The hardest part

The Simple Homeschool blog has done a series featuring the  hardest part of our homeschool years and invited others to participate.  We are late getting started this morning...because I took the time to write this....

When I sat down to type out this post I considered what to share, after all there are several things that make our days take a tumble.  A special needs child that has several chronic medical conditions that threaten to overwhelm our days constantly, seemingly with no rhyme or reason to what makes them flare up, or my lack of organization that threatens to derail our days one by one by one until when I glance back it looks like a crazy person ran through with a marker scribbling on my planner coupled with the fact that I cannot find the books when I need them and I waste precious moments scrambling around trying to hunt them down. Or that I have a teenager.  Enough said.

But really when I stop to examine what is the hardest part of our homeschool year I realize it is fear.  My fear.  I worry too much about what others think.  I compare our days and schedules to other moms and cringe.  I sit up in the middle of the night consumed with 'what if' thinking.  What if I am not enough for my kids, what if I am not teaching them enough, reading the right books, what if I should have chosen book _________ instead of book __________?  When we are out during the school day I worry about the comments from other people, when we are having hard days I worry that we are staying in too much and my kids will be irreversibly damaged.  What if we are moving too slow and we won't get 'it' all done by the time that the books say we should?  What if our neighbor across the street, or my father in law, or my husband's family or my sisters or friends or mom think I am too dumb to do this?  What if my kids can't answer one of the questions lobbed at them from complete strangers or the dental hygienist or the librarian?  On and on and on it goes.  By the end of each week I am jumbled mess of nerves.  

I believe in God, I love Him, love the Bible and regard it as truth, as essential as oxygen.  I believe Him when He says we aren't supposed to worry.  That He's bigger than anything, able to conquer any obstacle.  But I also know sometimes He chooses not to.  And that's where my central fear lies.  Sometimes the days are hard and He doesn't ride in to save it, sometimes I fail and blow it BIG time and He lets me.  Sometimes people say mean things and it hurts.  Sometimes I should have chosen the other book.  

But this year, this year will be hard because I feel like God has called me to face my fears and I also believe He has called me to shed them like the stubborn ten pounds from last year.  

In my quest to conquer this fear I read what I believe is the best homeschool book I have ever read a few weeks ago called Teaching From Rest.  One question the author asked arrested me in my chair. 

 'Whose well done are you working for anyway?'  

The answer I want to give at the end of each day is His and His alone.