Thankful Thursday: Yes, I'm Thankful For The Public School

I've decided to devote my Thankful Thursday (which I've not been remembering to post enough, sorry!) to something on my heart. I've pondered and prayed about the emotions this conjured up in me and the Lord has convicted me to deal with it from a grateful heart.

I read this on someones facebook pages as a group description they had joined.

"So-called "public schools" are, in fact, "government schools." "They are operated by the government, using government employees, on property owned and controlled by the government, using government funds. Supporters of this destructive system would object to such candor, of course, since most Americans know that to identify something as a "government institution" is to brand it inefficient at best, destructive at worst. Child abuse is neither always obvious or intentional. The most rampant form of child abuse in this country is not only legal, but committed routinely. It is the act of taking what arguably is, or should be, the most precious things in your life--your children--and placing the responsibility for their education in the hands of the government."

I don't think I took that wrong when I read it to mean that I was exposing my children (or bringing it about myself) to child abuse by having them in public school. This hurt my spirit so much as a fellow member of the body of Christ.

It hurt me not because I care what men think, even Christians because see, I answer to two others above all these. (1) I answer to God who distinctly led us into the public schools all be it shocking to me and crushing to my legalistic presumptions about going public, and (2) I answer to my husband who decided this was best for our family at this time.

God would NEVER lead us into sin, NEVER. God would never lead us into abusing our children. One cannot say that attending a government school is child abuse (and therefore sinful) if they are not willing to say that all governmental institutions are sinful. Is sending your child to a state college sinful? Is it child abuse because it's government?

Is a single mother abusing her children by sending them to school when she has no husband and therefore has to work? If it is not sinful for that situation, then it is not for any family with these options. Though her reasons are desperate and extreme they are a good guideline to tell us if something is sinful or not. The family unit may have it's own less dramatic reasons for being led into the public schools. Sin is always wrong across the board. It is always clear and not altered by motive.

That is all I will say on that. I have a tender spot for this having journeyed through it and I want to be careful to be gracious though my emotions are in tumult at such "Christian" attitudes.

So...I am thankful:

• I am SO thankful for the journey the Lord has us on right now. Every day I keep an open heart and ponder what the next step is. Is it to have them back home? Is it to stay where they are? Is it for one of them to come home? What do you want Lord? I'm willing to do any of those if the Lord leads. I know His way is joyful.


• I am thankful for our little town and how close the school is to home.


• I'm thankful for great teachers, and I'm not just saying that. Each year the Lord has provided wonderful teachers for the kids so far, and guess what? I trust him to do that as long as he wants them there. Now, a bad teacher may not mean that it's not still God's will, it may mean a new challenge for us as a family and for our child. That is why we will seek him every step along the way. He will bless when we do what He wants, not what we want. To obey is better than sacrifice! Isn't it true though that sacrifice fulfills our sense of righteousness though? We feel good that we have given up something for the Lord. That may not be the sacrifice he wants us to make and obeying him is always a sure way to know what He wants.


• I am thankful for how public school has changed our family. We are able to relax more as a family and talk about life and God. Rick and I are able to have time together that we never had. My sanity level is so much better and have learned so much more what it means to trust the Lord with my children. When a homeschool mom teaches, she sacrifices ALL her time for this goal, and that is not easy. When a public school mom sends her kids in the Lord she sacrifices ALL control on what the Lord allows in their hours away. That may sound trite if you are on the homescool end and you may say "oh, that's nothing!" but trust me, it is.


• I am thankful for the branching out into the community that this has allowed us to do. Although being salt and light was not our mission statement, it is, now that we are called, a real joy to see happen. I truly trust that the exposure and challenges we face are preparing my children even now for the exact purposes God has for them in His kingdom. If I were to hold back, I would stand in His way.


• I'm thankful for the homeschooling years we had! They were great! That is until the Lord began to show me that a change was needed. That is not to say that a rough day homeschooling is a sign that you should stop. We have bad days in public school too! I go to the Lord with all of those and wait on Him. No hasty decisions, just waiting on His lead.


• I'm thankful for our freedom as Americans! We have the right to teach at home! Praise the Lord. We have the right to take part in an institution put together by our government! Praise him still. We are not shut out from those places because of our faith and that is freedom! Again I quote something that meant a lot to encourage me a few years ago by a mom blogger "we seem to want to keep God in the schools but take Christian kids out of them". Oh, dear, what sadness. If the Lord takes me back out, I pray he sends others in! Christian kids and parents ARE Christ in the public schools.

I have a heart to encourage other mom's to be open to God's leading. We serve Him before any man or woman. People will create legalistic boundaries, God will break them down. He will send us everywhere, teach us all things, call us out, put us back, use us in every way. He does not expect us to look the same, march the same, or be afraid of those who don't and who need Him. If you are a mom struggling with schooling decisions, I encourage you to pray and then speak to your husband about your concerns either way. Let God be the author of your children's education, not you, and not the government, GOD. HE does all things well.

NOTE: If the above quote is intended to mean only that the government requiring public school for children then the abuse is on our rights to freedom, not to children. It is not abusive to a child to have him in a school, it is an abuse to take away our freedom to have him at home.

"Are You A Cool Mom?"

That's what a fourteen year old girl asked me yesterday and boy has it set me thinking.

When our children are little, they don't care if we are cool, we are the world to them. We are the mender of scrapes and aches, the soother of fevers, and the console of emotions. We are superior to cool. Then your child turns 11, or 12, or 13 and all of a sudden you have to earn your coolness to them. Or at least that is what THEY think. I've thought it out and realized this peer pressure from my own child aught to be put int the category it belongs...immaturity.

Dare I say that in homeschooling, you also can mostly avoid this challenging transition. You control their environment, their exposure to friends, EVERYTHING. But when your kids are in school they go through this phase where they are enchanted by what other people get to do and YOU become the ball and chain. It's CHALLENGING! But you know what! It's real life! Some may face it now, some later on, but definitely the coming Jr. High years are about to be my most challenging ever. If we don't go through it, I'm certain that it will show up in retarded timing later on in their lives. So, I guess I just have to strap my big girl boots on and walk on.

A mom of three nearly grown girls told me once that looking back she wished she had not tried to be her girls friend as much as their mom. I took that to heart and it's helping me here. That is my right, given by God toward them. I'm serious here! Do you think that I will go through the pain of birthing you (of which you will only know later on in life), the JOY of wiping your slimy bottom for a few years only to transition to cleaning up your pee mess on the floor now and then, the glorious job of patiently teaching you you are NOT the center of your own universe, the delight of loving you at every turn whether you deserved it or not, to be turned down at 11 because I have not EARNED you coolness standard? Uhhhh, I DON'T THINK SO!

So I've been sorting out in my head this anomaly of "coolness". What does it really mean to "be cool". Does it not at this age really mean I will let you do what ever you want, when you want, and on top of that like a little cherry on a sundae, I'll let you do whatever your friends want to do as well. Wow, it seems to me I've just defined one thing:

A REALLY BAD MOM!

When this gal asked me this last night, Victoria answered for me with a gesture of her thumb not up or down but in the middle and made a "ehhhhh" sound. In other words, I wasn't really. I have to admit, it hurt my feelings at first. So much so that I went home to sulk about it. Yes, I felt really immature when I did but you wait till YOU get there (unless you avoid this stage alltogether) and then talk to me about the way I felt! :) Then the Lord allowed something to happen to get me back on track and realize what my daughter really needed....GUIDANCE.

There is a boy in Victoria's class who has been on my heart since we put them into public school. He comes from a poor home with parents that are somewhat anarchist. They are also racists and being at a school full of Hispanics, that is not a great thing. His older brother is in the "community school" with it's own little two modular campus gated in at the back corner of the school property. He has been in so much trouble for being in fights with Hispanics. Louis however, the one in Victoria's class, is still a great kid. He has been effected by the things he is taught at home but he does not act out at anyone yet like his older brother. The kids have ostracized him and say he stinks or is dirty. Truthfully, he is a very loving kid, and trying hard to do well in school despite his lack of support at home from parents that don't agree with the requirement of the government that your kid be schooled at all.

I stood the other morning with the 6th grade class waiting for Victoria's teacher to get to the classroom to let them in. The kids line up in two lines but I noticed that one line was very long and one very short. I asked the kids why that was and they said (right where he could hear mind you) that it was because no one wanted to stand next to Louis. That crushed me. Children can be SO awful! I did not keep my tongue. I told them "well, that is just ridiculous!" and I went to stand by him and gave him a little side hug. He was very quiet. The whole class was watching me and hearing what I said and I wanted them to. I know he goes through this all the time. I happened to look up at my daughter who was smiling proudly at me. I knew she had felt bad for Louis for a long time and tries to be the one to be nice to him when she gets the opportunity. Her heart is convicted that the way he is treated is wrong.

But oh, the price we will pay for coolness......

This same 14 year old mentioned above was writing a note back and forth to Victoria last night that I happened to get my hands on though my daughter does not know it yet. She mentioned something she had to do this weekend that she did not like to which my daughters response was:

"Well, at least you don't have to sit by Louis (last name)"

The gal went on to respond that he was ugly, and his brother was a racist and all he had gotten in trouble for.

I was furious.

I would have pulled my daughter out of her cozy bed of reading last night when I finally discovered this and had a good talking to but she had fallen asleep. I discussed it with my husband and had time instead to process all this and I'm so thankful for that. God's good to slow me down.

My daughter looks up to this 14 year old and she knew she had a one way ticket to "coolness" by saying this derogatory statement about Louis. She took it. She cashed it in, and it worked. I KNOW this is not what she really thinks about Louis or how to treat him, but she was willing to trade in her character for cool.

And THAT is what it really comes down to isn't it!? Trading our character in for "cool". Is it worth the price we pay? Never.

So, you can imagine, my husband and I have a very teachable moment to grasp with our daughter this evening but I came here to share what it taught me.

"Coolness" is a versatile thing. It is defined by the one who defines it. There is no set in stone definition of cool. There is what one person thinks is cool, what one group, what one society, what one decade thinks. It forever changes. We have to be careful how we define it and the fact is, it will look a little different to all of us but there is one certainty....

God defines what's cool with Him, and what's not. That is the one thing that does not change.

This lesson is just rich with layers of life lessons for my child. She may never hear the end of it:)

For me, I had to remember whether I was defining "cool mom" from the perspective of an 11 or 14 year old, or from God's perspective. A really bad mom is not cool, but kids this age don't have the maturity to see that so we have to check ourselves by a different definition and realize the depravity of theirs. I was grateful for this reality check as to how fickle my immature child and this gal really are still. They need to be guided, they need to be guarded, and they need to be told "no" often. They need to be held back, away and from so many things and that is not going to look "cool" to them.

I do believe that what they need to see is a mom that when their maturity catches up with them, they will look back and see clearly. Being a mom they would think "cool" now, would later look flippant, unconcerned, and week to them later on.

My conclusion? If my child ALWAYS thought I was cool, I'd be in trouble. If she NEVER thought I was cool, that would be sad (because some of their definitions of "cool" are valid). My daughter gave me an in-the-middle "ehhh", and I realized that's exactly where I should be!

SO, that's cool with me.

*NOTE*

A dear friend of mine who homeschools has enlightened me. She was not able to get comments to work but wanted to say that she had the same problem at this age with her kids and their social homeschool group. Also, that there were social problems of unkindness there as well.

I thought that was important to add here. So, the desire for coolness must transcend schooling options. :)

I have since fixed the controls on the comment so that anyone can comment even without a google account. FYI

Just Waz Up And Some Muscle Building

I have had so little time for blogging lately. Since school has started my life is so structured which is great but I don't have more than just five minutes now and then to update my facebook status and that's it. I hear some people chat how they never could have time for facebook but if you just check in with people by reading updates, and you put your own, it is the quickest way I know of connecting. It's the blogging that has taken a back seat in my life for now. It's hard too because I have so many blogs go through my head.
So, you would think that a mom with three kids in school would have so much time on her hands for her hobbies and what not eh? Nope. No matter what situation, a mom's work is never done and I am never bored. Keeping the house ready for the next thing once the family is home keeps me hopping every moment. On top of that I'm taking some big time to exercise this fall and once I do that a big chunk of my time for the house is even gone. It's wroth it though and I've needed to get myself back on track from years of putting other things first. It's a great benefit to my family and husband for me to drop a few.
I've not had time for a Thankful Thursday this week but I have to say I've been so thankful for some heavy teachable moments with my children. It would seem that having them out there in school is just a different approach to preparing them for life. When we had them at home we prepared them hypothetically and now we do it experientially. The thing with the hypothetical was that I was not creative enough to think of all the hypotheticals and they were not real enough to demand being teachable moments. Now, very interesting things happen that give us wonderful springboards of conversation. How is the right way to deal with this? What would bring glory to God? What do you do when you are tempted to do what your friends are doing? Do you obey friends or God? Are you patient when being wrongly judged? Do you kindly learn to speak up for yourself? Here were some situations this last week or two:

-Victoria has a friend who comes up and acts like she is going to get something out of her hair and instead proceeds to just yank a bit of her hair out. This girl is a quiet aggressive and has shown some signs of being jealous of Victoria for some reason. Her ways are manipulative and unexpectedly insulting. Victoria had to learn to be forgiving but to speak up when someone does something like that and not just take it quietly.

-Caedmon got caught up in a 1st grade tease of a little boy who all the other boys were saying "wore his sisters underwear". We discussed how something being funny does not make it okay. How the one being teased will possibly even laugh but that does not mean they like it but rather that they are covering their shame and embarrassment with laughter. How God convicts us in the middle of these times as to what is right. Caedmon did feel that convicting but decided that since the boy was not saying he didn't mind that it was okay. We talked about the good meter to use of thinking how we would feel if such things were said about us and to always trust the conviction of the Holy Spririt of God.

-Caedmon did a fake stutter back to a little boy at school who stutters. This one was hard for me. It actually made me tear up to know he had done that. Having had a brother who was disabled and standing up for him when he was teased made this a sore spot for me. I needed a moment before we could even talk. We discussed how some children have to be even more brave than he ever will have to be to say what they want to say and always be teased for not being able to speak clearly. How blessed he is to be able to communicate well and how he can be an encourager to the child who struggles instead of making him shammed through mocking.

-Victoria makes a project in science and turns to her supposed friend to ask what she thinks and her friend replies "it looks like crap!". This friend was the one girl who professed to be a Christian and who Victoria had high hopes of being a good pal for her in school but the girl flips between wanting to be cool and popular and wanting to be a faithful friend. She is one of those what I use to call "light switch friends". I seemed to gravitate to girls who did that to me. They are your friend when THEY want to be but when it's inconvenient or uncool they want nothing to do with you. You are kind of their fall back plan. It's a painful thing to go through and she has weathered it very well. Thankfully there is a new girl in her class who has been a cheerful companion to her this year and who has also been troubled by some of the same girls Victoria has so they can relate on that level. Victoria is learning to love her friends even when they are sometimes unkind. The group that has been rough for her are the three girls we usually take to Awana so she has had to stay dedicated to taking them there with her to hear about the Lord even though she has been badly treated by them many times at school.

Those were just the ones off the top of my head.
I marvel sometimes what God must have in mind for my children. Knowing that he has called them to this place tells me that he has a specific set of preparation for them unlike what I could give them by keeping them home. He is building their armor and sharpening their defences as well as their convictions to bring Him glory through all things. I feel honored and challenged to give them what they need at every barrier they face. To seize those teachable moments even when they come fast and plenty! I definitely think you can prepare a child at home for the world and I definitely think you can prepare them from home while they are facing it. There are unique outcomes for both that God will use in their lives. Where we are fits us. It's where the rubber meets the road and for me that's where I can teach the best. Give me the situation Lord and I'll shine your light on it. Throw me one and challenge me to catch it. There is no time for hit and miss training when your kids are in school now days. You have to talk a lot and connect on everything. You have to be all ears. They are out there, in the real world with real people facing real issues. We are so much better at this part with our kids than the academics and I thrill at the challenge. This is why I love working hard on the home all day as well. That way, if we need to sit and talk at the dinner table longer about something, or just congregate in the living room for the evening to discuss life, we can.
I have no fear of what will come next. I look forward to it. There is always sufficient truth in God's treasure house of wisdom to give them. It is a privilege to hold their hands through it until someday we let go and they walk with Him alone through this world. As He leads and we walk through some places I may have chosen to shelter them from, I am thankful that He knows better how to build the foundation of their lives. Other wise I may have opened their cocoon for them thereby disallowing the full development of their spiritual muscles and when they hit the freedom of their transformed lives they would fall in weakness completely unable to survive.
As I work lately to build back my own physical muscles I think of God's goodness to stretch and build my children. Our job is to feed them well from truth and care for them between times so they are stronger and stronger each time resistance or challenge comes their way.

A Parent's Quandry on Nakedness

Okay here is a parenting quandary for you. The kids laugh, giggle, and "ew, gross!" at the cute little naked children fountain at my employer/friend's house. I tell them it's not gross because it's art. Cute little naked children is art! Then, Caedmon is drawing at home and draws a man naked from the back (way too well I might add) in the shower. I ask him not to draw that because it's inappropriate. He just thinks it's funny but obeys and moves on to cartoon characters in more decent dispositions.

Then, today it dawns on me. Isn't this a mixed message? It's a comical one, but one just the same. How can I tell them that naked statues are not gross because they are art and God made the human body beautiful and then not let them draw naked figures?

I DON'T KNOW! Some smarter parent than I will have to solve this one I guess. Logically it would seem bad to keep them from drawing what I'm referring to as art!

I told him when we walked away from the fountain that he needed to go to a good art museum and then as we walk to the car it also occurs to me that that may not be the best feeding of his imagination right now. I might get really challenged with some interesting "mommy look what I drew!" moments. Then of course there is always the next comment....

"I'm going to take this to show my teacher!"

HELP!

The Real World...Gotta Love It

Victoria made dinner last night as it was kids cook night and the other two have not been in the best of health. She chose to make sloppy joes, mashed potatoes, and salad. She also picked an easy dessert. She did really well on the cooking.
The funny part to me was the reality of the job itself. I was sick in bed as of about three in the afternoon. I had pushed myself to make bread since we were out and then a fever started and I told the kids I had to lay down.
I told her she would have to clear the counter to have room to cook. She loaded the dishwasher which she has never done before. She usually puts away and Emma unloads. She came in to ask me which way the bowls went in the washer. She could not find the sponge to wipe the counter off. I suggested looking in the sink amongst the remaining dirty dishes. She was upset she could not find it. I told her it had to be in the kitchen somewhere. Once the counter was clear she came in and was freaked because the sinks were still full of dirty dishes and she needed a spot to wash the potatoes. I told her she would have to empty one side onto the counter. "But I just cleaned it off" she said. I smiled and told her that was called shuffling and you had to do that sometimes to make things work.
She would need pot to cook the potatoes. There were no pots she said. Well, I said to look again, it had to be somewhere. She came in with it and said "It's dirty!" with a frustrated look on her face. Well, when you need a certain pot, and you find it dirty, you have to wash it, I told her.
It started to get comical, every bend there was an obstacle she had to work through and no one was in there to hold her hand or do for her. I realized quite strongly that she needs to do this more and more. Emma is the type who plows through obstacles so fast you have to look out for what she might do to get the job done, and Victoria finds every road block amazingly surprising and impossible to move beyond. The next few years of teaching them to cook should be fun!
In the end, she did great. She gained momentum as she went along and I think some confidence as well. She did not want to put the chopped onion in the recipe because she did not like onions and it was a lot of work anyway. I insisted on the onion and reminded her they taste different when in the recipe than when you just eat them.:)
She made a lovely little chocolate pie that was so easy for kids to make. I think I'll post it on DC soon.
Now, I get to be the big girl and face the obstacles. Tons of more dishes in the kitchen waiting for me. I think I'll employ some more child laborers.:)