Homeschooling from a place of Failure

Apparently we’re falling falling falling to the summer plague. Discovered in alarm yesterday that the three little girls had spent the whole morning playing nicely together on the couch in the school room. Then found them lying around in various other locations, whining. And Romulus was up during the night with a headache, and everyone is still asleep now, even though it’s 8 o’clock. I can imagine no other explanation than that everyone is getting some terrible cold. Of course they are. Of course. The question is, will I get it? And the answer is, most certainly. I will definitely get it because I have so much to do.

Just by the by, you may be wondering why there is a couch in the school room. A place where crayons and good pencils and important bits of toys can be buried forever. A place where marker can be applied in great swirls and scratches. A place from whence the cushions can be wrenched and flung down, so that it is impossible to walk through the room. As with everything, it seemed like a good idea at the time. We can sit there, I thought, and read stories and it’ll be friendly, or something. But no, it is a great hulking eater of stuff and there is always a kid standing on the very top, ready to leap off onto the floor.

So anyway, we’re going to start school next week, even if we’re all sick. And it’s going to be wonderful. I have been both promising, and hesitating, to blog about my plans for the year. The reason for the promise is because people keep asking me what I’m going to do and what my plans are. I’ve been doing this for a while and my children are reasonably clean and alive. So, well, maybe I have something to say. The hesitation is because really I Don’t Have It Together. I really would be so worried and anxious if anyone took a page from my book and tried to do it the way I’m doing it. I am not the peaceful expansive together homeschooler who writes everything carefully down and carries forth a lovely plan that integrates the needs of the child beautifully with the carefully chosen curricula. I am not really Charlotte Mason. Nor am I properly Classical. Nor could I be called an Unschooler. I don’t properly pull off unit studies. I frequently and frantically lose my way and my papers and, most importantly, I’m always fighting down a goodly measure of sheer panic. Once school starts I will begin waking up in the middle of the night sweating and freaking out.

So why do you homeschool? The clever observer might ask. ‘Good question,’ I might reply through a bright smile concealing tightly clenched teeth, ‘because I like it, I like my kids, and because there aren’t any other options right now.’ And really, I do love it. I love being with my kids all day. I love seeing skills and knowledge planted and observe them budding and arriving into full bloom. I love the independence and the drive of each child to read and write. I would grieve and mourn if all that happened under the care and attention of another. That said, I don’t enjoy carrying the burden of their future lives on my ever stooping shoulders. I don’t enjoy the expectations of the state, nor of myself. I don’t enjoy the panic, even though I wallow in it almost all the time.

And this is where I keep slamming into the Christian pillars of Grace and Peace. Because people write all the time about grace, and gratitude, and rest, and peace. And they say things like, you should believe and trust in God’s grace and you should work with rest, knowing that God will do whatever it is that he going to do. And you should have peace, because God is in control. And hey, throw in there some joy, because joy is supposed to be evidenced in the life of the Christian. And I come away from my little Internet homeschooling sojournings carrying another great burden, greater even than the one I was carrying already. In this world, grace and peace and joy are added as another work to the work I am already failing to do. Not only am I trying to do a good job with my own children, I’m also trying to do it in the right frame of mind, as in, with trust in God and not with a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing of complete all the time freaking out.

This is why I am always saying, and I do understand that no one believes me when I say this, that I homeschool from a place of Failure. I cannot do it. I cannot do it in the right way. I can’t produce grace and joy for myself on top of everything else. And most of the time, I can’t do the good job I know I should be doing. I just can’t. I’m not good enough and smart enough even though I’m pretty sure lots of people like me. My efforts are inadequate and I am always in the wrong frame of mind.

It is out of this deep well of failing that I am always thinking about Christian work. Because I think there is a percolating belief out there, even amongst Christians themselves, that they may not be able to save themvelves, but once saved, they can keep it together long enough to make it to heaven. That the salvation was surely a free gift of God, but in between the moment of God’s initial rescue, and the moment of being taken up into the glorious presence of Jesus, there is a wide open space where human striving might be found to be enough. And this wide open space, for me, is littered and strewn with the transmogrification of grace and joy, which ought to be God’s to give, into works that I have to produce.

And so I despair. I look at the terrible job I am actually doing, and the absence of all the qualities of the Holy Spirit that I feel like I should have ginned up, because they are supposed to be present, and I can’t carry the burden. I go around saying I can’t carry it, and everyone is surprised when I don’t manage to carry it. But I’m not surprised. And I don’t think God is surprised. Because grace and joy are actually his, not mine. I hope he’ll give them to me, as a gift. And tomorrow, I’ll write sbout my curriculum, but only if everyone promises not to follow behind me.