, a wonderful, loving part of the woman I have become.
I wonder if all grandmas have these stories? I’m sure they do.
But mine are special because they are mine and as the sunlight spills across my face, I close my eyes, feeling the warmth on my cheeks and I tuck the stories into my heart for another time.
What are the stories you are going to have with you when this is all done?
Even though it seems impossible to think of now, there will be a day when you will be that older woman, sitting in the chair, recalling your life spent.
What will be the memories, the stories left behind?
What will be the stories that your children tell to each other as they sit around the table together, their own children running around under feet?
The stories we are left with, an aroma of our lives, are why we toil and push so hard.
And all that work, leaves you with warm memories to fill your heart on a cold day, but more than that–they are also your children’s memories.
Ones they will tuck away and look back on with tenderness. Ones that will guide them into their future, the foundation on which they form relationships, decisions.
A life.
Momma, this is why we do what we do.
This is why we read all the homeschooling blogs, figure things out with our homeschooling girlfriends and cry on our husband’s shoulders over our bad days, days we lost our temper or when our child couldn’t learn math.
When this is all you have left, what is going to be your story?
Now is the time to write it.
Today.
Every step you take, every decision, is a chance to write a happy ending for you and your children.
Take this homeschooling opportunity to write an epic!
