Carpe Diem

Summer is surely fleeting….although I’ve been preparing for our new school year slowly but surely throughout the summer, I have more recently begun to get our school courses really ready, our home clean, some  cooking/freezing done, and stocking up on school supplies.

As I pour over the curriculum, pulling select books off the shelves, taking inventory of supplies, I realize how much I have adored being able to impart an excellent education to my children.  What a blessing.  How did this happen??  How is it my heart grows ten times bigger with gratefulness and awe each year? While it is a lot of work, it is work that is worthy and noble; it is full of depth and breadth and heroic effort.  This moment makes me want to stand up and applaud every parent out there that has done this, is currently doing this, or has an inclination of stepping up to the plate and giving it their best shot.  

If anyone would have told me 30 some years ago, I’d be married in Ohio, with four children and home schooling them, I would have never ever ever believed it.  Home schooling wasn’t even something on my radar, wasn’t even something I knew anything about.  I was still playing in bands and singing and traveling; I was working a very amazing job at the Utah state capitol and just living in the moment from day to day.  Now, I wake up and realize how God used those experiences to bring me to this place in my life with my own island of people. 

Wow, does God work in mysterious, or what?  Really, HE has a plan…and if you are just open to it, it unfolds beautifully in his timing and perfection.

I know I don’t want summer to end, because….well, I’m selfish and it was a long hard ugly winter, and I know I personally need a super long mental health day summer to recoup.  But, at the same time, I am thrilled to be able to school my own children with a beautiful classical education, giving them so much more than just subjects to be filled in, crossed off on the transcript. 

I am also so grateful that I can let my kids, be kids.  That means the teens can continue to be carefree, with some appropriate responsibilities of course, but not the pressing issues that secular society dictates to them in this culture. Girlfriends, boyfriends, sports.  If your teen life doesn’t consist  of  those ….then you are weird, or nothing.  It’s not what education is about. My children can relax more and prepare more deeply, with consideration and prayer, their God given vocation in life.  After exposing them to noble thoughts, amazing characters of history, cultures and languages, truth, and all that has come before them…they have such a more broadened view of the world and their place in it.  Giving them personal meaning through Christian studies, and how cherished they are by God, helps lessen their burdens of this sometimes very stressful and demanding existence.  They realize their existence is purposeful and meaningful.  Everyone has a place in the choir.  Every person is important.  As the Eleventh Doctor (Doctor Who) so thoughtfully express: “I’ve never met a person yet that wasn’t important.”   Believe it. 

So, as summer winds down, and I prepare to teach again the classical repertoire and Christian studies to my own family, I feel a deep poetic beauty and connectedness to this fascinating world of ours……to our maker and His creation, and to the particular clan of people He has chosen to put me with on this chronological timeline of His making. These are the kinds of feelings, I like to grasp a hold of revel in  forever…..savoring them and keeping them safe in my heart to open up again and again, as a pleasant reminder of a life blessed.    

Bring on the books!  Carpe Diem!