Homeschool can be confronting. Deeply and jaggedly confronting. When you get married you start to see a bit more clearly all the aspects of your personality that are, well, less than stellar. You work on the rough edges through the flint on flint sharpening that occurs when two humans find themselves in close proximity to one another on the regular. Then you have a child and the flaws become a little more alarming (finish fixing this quick before they’re too big to be ruined!!) and the sanctifying accelerates (so you think). And then, if you choose to homeschool, you quickly see that all the leaps you thought you had made/were making in ridding yourself of the dry dragon skin was just scratching off a few scales. Tiny scales, in fact. This has been one of those eye-opening weeks. I’ve gone to bed more than once simply befuddled. How do I find myself ending so many days feeling like I’m getting nowhere in learning to be patient, gentle, and full of grace?

The obvious answer is that I’m often trying on my own, and I’ll never get anywhere that way. But it’s not so simple as saying, “Okay, God… ready to change!!” God doesn’t poof us into something else or whisk away our flaws because we’re tired of fighting them. I still have to fight them, I just need to find my way to God every time the struggles come rather than just some of the time.

Unlike me, God is patient, gentle, and full of grace. So on weeks that have been rather hard and I feel less than successful as both mother and teacher, God gives me joy and laughter out of those exact roles. Gemma has been doodling a lot a lot during school time. On scrap paper, the chalkboard, old worksheets belonging to her sisters. Anything. And in the last two weeks they’ve all started to look like COVID germs. Is it me?! Am I just apt to see a COVID germ because it’s pervading life right now?? But honestly, her doodles are little and big germies with four eyes and funny mouths. And they have made me laugh every single day in this bumpy school week.

On Monday I grabbed Ray’s math work with a sigh after a particularly drawn out school day. I was in the middle of cooking and it was blazing hot everywhere with no escape. Checking multiplication problems was about the last thing I wanted to do. As I steeled myself for whatever that sheet might look like, my eye was immediately drawn to the doodle of a mouse labelled “mouse” directly in the middle of the page saying the most obvious of things on a math worksheet: “Math!” She is now doodling on all her work, but this was the first, and that happy math mouse brought the kind of laughter that made me forget how tired, hot, and crabby I was feeling.

Finally, last weekend I found a folk album by a woman named Sarah Sparks called “Into the Lantern Waste.” It’s a most stunning collection of songs inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia. Each track is from the perspective of a different character and I decided to introduce the girls to the music by making a game out of it. We listen to two songs during lunch. If one of them can figure out which character the singer is being, we all get chocolate!! It’s truly a win all the way around, but it unexpectedly ignited Willa’s interest and imagination. We finished reading the series aloud to her a few months ago, but she doesn’t remember as much as she longs to in listening to these songs. She’s now reading them on her own, and few things would bring greater joy to my Aslan loving heart.

God is patient. God is gentle. God is full of grace. Perhaps tomorrow with God’s ever present faithful hand I can be those things, too. I do know that tomorrow will include creative, joyful, silly children with a divine ability to spill and splash their joy all over my tendency to take life too seriously.