The Discipline of Waiting

Advent. It means 'coming'. Something, or rather someone, amazing is coming and we are waiting expectantly.. ..excitedly.. ...impatiently.. ...thoughtfully.. ...reflectively.


We usually think of waiting in terms of waiting for something to happen or to start. My kids are getting very excited about Christmas and have been counting down the days. They are waiting for a magical day to arrive. 





 

To be honest, my waiting experience is more to do with waiting for a home. Waiting to be settled somewhere at last after 10 months of living surrounded by boxes. Waiting to be able to put my own motherly, feminine touch on a place that we can finally call 'ours'. Last week we had to move again.....for the 26th time since we've been married. And I'm tired. We have another move scheduled for the end of January. And so we keep on waiting..... waiting for some bank to agree to lend us the money we need....waiting for that perfect, affordable house to appear on the market.






But waiting can also be about waiting for something to stop, to be over. Something unpleasant, difficult, stressful, painful. I know it's very minor compared to what many others are going through, but I'm still waiting to stop feeling sick! I'm 25 weeks through this current pregnancy, and the sickness has never gone on for so long. I know the end is in sight, I know it will stop eventually, but, again, I'm tired. Tired of waiting to feel 'normal' again.



Waiting. It's part of the Christian walk. The Bible tells us:

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27v14)

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. (Psalm 37v7)

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. (Psalm 5v3)

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! (Isaiah 30v18)

Interestingly, when I looked up the instances of the word 'wait' in the New Testament, they were almost all about waiting for Jesus to return, waiting for heaven and for eternal life. Perhaps it's a symptom of our modern, consumer culture that we find ourselves waiting for 'things' rather than for a person. Like the child who is waiting for her Christmas presents rather than the celebration of God's greatest gift - His Son.

God is not slow to act. His timing is perfect. Our job is to trust Him and to be patient. In the Bible, Sarah ran out of patience and gave Hagar to Abraham so as to preempt God's promise of a son. Saul ran out of patience waiting for Samuel at Gilgal and went ahead and sacrificed anyway. In both cases the results were disastrous.

No, the lesson of Advent is that we are to wait....patiently, expectantly, trustfully. And we are to make sure that, even though we can enjoy and thank God for the material comforts around us, our eyes are still fixed on Jesus as we celebrate His first coming and look forward to His second coming.







Merry Christmas to you all!






Abide in Him!

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Photo credits: www.freedigitalphotos.net /Gualberto107, Ian Kahn, Stuart Miles

A Homeschooling Mother's Experience of Mainstream School

When we returned to the UK in June of this year after 11 years in Russia, we faced a number of cultural adjustments. For example, on my first few visits to the supermarket I was completely overwhelmed by all the choice available. When driving, an oncoming vehicle flashing their lights meant 'come on through, I'll wait for you' as opposed to 'watch out, I'm coming through at some speed'. And it took us a while to get used to dogs who lived in people's homes and not in a kennel out in the front yard.

However, one of the greatest cultural adjustments was sending our two eldest daughters off to the local primary school after having homeschooled them up to this point. Here are some of the things we had to get used to:

• Mornings now involve a lot more shouting and cajouling as we try to get the girls dressed in their uniforms complete with packed lunches, book bags and gym kit, and out of the door in time for the 8.45am school bell.

• I've gone from knowing in great detail exactly what my girls are learning and how they're doing academically, to having to bombard them with loads of questions just to establish whether or not they did in fact have a maths lesson that day (let alone what they actually learnt in it).

• The amount of paperwork work that comes home, in the form of letters to parents, could stock a small-sized rainforest.

• The Parents Association are absolute pros when it comes to eeking out extra money from you, whether it's that school disco that everyone is going to, or the school photo that you just have to buy. At one point I found myself making chocolate cupcakes for a bake sale (my child surely couldn't be the only one without a contribution the next morning) which I then felt I had to buy back at 50p a plate the next day to show my support!

• Everything now needs a name label on it. For a recent school trip I was up late the night before labelling sheets, socks, a soap box and even the toothpaste! My parents knew what they were doing when they gave my brother and me the same initial!

These are just a few of the funnier adjustments we've had to make. I'll talk another time about some of the more serious negatives I've encountered as well as some of the positives we've experienced.

Qu: If you've been in a similar situation, what are some of the more humorous observations you've made?

Abide in Him!



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Hi - I'm Back!

Hi everyone!

It's been a bit quiet on Grace To Abide for the last few months. Just to recap:

• in June we had to leave Russia, where we'd been living for the past 11 years, and move back to our 'home' country of the UK

• the summer was spent travelling around temporary accommodation and living out of suitcases

• at the end of July I found out that I was pregnant again, and experienced the worst 'morning' sickness I've had with any of my pregnancies, which basically wiped me out for several weeks.

So here we are in more stable, rented accommodation in my husband's home town. I'm still feeling nauseous at 21 weeks, but it's definitely getting better. My eldest two children are in a local primary school this year, so I'll have lots to say about how this homeschooling-at-heart-mama is dealing with that, as well as the ups and downs of being first-time buyers on the property market, and of course the culture shock that we're still dealing with.

I hope to see you here at Grace to Abide more regularly from now on :-)

Abide in Him!




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Preparing My Homeschooler for Mainstream School.

Last week Sophie (8) and Charis (6) had a tour around their respective new schools, which they’ll be starting in September. I think I was more nervous and apprehensive than they were! I’m a homeschooler at heart, but for various reasons it seemed the right thing to do to put the girls into mainstream school during this year of transition. However, I can’t get rid of this anxious concern of "Will they measure up OK? Have I done a good job or will they be way behind their peers? Have I been a good advert for the homeschooling cause?"

I’m sure I’ll be writing a lot on this general topic over the coming few months,

but in this post I’d like to focus in on the concern I have about their writing skills, and by that I mean their ability to formulate their thoughts into written words and write in sentences, not the way they form their letters.

You see, up to now we’ve been very happily following a homeschooling curriculum, called Ambleside Online, which is based on Charlotte Mason’s methods of education. When I think about my girls going into mainstream school, I can foresee two potential areas of where the school might have a different approach to the one my girls have been used to: 1) writing ‘creatively’ and 2) spelling.

Creative Writing

In the Ambleside Online curriculum, children start with oral narration (telling back verbally what they’ve heard or seen), and it’s not until they’re about ten years old that they begin written narration. The expectation is that this should lead quickly to ‘creative writing’. However, Charlotte Mason didn’t require the children to come up with too much ‘original’ work at an early age. It was mostly dictations or narrations from what had been read or observed. Before the age of ten children practise their writing by doing daily copywork exercises.

“They should narrate in the first place and they will compose, later, readily enough, but they should not be taught 'composition.'” Vol 1 of Home Education, pg 247

Worried that Sophie, in particular, would flounder when asked to write something original in her exercise book during a lesson at school, I decided to encourage her to keep a little diary of her exploits over the summer. We’ve already missed a few days, but I’m hoping that by practising this a few times a week she’ll gain a little more confidence in writing down her thoughts rather than just copying a text in front of her. Diary-keeping, of course, is a form of written narration since she is recounting what she did and saw.

Spelling

I don’t yet know what the school policy is in regard to spelling, but I suspect that a teacher in charge of 30 pupils won’t have time to correct each spelling mistake the moment it occurs. Charlotte Mason didn’t like the child to get used to seeing a word misspelled, and the teacher/parent was supposed to erase the word as soon as possible before bad spelling habits were lodged in the child’s mind:

“The teacher's business to prevent false spelling, and, if an error has been made, to hide it away, as it were, so that the impression may not become fixed...”

Charlotte didn’t advocate writing out a word 10 times from a spelling list. Instead, she wanted the child to focus on the written word in front of them until they thought they could ‘see’ it in their mind’s eye. Then cover up the word and get them to spell it out orally, then perhaps write it out once.

“Once the eye sees a misspelt word, that image remains; and if there is also the image of the word rightly spelt, we are perplexed as to which is which...”

Up to now, in our homeschool, when the girls have needed to write, for example, a thank you letter back to their grandparents, I’ve always dictated or written out clearly what they were going to write and then got them to copy (like doing copywork). I didn’t make my child ‘guess’. The only times I’ve turned a blind eye to misspelled letters is when the girls have written something on their own initiative outside of ‘school’ and presented it to me, for example a card or a comment on a picture. In those situations I’ve felt it more important not to quash their enthusiasm. If they’ve written something longer, for example Charis loves to write emails to people, then I might point out one or two main spelling issues just to make the letter a bit more understandable to the person who would be reading it, but I let the rest go. But generally, their habit is always to check with me first a word they’re not sure about rather than just guessing and trying to write it phonetically, which we all know doesn't work too well in English!

I don’t know if this habit will hold them back in mainstream school, and whether or not it will be a problem. I suspect they will write more slowly and be more unsure about their writing than their peers. I wonder too how the different approach to spelling will work. I hope to continue using the art of 'visualisation' when we receive those spelling lists from their class teacher.



Supporting From Home

Of course, there are many other things I can continue to do with my girls, despite no longer homeschooling ‘full-time’, and one of those is to keep on reading quality books to them that challenge and inspire them. I’ll leave you with an appropriate comment on this from Charlotte Mason herself which I really love:

"Writing, of course, comes from reading, and nobody can write well who does not read much."

Qu: Has your homeschooled child spent some time in a mainstream school? I'd love to hear your thoughts about the particular challenges you faced and how you overcame them.

Abide in Him!



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(Apologies that I was not able to find the exact references for several of the above quotes.)

Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net / stockimages 


Grace to Abide will be taking a few weeks off over the summer, but we'll be back soon!

10 Things I'll Miss About Russia - Part 2

This is the second part of my series about things I'll miss about Russia now that we're no longer able live there. If you missed Part 1 you can find it here. In Part 1 I started listing my choices in reverse order, 10 to 6. So now, let's kick off with number 5.....

5)      The Child-Focussed Nature of the Local Culture

I remember returning to England once when Sophie was still very small, and wondering ‘Why aren’t people cooing over my baby and wanting to hold her? Can’t they see how beautiful she is?’ I’d got used to living in a culture where it’s totally fine for strangers to want to interact with your children; for waitresses at cafes to whisk them off into the kitchen so that you can eat your meal in peace, and for sometimes quite random people at church offering to hold your baby so that you can concentrate on the service. It seemed to me that all babushkas had a supply of sweets stashed away in their pockets, ready to be whipped out whenever a small child appeared within 5m of them (although realising your toddler has chocolate smeared all over his face just when the church service is about to start was not always totally appreciated by the parents involved!), and all strangers, men and women, regardless of age, saw it as their duty to inform any poor, distracted mother when her child was showing any bare skin, especially around the ears, during the winter months. Whereas in England people in supermarkets can sometimes look annoyed that you’ve brought your toddlers there to disrupt their peaceful shopping experience, in Russia they would smile at them, offer them sweets and praise them for being such good helpers. I’ll miss being in a place where children are genuinely loved and valued by the whole community. Not that they're not loved and valued in England, but it was more tangible and obvious in Russia. Now we'll have to teach our children that it's no longer acceptable to accept sweets from strangers - if we'd taught them that in Russia, we would have offended a lot of people!

4)      Experiencing Different Cultures

Living in a culture that’s not your own is difficult, but incredibly enriching. I feel so blessed to have had this opportunity to live in a place where very few foreigners have ever lived, to learn about traditions that are so different to my own, and to have my eyes opened further to the beautiful diversity of culture, people and language that exists in God’s world. Some cultural habits will be hard to shake off, like wanting to take your shoes off when you enter a house, or wanting to 'bob' up out of your seat when somebody sneezes. Other cultural habits we hope we won't shake off, such as the respect shown to elders and the generosity and hospitality shown to guests. It now seems natural to us to want to take a gift whenever we are invited somewhere, and to want to give away toys to the children who come to visit us.

3)      The Weather

OK, so I’m British, and ‘the Weather’ has to be somewhere up there in my top three! Last year we were back in England for six months, just in time to hit the wettest spring/summer on record (going back 100 years!) It seems like the national dress has now become waterproof jackets and wellies. When we returned to Russia in August (I need to point out that we lived down in the south of the country) we experienced more sunshine in one month than we’d had in the whole six months in England! We’re going to really miss the heat, the sunshine and the clear, blue skies! We’re going to miss not having to think about taking a sweater and an umbrella with you everywhere you go. We’re going to miss all those summer evenings of eating outside in our garden, and our kids being able to splash in the paddling pool all summer long.

2)      The Ex-pat Community

Living in an often difficult cross-cultural environment understandably brought all of the like-minded Westerners together in a special way over the years. It was such a privilege to be a part of this amazing group of people, all doing amazing things, and we benefited so much from their practical help, emotional support and spiritual encouragement over the years. We know it’ll be hard to find such a group of people back in our ‘home’ country.

1)      Local Friends

We found the people in our part of Russia to be incredibly warm, friendly and hospitable. In fact, many of them are generous beyond what they can really afford, and I’ve learned so much from them about hospitality over the years. With some particular local friends we have fond memories going back ten years, and it was very difficult to have to say goodbye and possibly never see them again. We’ll particularly miss our local church, where we were so blessed by the fellowship and the worship. However, my heart bleeds most for my children. For me, I know that if I have the opportunity to visit my friends in two or three years time then they won't have changed that much, but for the children it feels like their whole childhood experience up to now has come to an end and will never be regained. They were so blessed to have wonderful friends living right next door, with whom they played almost every day, and they had lovely, local friends in their Sunday school group at church too. I know they'll make new friends here in England, but I still can't stop the tears coming to my eyes when I look at photos of the friends they left behind in Russia.

Qu: Have you moved a long distance away and had to leave close friends behind? How did you help your children work through their loss and start building new relationships? I'd love to hear your thoughts.


Abide in Him!

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10 Things I'll Miss About Russia - Part 1

We've been back in the UK nearly two weeks now, and are slowly recovering from the two day journey with 15 large bags, 9 items of hand luggage and 3 small-ish children. We're gradually, albeit a bit reluctantly, adjusting back to life here in England. It's lovely to be reunited with family, to have more conveniences on hand, and to already be making use of the wonderful health care system, but at the same time we feel very much in limbo and are afraid of getting sucked into materialism and just the 'mundane-ness' of life as we experience it here.

So, before I go too far along the transition process, I wanted to remember and record all the good things about our life in Russia. Things that we really appreciated and will really miss. I'll write this over two posts and in reverse order:

10) Village Life

Back in Russia we lived in a village that was situated close to a main town. It was the best of both worlds,
really. We loved the peaceful, slow way of life in the village. I loved the fact that the kids and I could see so many animals on our walks 'around the block'. There were chickens, geese and turkeys just out and about on the streets or behind wire fences where we could see them and observe them. Every evening the cows would amble home from the pasture, and we watched in amazement as each cow knew exactly where she lived and would peel off from the rest of the herd, stand at her own gate and moo until the owner let her in for the night. There were of course lots of dogs and cats (pets and strays) around, and occasionally we would see a horse and her foal munching grass by the side of the road.

9) Beautiful Scenery

We were lucky enough to live in a place where we could see a range of snow-capped mountains in the distance. On a clear day the view was stunning. I named our homeschool 'Mountain River Homeschool' and our special verse was Psalm 121 v 1,2:

"I life up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." 

When we were in need of a break, then a few hours drive and we could be up in those mountains, enjoying a family picnic or walking beside mountain streams.




8) New Food

One of the most interesting aspects of travelling is trying out the local, ethnic cuisine. We'll miss the local pies, the wonderful variety of salads and the varied assortment of cakes. We'll also miss some local foods that came to be a natural part of our diet and that are hard to replicate here, such as the wonderful seasonal fruit and veg (I doubt we'll see watermelons that size again for a long time), dairy products such as smetana, grains and legumes such as buckwheat (it doesn't seem to be quite the same in my local supermarket in England) and a certain pear-flavoured fizzy drink called 'grusha'. Over the years I adapted my recipes to fit the local ingredients and there were fewer and fewer things that I hankered after from the UK (with the exception of peanut butter, marmite and custard powder!) I'll miss the local farmers' markets.

7) Reduced Health and Safety Restrictions

OK, this one might sound a bit strange. I mean, what kind of mother would like slacker rules on health and safety? But there are a few things that we find have been taken to an extreme back home in England. Road works is one. In England, the whole road could get closed off, causing annoying disruptions. In Russia, you just drove around it, and if your car fell in the hole, well, that was your problem. There were no restrictions on photographing your kids in public places. You could let your children go and play on the street with their friends from a really young age because you knew that they would all be under the watchful eye of some babushka standing on the corner. And, although we almost always strapped our kids into car seats, you knew that if necessary it would be totally OK to hold a child on your lap while you were giving friends a lift home.
 
6) A Gadget-Free Childhood

Every time we go back to England we’re amazed at how many toys and gadgets children have. And whilst we provided our children with more toys probably than many local children in Russia were able to have, we’re still very thankful that our kids have grown up in a culture where it’s normal to spend your afternoons riding bikes, setting up a home for your dollies in the garden shed, picking flowers and climbing trees rather than playing computer games or watching cartoons on the iPad. We’ve also appreciated not being pressured by our kids to buy ‘the latest thing’ or a particular brand of clothing that everyone else is wearing, simply because that wasn’t important in Russia, at least not among their peers. Somehow I get the feeling that life will be a bit more expensive here in England, in terms of what we will need to buy for the children!

I'll let you know my top 5 things in the next post, which you can find here. But in the meantime: 

Qu: If you've ever been to Russia, what were some of the things you appreciated about life there? Or if you've lived overseas somewhere else, what are some of the things that you would miss/have missed about life there?

Abide in Him!

Linking up here:

How Building A RAFT Can Help In Times of Transition

We’re now into our last few days of living here in Russia before we return to England. This week we’ve moved from concentrating on selling/packing/getting rid of all our stuff (and when it’s been accumulating for 11 years there’s an awful lot of it!) to saying painful goodbyes.

And it’s not just saying goodbye to people that’s painful, but also to places and activities that have been special to us over the years. Yesterday, for example, I had my last visit to my favourite café in town. Situated in the park, it’s been so peaceful being able to sit outside in the summer-time especially, and I’ve spent many an afternoon there re-charging my batteries and re-focussing my vision for the week ahead. I’m really going to miss it!

Many people have shared with us the RAFT principles of transistion times such as this. It’s a tool offered by the late Dave Pollock, who wrote a seminal book about TCKs (check it out here: Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, Revised Edition). RAFT stands for:

R – Reconciliation

Try to heal any broken relationships and resolve any tensions before you leave.

A-  Affirmation

Tell people how much you’ve appreciated them and been blessed by them over the years. Thank them for their kindnesses.

F- Farewells

Make sure you make time to say goodbye not just to people but also to places, possessions and pets.

T – Think Destination

Be realistic about what it’s going to be like when you return and how you’re going to cope with all the adjustments.

Following the principle of Affirmation, I felt moved to write a comment in the comments book at my favourite café. I thanked them for many things, including the fact that they have the best toilet in the whole town! This may sound like a trivial thing, but when you’re faced with the alternative of dirty holes in the floor and open-topped baskets overflowing with discarded, used toilet paper and other unmentionables, the clean, white toilet seat, the automatic soap dispenser and the continuous stock of paper towels seem like they’ve been sent from heaven!

So, if you’re going through a time of transition, moving from one place to another, I encourage you to build a
RAFT too!

Qu: Have you had experiences of good transitions using this model? Do you have any advice to add about how to make transition times smoother? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Abide in Him!

Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net/baitong333 and cbenjasuwan

You Know Your Child Is A TCK When.....

It's now less than a month until we have to say a final farewell to our home of nine years here in Russia and head on back to England. The last few weeks have been filled with sadness and stress, but also we've sensed God's peace and people's prayers throughout it all.

I can't help wondering, of course, what it'll be like to assimilate back into British culture, and especially how my children are going to cope with that. For those of you who live overseas you may be familiar with the term 'TCK' or 'Third Culture Kid'. For those of you who are asking: "What are TCKs?", let me explain:


Our children don't belong to their parents' culture (since they've lived overseas nearly all their life) and they don't belong to local Russian culture either (because they're clearly foreigners who don't speak the language fluently). Instead, they belong to their own 'third culture', which only their siblings and other TCKs can fully understand and appreciate.

I thought, after the heaviness of the last few posts, that it was time to have a more light-hearted one, so here goes some funny (well, at least I think they're amusing!) reflections on the life of a TCK:

You know your child is a TCK when....

.... they've been on 17 flights before they're even born (Sophie)

.....their first steps are taken not in the family home but in an airport (Charis, in Berlin, on our way to Moscow)

...... their first proper sentence contains the words 'skype' and 'Grandma' (Nathaniel)

.....they list as their top three favourite foods 1) smetana 2) khitchini and 3) grusha

.....they can't understand why, when you're visiting your home country, you can't 'pause' the TV to allow them to go to the toilet (because they only ever watch English language TV on DVDs)

..... they return to your home country and are shocked to find that the children around them are speaking English.

...... they automatically kick off their shoes when entering people's houses in England

...... they're amazed to see dogs living inside people's houses and not outside in the yard

...... they know the Russian term for 'Hide and Seek' but can't think what it is in English

...... they have no idea who Justin Bieber is, but they're quite happy, thanks to your husband's influence (!), singing songs by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.

Qu: Are your children TCKs? If so, please add some more funny observations in the comments below!

Abide in Him!


Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net / digitalart

Has Homeschooling Become An Idol?

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been trying to listen to what God might be teaching me as our time here in Russia draws to a close and I pack up our life here after nine years. If you haven’t already, I think you might need to read the previous two posts to understand what I’m about to say. You can find them here and here.

A thought occurred to me as I was sorting through the craft cupboard. Now, I have to tell you that, despite not being a particularly crafty person myself, I’m very proud of my craft cupboard! For years I’ve been stocking up on goggle eyes and lollipop sticks, sheets of felt, pipe cleaners, and colourful foam shapes. And since I know that those items are impossible to find in our part of Russia, I’ve been using them very sparingly. It seems to me ironic, now, that my kids will never get to use most of the items I’ve been storing up in those lovely, matching, clearly labelled plastic containers. Which is why I suddenly wondered, have I been storing up my treasure in the wrong place? Has my homeschool room become an idol to me? Has my homeschooling dream been pushing out some of the other dreams that God has been wanting me to embrace?

I’m still processing this thought, but now I’m more open to spending this next year listening more closely to what God wants of me. It may well be, and I really hope so, that He will reaffirm my calling to be a homeschooling mother, but I have to be open to the possibility that He won’t. And even if He does, I need to be sure that I’m storing up treasures in the right places. 

Perhaps I’ve been focussing too much on completing schedules and ticking boxes rather than making sure that my children are really learning and enjoying the experience of learning. Perhaps I’ve been more obsessed with ‘looking the part’, with the neatly labelled but generally unused boxes, than with allowing my children the freedom to explore and learn through their own, often messy discoveries. Have I let rigidity and rules take the place of relationships? How often have I filled in something myself in the nature diary or the Book of Centuries because allowing the children to do it would take too long and wouldn’t be ‘as neat’? How often have I been more worried about other people’s expectations of me than working at the pace my child needs to go at?

Now, before you start to object, I know that children often need to do things that they don’t enjoy. Personally, I'm not an ‘unschooler’ – I choose to follow a fairly set curriculum and daily timetable, and I believe children need to learn to persevere at tasks they don’t find easy or necessarily enjoyable sometimes. However, I think these are questions all homeschooling mums need to ask themselves from time to time.

Transition times are hard, but they do offer us the chance to step back a bit and take stock. I pray that we would all have the opportunity to do that from time to time, because motherhood is a lifelong learning process, and if we stop learning we stop growing.

Qu: How about you? Do you feel that sometimes homeschooling can become a bit of an idol in itself? What lessons have you learned through the homeschooling journey?

Abide in Him!

Giving Up Your Dreams For A Season – Part 2

In my last post I described how our family embarked down the path of homeschooling, all with great expectations and enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, the nature of our chosen way of life meant a return to England for six months in the spring and summer of Sophie’s first year, for ‘home leave’, and I found it a struggle to finish Year 1 with all the disruptions of travel, living out of suitcases and having to leave most of my resources behind in Russia. Still, I consoled myself, Year 2 would be much more settled.

However, that was not to be. Our time here in Russia has sadly and unexpectedly come to an end, and we’re busily preparing to move back to England for the short term while we wait and see what God has in store for our family next. For various reasons it makes sense to put Sophie (8) and Charis (nearly 6) into mainstream schools for the year. I am still coming to terms with the fact that we will never properly finish Year 2, and in all likelihood will be missing out completely on Year 3. Nor will I be able to start Charis off in Year 1 with the greater confidence that comes from starting down a road you have already travelled.

And so, as I pack up the books and the craft materials and the homeschool supplies that it took me five years to build up, I not only feel overwhelmed with sadness, but I realised that I'm also feeling afraid. I’m afraid of many things:

-         I’m afraid that I’m losing my dream, a dream I've held for five years now.

-         I’m afraid that I’m losing my status; the thing that defines me. For at least a year I won’t be ‘a Homeschooler’ anymore.

-         I’m afraid I’m losing my ‘niche’, my ‘passion’.

-         I’m afraid of getting sucked into the 'normal' educational system and of not being able to pull my family out again.

-         I’m afraid my children will be assessed academically and found to be lacking.

-         To be honest, one of my biggest fears is that my children will enjoy mainstream school more than they enjoyed doing school with me and won’t want to return to the dream life that I had envisioned for so long.

As always, I want to ask myself what God is trying to teach me through this experience. What lessons can I learn? How should I use this situation to draw closer to Him and deepen my faith?

But I think it’s too early for answers at the moment. All I know is that God has good plans for us as a family, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and future. (Jeremiah 29v11) In a previous post I talked about having to go through hardships, and this is just another aspect of the one our family is called to walk through right now.

Qu: Have you faced the situation of having to give up one of your dreams for a season? 

Abide in Him!



 

Giving Up Your Dreams for a Season – Part 1

It was a little unexpected, actually, how fast the tears began to flow once I began to tear down my schoolroom. 

I knew it would be hard to pack everything up and sort through eight years’ worth of children’s books, artwork and craft supplies, most of which would have to be sold, given away or thrown away. However, I didn’t realise that, internally, this was signifying not just a move and a change of scene, but actually the end of a dream.

Let’s back up a little. When Sophie, who’s now eight, was just two years old, I enthusiastically embarked upon a low-key pre-school curriculum. For half an hour a day we would sit at the living room table and start learning letters, numbers, motor skills and all about zoo animals. As a teacher myself, growing up in a family of teachers, a good education was critically important to me. Ensuring that my children had the best possible start in life academically was not just a duty of motherhood but something that I was excited about.

About a year later I discovered the world of Charlotte Mason and Homeschooling, and as I avidly devoured books and trailed through websites on the subject, I eased up on Sophie’s academic pursuits. I began to understand the benefits of allowing ample time for a proper childhood, and instead I redirected my time and energies into planning and preparing myself for that wonderful day when we would start ‘properly’, the September before she turned seven.

Living overseas presented its challenges in terms of gathering materials, and those were the days before I discovered the wonders of Kindles, and so each trip back to England involved stocking up the suitcase with a few more books and craft materials, manipulatives and wall posters. When our third child, Nathaniel, arrived, we kicked Daddy out of his office in the house into the spare room adjoining the garage, and turned his office into our schoolroom. I need to add that he went fairly willingly (the increased noise and interruptions in the house were affecting his productivity levels) and he did a great job of repainting the walls a colourful orange and putting up shelves ready to hold all those wonderful books and other materials.

Our first term of following Year 1 of the Ambleside Online curriculum was so positive. Of course we had our bad days, our days of interruptions, grumpy children, or, more frequently, grumpy mummies, but finally I was doing what I’d been waiting to do for so long. Finally I had a label: I was a Homeschooler. At social gatherings I could now reply to the question “And what do you do?” with the answer “Oh, I homeschool our children.”, which sounded so much better than “Oh, I’m just at home with the kids.” I was loving it! I don’t know if Sophie was learning much, but I was learning all about the Roman Invasion of Britain, the persecution of the early Church,  and the Vikings.

I was soon to discover that homeschooling is not a smooth, predictable path, because it depends so much on family circumstances. Stay tuned as I continue the story in my next post…

Abide in Him!

Are You A Carrot, An Egg or A Coffee Bean?

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog recently, because shortly after experiencing my third miscarriage we were informed that we no longer have permission to stay in our home here in Russia, which means we have just three months to pack up and sell a house we've been living in for nine years and say goodbye to all our friends and neighbours....probably for ever. Consequently, I've been thinking a lot about hard times and trials that God allows us to go through and grow through this side of heaven.

I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced some pain in their life. For some it's a long, debilitating illness; for others financial troubles, or difficult relationships between family members or with friends. Sometimes it's a string of 'failures' at work, or serious set-backs in their career or their husband's career. Some people battle with addiction, either personally or through someone close to them. And for some it's the grief of losing a loved one. For many it's simply the daily grind of trying to cook, clean, feed your family and make ends meet in less than ideal circumstances.

The Bible tells us we will face hardships

"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, 

as though something strange were happening to you. 

But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, 

that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed."

1 Peter 4:12-13 (ESV)

Anyone who tells you that being a Christian means that God will sort out all your problems and life will be a bed of roses is lying. The Bible is clear that Jesus' followers will experience trials and hardships in this life. It's to be expected. I'm not saying that we should go looking for them, or thinking something is wrong if God is blessing us with a period of stability at the moment, but we shouldn't be surprised when they turn up.

The Bible tells us that God is with us in the hardships

 "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 

who comforts us in all our troubles, 

so that we can comfort those in any trouble 

with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)

It's not that God doesn't care. He feels our pain, He is tender with us and wants to comfort us. Jesus Himself experienced horrible things when He was living here on earth - poverty, abandonment, loss of loved ones, pain, imprisonment and ultimately an excruciating death - and so He knows what we're going through. He can sympathise.

We need to allow time to grieve. God doesn't expect us to put on an 'everything is fine' facade and walk about life as normal, and it might take us a while to get out of that place.

The Bible tells us we should embrace the hardships

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,

whenever you face trials of many kinds,

because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete,

not lacking anything."

James 1:2-4 (NIV)

OK, this is hard. It's one thing to accept troubles, to do our best to cope with them and get through them with minimal whining and self-pity, but to embrace them? To give thanks for them? To accept them with joy?

God doesn't let hard things happen to us by chance. He always has a greater purpose in mind.

Some of the things I noticed coming from my recent miscarriage:
- a greater desire to cling to God through prayer and reading His Word
- a greater appreciation and thankfulness for the gifts He has already given me
- a greater and sweeter connection with others who have gone through similar trials
- a greater awareness that my life is in God's hands and consequently....
- a greater intentionality about how I can best use my life to serve Him

And lessons I'm learning from having to pack up home:
- thankfulness for all that God has provided over the last nine years here
- a reminder that our true home is in heaven
- needing to resubmit to God's will concerning the plans He has, which may differ from my own

There's a lovely story about a young woman who was going through a difficult period in her life and complaining about it to her mother. Without saying a word, the mother took three saucepans and boiled some water. In one saucepan she placed an egg, in the other a carrot, and in the third some coffee grains. After a few minutes she turned off the heat.
"What happened to the egg?" she asked.
"It got harder." the daughter replied.
"What happened to the carrot?" asked the mother.
"It got softer." answered the young woman.
"And the coffee grains?"
"They mixed in with the water and turned into 'coffee'."
"They each went through the same trial," explained the mother. "The egg hardened, and in the same way some people allow painful experiences to harden their hearts. The carrot softened, and others allow hardships to make them weak and to give up on life. But the coffee: it embraced the hot water. It mixed with it and allowed it to change its nature, and as a result it has produced a pleasing aroma that fills the room. In the same way, darling," said the mother as she looked kindly at her daughter, "It's not the troubles themselves but how you respond to your troubles that is the important thing."


God is like a potter, and we are like the clay in His hands. Sometimes He wants to mold us in a way that is painful, or He might want to turn us into something that we don't want to be. But we need to trust Him and allow Him to mold us in the way He thinks is best. Will we be like the egg, the carrot or the coffee grains?

 Qu: How do you usually respond to hardships? Like an egg? Like a carrot? Or are you learning to be more like a coffee bean?

Abide in Him!

Appreciate God's Blessings!

Last month continued to be a busy and emotionally/physically draining month. Of course, 'as luck would have it', I came down with a terrible cold which turned into a sinus infection during a hectic two-week seminar! I've also been finding myself getting teary at odd moments, as I'm still coming to terms with our recent miscarriage. A friend, who's been through the unspeakably painful experience of losing a newborn, lent me the book Grieving the Child I Never Knewby Kathe Wunnenberg, which I highly recommend for anyone who has experienced the loss of an unborn or newly born child.

In the meantime, I continue to thank God for the three, beautiful blessings I already have. The other day, I was looking through an old journal and I came across this poem I wrote for my eldest daughter, who's now eight years old. I'm guessing I must have written it when she was about eighteen months. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not the world's greatest poet, but I just wanted to share it with you in the hope that it might be of some blessing, especially to busy mums with toddlers at home:

Every day there is so much to see,
 to learn, to watch, to listen to.
A stone, a pine cone, a dog barking,
 a car alarm.
What happens if I swirl this twig in the water,
 or throw it on the ground?
Let's count the steps or the trees;
 two, three, four, six.
Why is this piece of paper stuck to my finger?
Where has Mummy hidden the biscuits?
Every day there are so many words
 to copy, to practise, to remember - 
 Nose, Chair, Food, Ice Cream.
I'm sleepy, but I fight it.
 I don't want to miss out on anything!
But here is teddy and my sheet.
 I can start again tomorrow.

Abide in Him!



 Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net/ Maggie Smith