Grace Notes

It finally happened. Something I’ve thought about long before I ever became a mother. The day my child leaves the nest and goes to college. No, he hasn’t left my home. Just my school. I can’t say I’m sad, happy, scared, or you fill in the blank. I suppose the best word to describe what I’m feeling is amazement. I’m amazed that we’re at this moment. It always seemed so very far into the future all those times I thought about it in the past. And yet, here we are. I am amazed that my young man is all grown up. And he decidedly is. All the other milestones- passing me in height… getting his first job… driving… going to church camp for a whole week… getting braces… first steps… riding without training wheels.  All those milestones did seem significant at the time, and they definitely were. But for some reason, they pale compared to his starting college. This is the first year that his name has not graced the top of my Excel spreadsheet school schedule. I do not know why, but that hit me in the gut to not have his name on my school roster.

Lest you think I am in the very depths of despair, rest assured that is not the case. I am also amazed at God’s goodness in this son’s life. I am amazed that I will now get to see all those years of cultivating, pruning, carefully nourishing his body, mind, soul, and spirit begin to yield a harvest. It is beyond amazing to me that my husband and I brought this boy into this world and get to see him grow and mature and become a wonderful young man. I am amazed at how good it is to have a son. It is incomprehensible to me that women can turn their back on the sacred duty and role of motherhood- but that’s for a different day. I am amazed at his strength, his talent, his love for his parents and his family. We have had some rough times to be sure (very minor compared to what other parents have endured to be sure!), but this son has certainly brought more joy than pain- ten thousand-fold the joy!

I am amazed at the doors that God has opened in my son’s life. He has made a way for him to start college a year early. I am amazed at the hope and anticipation I feel for his future. So while there is a bit of sorrow in seeing this son of mine gone from my homeschool, it is only slight in comparison to the gain I feel. And I only miss him because I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching and training him. Conquering the challenges. Excelling. Discovering. Growing and developing. But I still look forward to having those very same experiences. Only now there won’t be a grade riding on it, and it won’t appear on a transcript! So in some ways, I’ll always be a homeschool mom to my children. I welcome the idea of it. I welcome the future, knowing God always has good in store for His children. Maybe not always easy, but always good! Thank you, sweet Lord, for the blessings you’ve placed in my life and bestowed along my way!

Many, many moons ago, I got locked out of my own dearly beloved blog. (I know… can ya believe that???) I tried and tried to figure out some way to get a password that would work. All to no avail. So with much sadness, I gave up and tried to go blog elsewhere. But folks, it just wasn’t the same. I don’t know why, but it just didn’t jive for me. Fast forward to today when I got an email from homeschoolblogger… I decided to just give it a try since I had heard that things had undergone massive changes. And wonder of wonders, it worked!!! I could not be more thrilled! So friends, I am back in the saddle! YIPPEEEEE!!!!!!!!

My son Mrdarci tagged me, so I’m being a good mommy and playing. Here are my answers:

What is your favorite book of the Bible? Ephesians and Proverbs

What are you most afraid of?    Rats!   

What makes you the maddest?    People who are whiney-heiney and expect everything in life to be easy, fun, always perfect, and just generally cushy.   

What do you think is the worst kind of evil?    Whatever is slapping me in the face at the time…

What would be considered your theme song? Too many to choose from.

If you had to choose a villian to team up with, who would it be?   Tom, as in Tom and Jerry.

Do you think this Tag was creepy?       Creepy may be a bit strong, but definitely dark??

It has recently become apparent that I am speech impaired… But only in some parts of the globe, mind you. I have always known that I cannot roll my R’s. It’s come up mostly when singing. But as long as I slipped in a little bit of a "D" sound, I could fake manageably well. I never saw it as any big deal.

Fast forward to this year when we as a homeschool family commence to learn the Spanish language. With a high schooler who is college-bound, foreign language is a necessary and needful subject. So yesterday we are listening to the CD with the examples of how to pronounce the Spanish alphabet sounds. Suffice it to say that the inability to roll my R’s is a much larger issue when trying to speak Spanish!

We all had a great laugh imagining how it would have gone for me if I’d been born only a few hundred miles south! I would have found myself landing squarely in speech therapy I’m sure. We, with many a chuckle, concluded that Mom has a Mexican Lisp! I don’t know which made them laugh more… the conversation at hand, or my pathetic failures at the Crash-Course for How to Roll Your R’s? Both were quite humorous my children will assure you!

Incidentally, I have never for the life of me understood why the word "lisp" was chosen as a title for that affliction… A person suffering from this malady is in no way, shape, or form able to enunciate the very thing that he/she is diagnosed with! It seems to my way of thinking that "lisp" should have been the absolute last resort as a title for this particular condition.

In thinking through my particular circumstances, my high school son deduced that we should change the title of my apparent difficulties. It should more closely match the predicament that "American lisp" sufferers endure. So in keeping with that premise, I could say that I have a "Rarrrrrr." Make sure and roll those R’s like crazy as you say it! And if I’m trying to say it, it will come out more like "Rdard."

So Mexican Lisp, or Rrarr, or Rdard… Any way you cut it, I have it!!! I guess it’s kind of like the song "It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere." Just imagine it instead as, "You’ve Got a Speech Impediment Somewhere."

Have you noticed I’ve been gone awhile? I have! Unfortunately I haven’t been gone on a whirlwind vacation to the beaches of the Riviera or anything glamorous like that. I have been here in the trenches and I thought I’d give an update of sorts and write out some of the lessons/struggles from living what feels like a life under siege.

If you’ve read my blog from the past months, I have had a few entries that dealt with some of the financial struggles we’ve endured as my husband has been working to get his business off the ground. And you know this is something that we have prayed for God to make His plans and ways for us clear. And honest to goodness, every time we pray that prayer, what comes across our path in relation to his business is to keep hanging in there. So we’ve done that and kept waiting for the struggles to lighten up somehow. And at this point, we are just hanging on by a thread! This has been a real spiritual test for both my husband and me. It is literally a minute by minute struggle to obey the words of Jesus when He tells us not to worry. In fact we have really had this come to the forefront for our whole household as to what exactly "not worrying" looks like. Where is the line between taking the steps the Lord wants us to take- doing our part, but also resting in Him? For the life of me, we just can’t figure it all out! We’ve done everything we can think of to do. We’ve put out resumes- nothing. We’ve cut expenses until there’s nothing more to cut- still drowning. We have prayed and prayed until we are blue in the face. And sadly, it usually goes something like this:
Us: Dear Lord, we know you know our needs. We present our struggles to you. Please help us with this.
       Please let ABC go through/happen. ( Much annotated version)
Then, you guessed it, instead of the ABC scenario, we get the XYZ occurrence, the exact opposite or exactly what we were desperately praying wouldn’t happen!

Needless to say, this has all been very unnerving and made prayer quite daunting at times. However there are some conclusions that I have come to here at the end of my rope.
1) I am resolved to simply praise Him. Whatever happens, it doesn’t change his greatness, power, majesty, goodness, etc. To put it like the movie Facing the Giants says, I’ll praise him when we win, and I’ll praise him when we lose.
2) Even though there are plenty of times that coming to prayer is more than a little difficult, and there are times that I really have to lay my questions before him and pray for him to help me in my unbelief even, I still feel peace from having done that. If for nothing else, prayer has accomplished that.
3) This whole experience has taught me just how precarious life can be. Before, when John was bringing home the healthy paychecks, I always thought myself grateful and I would have said that I realized God was my source. Now? I realize how little I depended on God then. I assumed/knew the check would be in the bank. No prayers needed, right? Wrong! Money is easy come, easy go. None of us knows what tomorrow holds. Yes, we plan and try our best to prepare. But that doesn’t mean that any of us are immune to the unexpected or even catastrophic from happening. A while back I was in Sunday School and the lesson had to do with Proverbs and how that speaks to finances. And it was very hard to sit and not scream! Over and over I heard:
     "I know _______ can happen and catch you unprepared and you can find yourself in trouble. But if you would have only… then that wouldn’t have been a problem."

Yes, that is indeed true and the reason why we should take preparedness very seriously. But we never need to lose sight of the fact that we are finite. Our bank accounts are never limitless. Our abilities are not guaranteed. Our resources can be tapped out because we have limits to what we can do and what we can handle. In short, we are NOT God! Only he is boundless, never toppled, never failing. It’s like we think that by following God’s principles, then that will make us like him. Yes, there is protection in living according to God’s principles, but we will never take on his omnipotence.

Thanks for listening if you’ve made it this far. I feel better just getting a little of this down on "paper" so to speak. I’ve asked for prayer here before, and I ask again. Would you please pray for us whenever God brings us to your mind? We could surely use it. I the mean time, I keep waiting, praising him when I win, and praising him when I lose.

Kim