Last Year of Home School

And so this is it.  A career that began with my daughters, almost 20 years ago, ends this May, upon the graduation of my youngest son.  All my children have only, ever, been home educated.  From kindergarten through graduation, all the reading, writing, and math skills have been learned at home.

This is my very last year as a full time home educator.  We start this week - Isaac and I - with a review of basic Geometry and Algebra II, along with a DVD teaching series by John Bevere for Bible class, and some light essay writing...just to get going.  Then, we'll launch into anatomy and physiology, and we'll get his 1/2 credit of economics in by Christmas.

I am doing one thing slightly different this year:  I am journaling from my perspective as a parent-educator about how wonderful this experience can be.  I'm free-writing, stream of consciousness style, digging deep into my heart of hearts, and putting down in writing what the school year would look like, what the semester would look like, what the week would look like, what the day would look like, if I could design it any way I wanted...no budget, no restraints, no issues.  I'm pretending like I have zero baggage, no lack of resources, and an amazing grace overshadowing this whole endeavor.

Then, after I'm done imagining it...I'm going to live it.  I'm wondering just how big my God can be.

Here's a bit of visual inspiration for my fellow home educators (a stalwart lot, we are!)...we've outgrown this idea somewhat here at my house, but I will be taking this idea and tweaking it for myself soon!

I'm so glad I didn't quit home schooling when it stopped being cute and gratifying.  You know...as your kids get older, they outgrow the "learning centers" and the lovely nature tables get replaced with desktop computers and bulky textbooks, and it all gets a bit grueling and...not cute.  When the kids get a little mouthy and aren't overwhelmed with gratitude at your sacrifice in staying home to drill them in their theorems and Latin declensions.  When science isn't as simple as a nature walk and a field guide.  When you aren't so impressed with yourself as teacher anymore, and the enthusiasm seems to be waning and government or some sort of institutional education looks so inviting. 

When someone becomes prodigal, graduates from your home school full of potential, but doesn't go on to college - and in fact takes all those hours of music lessons and leadership training, and begins to play in bars all over your city.  Even then.  Even then, I am so glad we didn't give up.

I don't know how this year will turn out.  This is a communication from the uncertainty of the front lines, not some safe observation from hindsight.

But, come what may, I am already glad I didn't quit.

This is it.  It all comes down to this year.  You won't waste a prayer on the Atchley family, gentle reader!

Starting Here at Home

...this isn't my home, but it is my dream home...no, I don't dream of big houses, tho' I could dream anything I want to ...I've always loved small. Small is the new big, ya'll...trust me. (Unless you have a vision to truly have a Hospitality House - something akin to a retreat center for family and friends, thus your large spaces are graciously and regularly shared with others! ) Homes that are too big for their true purposes, a.k.a. McMansions, are now passe - post with recent quotes from top architects and interior designers forthcoming! Top designer advice? "Think outside the granite box" when it comes to surfaces. In short, pretentious consumption is not the atmosphere you want to go for, if you are blessed with any sort of home building or home improvement project. Instead, think "hand made living", think kinship and earthy and light and airy and simple. And yes...you can dream of "small".

And above all, big or small, let the spirit of your home be one of shared community, an atmosphere of grace that celebrates the perfectly imperfect!

Accompany me today, O Spirit invisible, in all my goings, but stay with me also when I am in my own home and among my kindred. Forbid that I should fail to show to those nearest to me the sympathy and consideration which Thy grace enables me to show to others with whom I have to do. Forbid that I should refuse to my own household the courtesy and politeness which I think proper to show to strangers.




Let charity today begin at home.
-Baillie

Have a Faith, Friends, and Family-Filled Weekend!

May this be a metaphor for your weekend...(a proverbial bowl of cherries!)

Make plans, make friends, make love, make cookies...your weekend can be this beautiful!  It isn't too late to "make" it happen!  Be sure to share the blessing of kinship, the surprise of grace and glory, the comfort of community.

"Make" it a good weekend, gentle reader.  I pray God's best and brightest for you and yours!

The Friendships of Women

I can't resist sharing this with you - written by Ann Voskamp.  You'll find this both at her blog A Holy Experience, and over at In Courage.

I feel so blessed to have faithful girlfriends in my life - and I know of few greater goals than to be a faithful friend, who values and lives continuity.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Lissa Turscott slid down her bus window and whipped that baseball hard, I felt the thud in my back and the smash of my heart and I hunched over to catch the pieces all shattering.

I heard her friends all slapping her on the back in congratulations as the bus moaned away.

Some bruises break the vessels skin deep and others just break souls and Lissa and Judith and Alexa and all the girls with the teased bangs, they were the ones sashaying to the latest Madonna songs and I was the mocked girl wearing polyester pants from the Sally Ann.

I’ve been rejected and I’ve skirted wide circles around women and maybe you know something about wide berths and big circles?

The skittish circles you make at church teas around the buffet table looking for another cracker and hoping no one makes eye contact?

The way you carry a book to the kids’ swimming lessons like a piece of armour so no one gets close enough to trample on your still bruised heart?

The imaginary and very real boundaries you draw around your life like a barbed wire fence?

And when you’ve been hurt, you’re making sure that won’t be happening any time soon and you keep this wary distance from anywhere where you’d have to show the bare underbelly of your tender heart. But no one tells you that the shields you carry to keep you safe, become the the steel cages that keep you alone.

And then sometimes along comes someone who lays a hand on your shield, who sticks her hand through the bars of your protective cage... and quietly waits. And for you.

She’s a woman like Tonia who every day sends me lines of her thoughts. I get brave and send back mine. For five years, we write letters and exchange bits of our lives. I begin to trust the places with no shields. And I begin to see the beauty of women and the way their words have movement and action and meaning and you can always trust what moves, what reaches out, trust the words that migrate down to the muscle and touches skin.

She’s a woman like Marlene who shows up unexpected in the middle of some crazy morning with a bouquet of yellow roses in hand and she says she believes in me and God and whatever is to come and she prays before she leaves. I dry her roses and this is what I will preserve, a friendship that gives like this because there’s no currency in the world that can buy you this and this is the only treasure worth storing up, love.

She’s a woman like Megan and I open a note from her and I laugh wonder when I find this picture of her holding a square of cardboard scrawled with the words, “Run the Race, friend!” and another picture too, her holding the back side of the cardboard and the words, “You can do it!”

And we can. We can do it.

We can believe that God alone is our security and love is always worth the risk and there is no better investment than reaching out to someone and locking arms and unlocking your heart. No better investment than finding the time for friendship and the courage to be real and the humility to say we’re sorry. And distrust can cost us the very richest life of all and the price for being safe can be too expensive and friendship is the only thing that will show up at our funerals.

We can do life together and we can laugh about babies who pee on Sunday skirts and boys who lose piano books and daughters who try on seven outfits before deciding on anything and their bedroom floor is proof of it, and we can drive each other to doctor appointments and bring soup when the flu season hits and we can see something on a shelf that whispered the other’s name and we can wrap it up and give it on any day at all for no reason at all but to celebrate a kindred sister.

And we can hold each other’s fragility and we can forgive each other when we crack an artery, and our hearts will break, and we can pray and grant grace and begin again because we've tasted mercy and His name is Jesus.

I am learning to reach out my hand.

And long after Lissa Turscott, on one fine spring day in the summer of my life, I meet a woman, a woman who loves women, a woman who helped build a certain cyber beach house I know, and she drives me up and down and around the winding backroads of Arkansas and I ramble all awkward and thick tongued in her passenger seat and I wish for the luxury of a wall somewhere just to be a flower.

We share a no-fat sticky bun together on a Monday morning with a glass of orange juice and we don't believe for a New York minute that that sticky sweet won't find our hips. We laugh. I meet her friends. They are wondrous. My mouth feels dry. She drives me to the airport. And when I am back home on the farm, she writes me a letter, and I keep it.

“You have been hurt by women. I could see the pain in your eyes… And I've never done this before but... I feel prompted to make you a promise of friendship."

"I promise I will never speak an unkind word to or about you. I will never be jealous of you. I will never compete with you. I will never abandon or betray you. I will love you. I will pray for you. I will do all I can to help you go far and wide in the Kingdom.


I will accept you as you are, always. I will be loyal to you. Before our loving God of grace, you have my words and my heart in friendship for this life and forever with Him.”

And our God is a love body and He hates amputations and He sutures our wounds together with the silver threads of community. And I have found healing here. Trust asks us to live (in) Courage.

In this place, we kneel down beside you. In this place, we reach out our hands. In this place, can you hear us whisper? “You have been hurt. We can see the pain in your eyes —- We offer you a promise of friendship.”

In the places of sisters and sinners and souls made saints, we make big circles around women and together we watch each other's backs and together we bend down when one hunches over in pain and together we pick up the shards of the hearts all shattered.

Because this is the promise of friendship that the true sisterhood always makes good on.This we can do.

And by God's good grace, we will.

By Ann Voskamp, http://www.aholyexperience.com/

When You Are A Hammer...

...everyone else looks like a nail.

This past year, due to several situations I had run up against, not the least of which is my relationship with my boys, I began to read all I can, from a Biblical worldview, about dealing with difficult people.

First of all, allow me to say this:  we are all dysfunctional.  Every single one of us.  We were born in sin, born wrong, and we will be growing and struggling out of that wrong-ness until  heaven...until we "know as we are known".  We all see through a glass darkly.

The difference between a normal level of dysfunction, and a toxic level of dysfunction, however, is the acknowledgement of dysfunction's existence.  Some people just won't own up to their stuff.

Those of us who know we can be whack jobs have the unfortunate experience of having to work through dealing with those who insist they are far too __________ (fill in the blank with "educated" or "spiritual" or "affluent" or "happy") to be a whack job. Or, we have the unfortunate experience of dealing with those who insist it is our fault they are a whack job - or, richer still, the difficult person insists they are the normal one, and you are the whack job.  And they can be very convincing.

It is confusing, because dysfunctional, difficult people can be so likable and seemingly functional with everyone else but the people they torment.  (Which, by the way, is the textbook definition of dysfunctional...when a person does not function normally in many of their significant relationships, or does not function normally for very long - for example, they make it one to five years in a new friendship, but cannot be consistent beyond that set point.)

One symptom of a dysfunctional person is when you notice that, over time, everyone in their life has an issue with the truth.  Their father is a liar.  Their brother is a liar.  Their daughter is a liar.  Their boss twists the truth.  Their girlfriend is a manipulator.  Old friends lie about them.  Everyone manipulates.  Everyone lies.

Everyone looks like a nail, when you are the hammer.

Be assured that the person with the lying issue is the one pointing the finger.  And don't even bother confronting them unless you are very, very vested in the relationship, and are willing to be mistreated, because another symptom of a dysfunctional person is they don't change their mind.  Talking does nothing for them, long term.  Talking only brings about short term relief...after a matter of hours or days, the dysfunctional person just resets to the old thought patterns.

There's more symptoms - very eye opening.  I'll share them in another blog post.  But for now, if you are dealing with a difficult, manipulative, controlling person, you aren't crazy.  And there is help, just not necessarily what you think help looks like.

Hang in there.  Relationships, healthy ones, are so worth it!

Ladies Only

Friends, life is too short to wear painful underwear.  Or ugly underwear.  Life is just too preciously short. 

Invest in yourself this week.  My latest two Ultimate Truths are to "never wear a wire again", and to "have a set of undies for exercise, and a set that is prettier, but still incredibly comfortable, for every day".  Who says I can't change from utilitarian to cute, every single day, after exercise?  Or five times a day, if I have to?

 Honestly, I have noooooooooooo idea why that has not occurred to me before.  I can think outside the box everywhere else but my dresser drawer, apparently.  That drawer was totally divided between ugly-but-comfortable-for-exercise, and pretty but never-wear-it-because-it-is-just-too-painful.

Guess what I ended up in, every day.  Utterly depressing.  Does nothing for a girl's self esteem.  On top of that, wires were never meant to be close to a woman's body.  Period. 

Enter the boy short.  Trimmed in lace, this becomes the perfect marriage of cute and comfy.  No more sinister underwear...you know...the kind that creep up on you from behind and inflict distress.  Pair these with the "no more wire" policy, and you'll have yourself  a personal renewal that is darn near spiritual.

Seriously do go through your drawers and get rid of everything that is uncomfortable, or does not feel pretty to you.  You are that important.

An Overdue Thank You - and blog recommendation

I owe my friend Lydia Joy Shatney a looooooong overdue thank you!  She sent me the best little booklet, a handy shopping guide by the Weston Price Foundation.  It is a guide to finding the healthiest foods in grocery stores, health food markets, and online.  Love it!

Thanks, Lyds.

Again, (I've mentioned her before) I also want to commend to you her blog, "Divine Health From the Inside Out".

If you are on a gluten free diet, if you are interested in whole food eating, healthy eating, the truth about fat in your diet, taking control and responsibility for your family's diet, you will love this blog, I think.  It is worth checking out, for the salad dressing recipes alone - I am also going to make her Asian lettuce wraps.

I've shared my story here before.  My health journey has taken me to extremes of low fat cooking, whole foods cooking, low carb, etc. etc.  I made myself (and sometimes my family) anxious over food.  When I stopped all food "rules", my health and well being flourished.

Lesson learned.  My health comes from the Lord.

Now, here is where I am in this journey:  after about ten years of no food rules whatsoever - maintaining a healthy weight without examining my food, just using portion control - I am once again open to the idea of "let food be your medicine and your medicine be your food".

A woman's body changes in her forties - no question about that.  I am discovering that a healthy diet makes me feel much better, physically.  No longer is it about food rules, no longer is it based on anxiety over my weight or my health.  I'm just interested in consistent energy levels, and I am interested in beating or containing my health issues such as hypothyroid, and sore joints, and foggy thinking.

This time, in this season of my life, coming out of rules and into freedom - examining what I eat, and how I eat it, is fun!  It is pure pleasure to take good, nourishing care of myself, so that I can nurture the other women and children in my life, and be a passionate wife.  (Passion is so much more than the bedroom - though it is all that!  Passion has even more to do with that "vital optimism", a sense of humor, and the ability to take joy.)

I have, for years and years, been fascinated by the fact that we are triune beings, spirit, mind, and body.  All three have to be fed or "renewed", regularly.  I do have to say, it is as important, if not far far more important, to address healthy thinking as it is to address healthy eating.  I also have to say - it is all about grace.  Grace touches every area of a woman's life.  It feeds her spirit, it renews her mind, and removes all fear that wreaks havoc with her body.

I think the Lord is just so abundant and fresh and I think He is health personified.  I love to just breathe Him in.  I love all He has made - flowers and puppies and healthy, healthy food.  When we eat His stuff, as close to the way He made it as we can, I think we do well.

I'll be turning often to Lydia's blog for inspiration.