Just as I was finally able to fully embrace homeschooling, I found myself pregnant with our 4th baby. This baby is such an incredible blessing, because my husband never really wanted to have the third that came before this one.It isn't that he doesn't love the BumbleTot madly; it's just that she happened out of the blue, and he went along with it ( turns out she is his little girl doppelganger).
I grew up wanting a house full of children. My dad still likes to tease me hat when I was ten years old, I said I wanted 12; what he doesn't realize is that I still would. I think it was something about the larger than average families that I saw; from the outside, I saw so much love, so much compassion, and so much companionship between the people in those families. even as a child, I wanted whatever that was. Now I realize that it was Christ, not a house full of children. However, by the time Mr. SoulFull and I were married, I was down to six as an acceptable number. he married me knowing how much I wanted and loved children. I don't think he gave it much thought,but he feels the pressure of caring for a family now. God and I spent a lot of time talking about content hearts and respecting the authority of our husband's.
Fast forward, the week that my long-awaited student teaching begins....I find out that I am pregnant. BUT even more unexpected and wonderful....my husband's response isn't "oh no" but "Praise God, I have been praying for this." Little did I know that while God was working on me to have a content heart, he was working on my husband's attitude towards children. Praise God.
That said, we are still dealing with our extended family's/the world's attitudes toward children, and while I know I shouldn't, I feel the need to constantly justify our "decision" to have this baby. It doesn't help that this is the first pregnancy where I have been anything but perfectly healthy (save extreme all day sickness with Boy and BumbleTot). I am afraid to take it easy, I am afraid to ask for help, because I feel that if I acknowledge that this pregnancy is hard on me, it will be like acknowledging that they are all right- I have no business having a fourth baby ( or any subsequent babies I would love to be blessed with).
So instead, just as I am able to jump fully into homeschooling, I feel like a homeschooling failure pretty much every day. As hard as I try, I cannot get up early enough to be as prepared for the day as I would like,and I end up falling asleep during their rest time instead of getting my own work done.
While I was a the public school, albeit one filled with small town community and Christian teachers, God deepened my convictions that it is not the place for my children to be and not the place that can provide the education that they need- even by their own standards. Yet, I find myself still slipping into their paradigms. Still thinking that I have to do things their way in order for it to be good enough. I am so grateful for the blog posts shared by women like Kimberley @ Raising Olives for the reminder that that my homeschooling doesn't need to look like public school in the house. They will be okay...more than okay; they are learning about living by faith and by the only opinion that matters at all- God's. I wish someone had taught me that lesson so early in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment