{"id":465,"date":"2012-05-14T11:02:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T11:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/05\/the-commitment.html"},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:48:58","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T20:48:58","slug":"the-commitment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/05\/the-commitment.html","title":{"rendered":"The Commitment"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>This past weekend, I went to the homeschool convention in Arlington. As I sat down for the first talk on Saturday morning, I looked around at all the young (oh my goodness they were young!) faces of the moms just beginning on this journey.\u00a0 At 37, I definitely wasn\u2019t the oldest mom in the room, but I was at least 15 years older than the youngest. I looked down at the baby hanging out in her sling and it hit me\u2026.I\u2019ve been homeschooling for 12 years and #7 means I\u2019ll be at it for at least 18 more.<\/p>\n<p>Holy crap.<\/p>\n<p>30 years.\u00a0 That\u2019s my whole life. Well, a big ol\u2019 chunk of it teaching preschool, Algebra, and physics all side by side.\u00a0 It was in that moment that I felt exhausted. What about me?\u00a0 What about the plans I had and have for myself? In the prime of my life with so many dreams unfulfilled\u2026.what about me? 30 years. More if there\u2019s ever a #8.\u00a0 Holy. freaking. moly.<\/p>\n<p>And I knew that I want to quit.\u00a0 Just chuck it all and walk away. There are better things I could be doing with my life.\u00a0 Important and memorable things. <b><span style=\"font-size: large\">Things which will last forever!<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small\">Things like my children and their immortal souls.Which, incidentally, are the <i>only <\/i>things which last forever.\u00a0<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\">I was reminded this weekend of the time #2 spent in the NICU dying.\u00a0 (Just because you\u2019re dying doesn\u2019t mean you do.\u00a0 You<i> can<\/i> recover, but he was surely dying.)\u00a0 The awful very bad time when I pleaded with God to trade my life for his.\u00a0 \u201cPlease take my life in trade for his, let me die if he can live,\u201d I begged.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\"><br><\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: small\">Did I mean it?\u00a0 Did I really mean I would give my own life for his or did I only mean I\u2019d die willingly right there on the spot?\u00a0 What if the death He asks for is a long, slow painful death to self?\u00a0 Say\u2026\u2026 30 years or more of dying to myself?\u00a0 Am I willing to make that trade for him? For them all?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend, I went to the homeschool convention in Arlington. As I sat down for the first talk on Saturday morning, I looked around at all the young (oh my goodness they were young!) faces of the moms just beginning on this journey.\u00a0 At 37, I definitely wasn\u2019t the oldest mom in the room, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Commitment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This past weekend, I went to the homeschool convention in Arlington. 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