Homeschooling from a Place of Failure

I recently came across a really lovely blog. It has a lovely name, with the word lovely in it, and it is very pretty and the writing is lovely, and so I check it every day now. It is part of the whole pantheon of Homeschool Blogs that you can spend all your alotted homeschool time reading and browsing and accumulating helpful tips, advice, curricula, chore charts, printables, lap book helps, unit studies, ways to get stains out of your table linens, how to get a child to read, what to do about termite infestations, where to sit during homeschool conventions, how often to feed your children, how to organize your markers, how to instill curiosity in children, how to make all your own cleaning supplies…not that I would spend all my time reading them, but some others might.

This lovely blog suggested that you homeschool from a place of rest. This was such a novel idea to me that I read all the posts twice, and every other post, thinking to myself, 'rest, that is craaaaazy.' They are all good, you should go read them, whether you are homeschooling or not. They include important truths like, don't do it in your own strength, and don't think you can do everything.

But as you all know, this blog is not about lovely things. This blog is about heartbreak, sarcasm, hostility, ruination, despair, and most of all, failure. Its why you come back here, day after day. You go look at all the pinterest pictures, and the gorgeous ways to do your wedding on 50$ or less, and why you should be more about God's grace, and then you come over here so that you can see what a big failure I am, and then you feel better about yourself. You look at pinterest and say, 'well, I can't do that', then you come here and say, 'but at least I'm not as wretched as Anne'. My daily life is here to serve as a warning to others, to try to just at least be better than me.

So anyway, because the meme of this blog is Rebellion and Sorrow, the more and more I have thought about Grace (and what I always say to myself, when I think about that, is 'I don't even know what that means'–I say that quietly to myself every time) and Rest ('rest' I always mutter, 'what rest. The rest of the guilty, that's what rest') I honestly have had to say to myself that I don't do anything from a place of rest, or with grace. Honestly, everything I do comes out of the deep deep profound well of insecurity and failure. Not trust in God. Just mostly sheer panic all the time, with little doses of gut level instinct to keep me going in the right direction.

So, for example, I've been living under the Great Threatening Cloud of State Testing for about 3 million years now. Its always been there, mocking me, as my oldest child has struggled and struggled and struggled to read. While all around me other homeschooled children are doing calculus at age 3 and memorizing whole books by just gazing at them fondly and reading all The Lord of the Rings in two and a half days and buildiing small perfect reproductions of the Temple in Jerusalem (ok, I made some of those up, I haven't seen any child do that last one, I think it was an old old man on the BBC) Elphine spent what seemed like the time of the New Heaven and the New Earth sounding out 'b-o-b, cob' and stuff like that. So when running around online looking at homeschool curriculum boards, mostly about spelling and math, and I read nice people with smart children (even though I am also a pretty nice person and I also have smart children) and they say 'testing is great because it let's you know where your child is and what gaps there are' I always scream (internally) at my screen, 'I KNOW WHERE MY CHILD IS! She can't read and can't spell and NOOOO I don't want to see it in black and white.' I'm the person comforting myself every day that in NYS you only have to get 30% to not be a failure. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Obviously I don't want my children to come out at 30%. But yes, I am super happy that the bar is so low. I'm not trying to beat the Chinese. I just want to get through one more day without dying.

So anyway, after all these years living, and I mean really really living, sitting down with my super comfortable tent and all my nice cusions and my flowers and my big bucket of gin, in the Land of Anxiety, I finally tested my two oldest kids. And

drumroll…….

they did fine. Even Elphine. It was O.K. It turns out she can read and count after all.

“You're a good mother” Matt said that evening, as I lay back in my chair with relief lapping up over my feet. “You're doing a good job.”

“You don't have to lie to me,” I said. “Everyone knows I'm a terrible mother and I'm doing a terrible job, and its just a matter of time before God intervenes to take the children away and give them to someone who can really do it well, like anyone else in the whole world, but especially all the people on that Peace Hill Press Board….and I'm fat.”

“Is that what you really think?” he asked, shocked.

“Yes,” I said, “I think it every moment of every day.”

“Wow,' he said, “I'm really glad I'm not a woman.”

“I know,” I said, “I'm glad you're not a woman too.”

Insecurity. The Threat of Failure. These are the places of my habitation. These are the things I think about all the time. And I guess that's ok. Apparently, all these years, its been enough. I can just show up and do it every day, badly, really badly, and then it turns out ok.

Next week, what kind of curriculum I use in my Homeschooling in my Tent of Failure. Just kidding. Go read the Peace Hill Press Boards.