Things You Don't Say to Your God

My kids love Tim Hawkins, and especially his absolutely spot-on funny "Things You Don't Say To Your Wife". In just under two minutes, Tim manages to get in most of the blunders husbands make in communicating with their wives. I've been a Christian most of my life, 35 out of 44 years. I've learned most of the things you don't say to God. "Please teach me patience." "Lord, can it get any worse?" And I used to giggle at the Randy Stonehill song, "Please Don't Send me to Africa." But apparently I didn't learn the complete lesson of that song. I had the audacity of saying to God, "I'll serve you in any way you want, just don't make me home school." Guess what. He's asking me to home school.

For all of their schooling thus far, my boys have been in Christian schools. For pre-school, my searching and researching and visiting and interviewing teachers and principals led me to a wonderful, casual Lutheran pre-school. You might recall I'm a former middle school math/English teacher, so I know a bit about what I want and don't want and I'm pretty good at recognizing the red flags and avoiding them. I didn't want anything super-structured. I wanted my boys to begin to understand being in a group, and following directions, and to hear more stories about Jesus, and to learn to "play well with others." They did. And the cabbage burgers were great, too.

For elementary, my searching, as described above, led me to the charter academy in town. Seemed perfect for what I wanted. I'm a believer in public schools. I was a public school teacher. There needs to be light and salt out there. I'd met wonderful, dedicated, Christian teachers in the public school where I taught. I knew there were more of the same not only in on staff at this school, but on the board as well. Some of them attend my church. So we went through the application process. Did the lottery drawing. 37th on the waiting list. I'm thinking that's a big, fat NO from God. When the class takes 25, and you're sitting there hoping ALL of them change their minds and then your'e still number 12 after that...yeah, mathematically, not bloody likely. So back to my search I went, and God led us to the last place I thought I'd ever consider. But it turned out to be a great fit, and of course it was, because it's what God chose for us. Until now.

This year has been a very hard year for both boys. YellowBoy has struggled all year, as you know from a previous post. Diamond has not really enjoyed the antics that are a junior high locker room, Christian school or not. And ever since my abrupt U-turn, it was getting squeakier and squeakier to make that hefty tuition payment. Then came the illnesses. One after another. I joked with our doctors receptionist that I had her on speed dial and as I handed her our debit card for the fourth time in a single week (NOT kidding) I asked if they had auto withdrawal. It got that bad. I'll spare you the details but we had multiple rounds of antibiotics and inhalers and steroids and diagnoses and it was no fun. The boys were home from school sick more than they were there. I was practically homeschooling already. So we took the leap.

I am now homeschooling. A bit sooner than we had planned. It's a steep learning curve stepping in for another teacher (7+ teachers actually) with all those preps, in the middle of a quarter, and finding my way amidst all the, "But Mrs.MyFavoriteTeacher didn't do it that way" coming from YellowBoy and, "I thought I wouldn't have to do that anymore" coming from Diamond. I had thought I had the summer to get myself in gear, and that we were going with the online virtual academy where I just supervised, but that's not how it went. Of course not.

After all, His ways aren't my ways. You'd think I had learned that by now.