Browsed by
Tag: proverbs 3

While Playing Sodoku

While Playing Sodoku

Comments 0 Comment

I had forgotten I drafted this post. Maybe it’s been a month. Then I wrote another because this thought lingers.  So, though similar to my very last post, here is another attempt, a continuing exploration.

…

I’m still having trouble saying the word. I say it slowly, syllable by syllable. So-do-ku. It’s been years since the puzzles entered my life. Though I’ve never been an avid player, I’ve completed enough to know what they are. I should know how to say the word, but uncertainty lingers.

Nine numbers in a row. Nine numbers in a square. Nine numbers in a column. Nine large squares total.

A new phone arrived for me the other day, and today it snowed. While I love watching the snow, my Florida-self longs for warmth and sunshine. Two kids went outside to play in the white wonderland, and I stayed inside with the oldest. I downloaded Sodoku on my new, faster phone and I explained the game. For forty-five minutes he sat, and I snuggled next to him under a blanket watching his brain and his fingers work out the puzzle.

Homeschooling begs for material things, and though we have plenty around our house, I am caught with one sentence which says, lean not on your own understanding. 

My understanding is that of humanity. It’s of America. It’s of the culture which loves to show off possessions. So we buy books and we buy lesson plans and we buy puzzles. We stand in front of children and talk, and we call that school.

Yet school is not the goal here, but education. Puzzles are great brain exercises, but another puzzle hangs from the ceiling of my path.

How does one teach? How does one encourage? How does one live the life of a mother and know that what they’re doing is right?

This is a house of peace. I say to my children. Choose kindness. I say. Choose to forgive. Stop fighting. Stop yelling. Stop. Stop. Stop. 

It can’t all be “stop” though. Sometimes, mustn’t we say “go”? Yet when I give freedoms, my children take advantage. They slip up. They spill the eggs on the floor and they walk to the neighbor’s house without invitation or permission.

Sodoku shows every mistake. It begs for trying. It boasts an eraser. Nine numbers over and over. Nine times nine squares. The same numbers shown in different patterns. Different answers for every new game.

Every day we have the same numbers. We have beds and lightbulbs. We have a kitchen holding breakfast. We have a room with homeschooling supplies, windows which let the sun shine brightly, a small library. We have parents and children and enough understanding to distract us from everything real.

We have the ability to realize that what is real is actually not. That looking beyond our visual reality allows us to make the same mistakes, to learn, to rearrange, to fight and forgive and move on.

Not school, but education. Not things, but lessons. Not a bunch of words, but The Word come to life. Can that be our understanding?

…

Sodoku. Homeschool.
Mother. Wife.
What is true and what is right?
Day by day, we wake and try.

 

To Lean

To Lean

Comments 0 Comment

Homeschooling is so strange. And as I write that sentence, I am caught with what may look like simple self-doubt. Surely, there is plenty of that in life without taking on the task of homeschool, and homeschool adds its own level of questioning.

Because I homeschool, I am not only mother but teacher. Thankfully, my children are mostly willing and my husband is always helpful and encouraging. My children are learning to not only choose obedience but to love the learning itself. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t do a ton of formal schooling. My children have lessons to accomplish, writing books to complete, but sometimes we do none of that and just play games (which lend their own teaching-blessing to the home school. I could be convinced that Scrabble is all you need for the first several years of schooling.)

Sometimes, the sun is just too bright and lovely so we spend our day outside. Sometimes, I am pregnant and too tired to make anyone do anything so we watch a movie and call it a day. Sometimes, I am tired of the routine and need to throw things off course, so we spend a day at the zoo or make too many muffins.

That is the lovely thing about homeschool, though. My only child who is actually school age is motivated on his own to practice mathematics and to read anything he’s handed. He is supposedly learning ahead of the average child his age (as far as the school system is concerned) so taking a day off here and there is no big deal. Even if we weren’t ahead, I have to remember why we homeschool. The main reason is not to create over-educated children but to allow for life to be the teacher.

What am I trying to say here, though? Mostly, I am trying to figure out what I’m doing. I’m trying to find a way. If you homeschool, too, perhaps you know what I’m talking about. I’m doing something that’s never been done, but yet this is something that’s been done millions of times throughout history.

Today, there are so many resources and for that I am grateful. Still, when I look at my home and my children it sometimes seems there are no resources good enough. Our family is new to this world, and no one can tell us what is absolutely right.

Only one can. Only one has.

It is this verse that keeps ringing in my mind when I think about our homeschool: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6. It’s one that I’ve read and heard over and over throughout my life, and yet it has a tremendous meaning for my home right now.

I have so little understanding that it’s hard for me to even answer what might be in my head. But trust in the LORD. Submit to him. He will make the path straight. The path of homeschool. The path of motherhood. The path of writing. The path of being a wife. It’s all crooked in this world, but the straight path can be made.