Count Your Many Blessings

Count Your Blessings

When upon life’s billows

 you are tempest-tossed,

When you are discouraged

 thinking all is lost,

Count your many blessings;

 name them one by one,

And it will surprise you

 what the Lord has done.

-Johnson Oatman Jr.

Do you ever have one of those days where you wake up and feel like the world is conspiring against you from the get go?  Well, today was one of those days for me.  Most of my discouragement was stemming from feelings of inadequacy (and probably lack of sleep).  The kids woke up and were wired and not following their morning routines, so I started nagging, which just helped feed my feelings of inadequacy, and the vicious cycle began.  By breakfast time I could feel a melt-down coming on.  My wonderful husband called me on his way to work because he was worried about me (and probably the kids) and suggested that perhaps I should try listing my blessings.  It is a guaranteed way your lift your mood.  After some mild protests that lack of blessing was not the problem, but disobedient children, I finally assented.  I told the kids that we would start the school day with art time (which they were thrilled about) and I sat down here to write my list.  If you will indulge me, here are some of the things I am grateful for:

-The Gospel of Jesus Christ,  which brings peace and direction to my life.

-My wonderful husband, who works so hard for our family, and is such a support and example to me.

-My four beautiful children, who really are very good (most of the time), and who bring so much joy to my life.

-Prayer.  I am so grateful to be able to go to my Heavenly Father and receive answers, encouragement, forgiveness, and peace.

-Health.  Our whole family is healthy despite it being winter, and we generally are.

-Extended family who loves and supports us.

-Books.  They are good friends, sources of inspiration and purveyors of knowledge.

-Music. It has the ability to sooth my soul, lift my spirits and express my emotions in a way that can’t be accomplished with words.

-Nature.  The many varied beauties of this Earth are a living testament of a loving Creator.

-Great friends, near and far, who share my beliefs and are a support to me.

-A warm and comfortable home.

-A full fridge and pantry.

-Computers.  It is amazing how much information is right at our finger tips.

My list could go on and on, and I do recognize how greatly I have been blessed.  The amazing thing is that I really am feeling better now.  Now it is time to go start school.  Maybe I should keep a piece of paper and pencil handy today, so that if I start feeling out-of-sorts again, I can add to my list... 

  Thanks for the suggestion Doug!

The Better Part

~Be still and know that I am God. -Psalms 46:10

I have been reading a book called Just David, which I highly recommend.  The book is about a ten year old boy who has been raised in the mountains by his father.  His father chose to only expose his son to good and beautiful things in his childhood to prepare him for his “great work” in the world.  When David is unexpectedly thrust into the world, his view of what is truly beautiful and important varies greatly from those he comes in contact with.  It has opened my eyes. 

I think that I try hard to protect my children from bad things and place good things in their lives, but at the end of our busy Saturday I started wondering if I am careful to choose only the best things for them.  It is an increasingly evil world.  We are constantly being bombarded by offensive things against our choosing.  Just driving down the freeway, or walking through the mall we are assaulted by countless sayings and images that could make us flee in terror if we stopped to think about it.  Not to mention the things we let into our home via television and other forms of media.  Even if it is a good program, which it usually is, the advertising is often worse than most PG-13 movies.   Which is actually what got me thinking tonight. Everyone was watching a show that was relatively harmless, but I started feeling like there was probably something better we could be doing with our time.  

We get so busy in our lives, and most of the things we do are good, but are they the best things we could be doing at that moment?  Are they things that draw us closer to God and fill us with those things that will help us to be of service to Him and to our fellowmen, or are they simply things that are enjoyable, but really have no lasting value.  It is so hard to weed out those things that we could do without to make room for those things that we really need.  Most things that we do seem to be important at that moment, but weighed with an eternal perspective, where would they really fit on the list? I believe Satan is working so hard to fill our lives with distractions, because the busier and noisier our lives are, the harder it is to hear the quiet whisperings of the spirit.  I know we have a “great work” to do in these last days, but will we be prepared to do it if we don’t take the time to do those things that will lead us to it?

Choice

By Jean Liebenthal

Ensign, Mar. 1995

Am I, like Martha,

too immersed in homely

chores—too single-minded

in my day’s pursuits

of worldly worries which,

by heaven’s time,

won’t count for much—

or so intent today on

busywork that I don’t pray,

or keep my soul

in touch with the divine?

And do I

(oh, yes, conscientiously)

keep thoughts so fixed

on duties of my hands,

this hour’s demands,

that I’ve no time to spare

to dry His sweet feet

with my bowed soul’s hair?

Oh, may I pattern

after Mary’s way

and choose the better part,

asking forgiveness

at those tender feet

washed with my hope,

anointed with my heart.

Clarification

 I started worrying this morning that my last entry could have been misinterpreted.  I probably should try to avoid writing at night when I am tired...  I was not trying to say that everyone should homeschool.  I believe that the choice to homeschool is a very personal one, and it is not necessarily the right choice for everyone.  What I was saying is that if you have felt that you would like to homeschool, or that you should homeschool, but are worried about lack of patience, don’t.   Patience will come.  To quote Ralph Wlado Emmerson, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do has increased.”   I still have doubts about my ability to properly educate my children, and I am so less than perfect in so many ways.  My faith is not always what it should be.  However, the longer I persist in this endeavor, the less I question.  It is like anything else in life.  The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

I am not Exceptionally Patient

“God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage.  If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.”-unknown

There is something that has confused me since I began homeschooling.  Why is it that whenever I tell someone that I homeschool, they immediately assume that I must be the epitome of patience.  Here are some examples of comments I have heard:  “You homeschool.  Wow, you must be so patient!”, or “That’s great that  you have decided to homeschool.  How do you have the patience for it?”, or my personal favorite “I would love to homeschool, but I just don’t have the patience.”  Without fail, if I get into a conversation with a “non-homeschooler” about homeschooling, some form of this comment always comes up.  Could I ask why?   One theory I have is that patient is code for crazy.  Substitute crazy for patient in the above sentences and that might work.  “Wow, you must be so crazy!” or  “Why are you so crazy?” (That was taking liberties, but it could be implied) and finally, with additional liberties “I would love to homeschool, but I’m not crazy enough.”  If that is all people are saying, then I will stop my nitpicking and accept that “if the shoe fits, wear it.”  However, if people are actually saying and/or believing that only someone with super-human patience is capable of homeschooling, I have some things I would like to clarify.

Now, I will humbly admit that I am not the most stressed-out person on the planet, but I am also far from patience personified.  In fact, patience is definitely in my top 10 list of things that I pray for on a regular basis, and that is my point.  When I decided that the Lord was telling me that I needed to homeschool, I had a list of excuses a mile long of why I was not capable of doing so, but I also accepted that when He commands I need to follow and He will provide the way.  If every couple waited to have children until they felt like they had all the skills to be the perfect parents, this planet would be unpopulated.  If everyone waited to reach out to others until they felt like they had all the answers themselves, this world would be friendless.  We don’t wait to do what we know we need to do.  We take the leap of faith and pray and believe that the Lord will make up the difference.  The secret is that He always does.  I’m still not the most patient person in the world, but I believe I am becoming more patient.  I still have a long list of excuses, but I believe it is getting shorter.  

“There is no obstacle too great, no challenge too difficult, if we have faith.” -Gordon B. Hinkley

Why Homeschool? (Part 2)

In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools - and it's becoming almost generally true - it is spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational philosophies, pragmatism and humanism were the early ones, and they branched out into a number of other philosophies which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are producing the problems that we face.      -Boyd K. Packer

As I mentioned in my last post, the reasons I started homeschooling are not the reasons that I am still homeschooling.  When I began homeschooling I did it almost wholly for academic reasons.  I wanted my kids to have the best education possible and I thought that I was much more capable of providing it with my love, attention, and 3:1 student to teacher ratio, than our public school with its one-size-fits-all methodology and 30:1 ratios.  When I started in the middle of the first grade with Harrison, I had a very strict schedule and we were learning a lot, but we were both getting incredibly stressed out.  I had recreated school at home, and had somehow turned into the Nazi school teacher that we all dreaded to get.  There had to be a better  way.

Before we started homeschooling I had prayed to know if this was what was right for our family.  I received an answer that it was.  I relied on that through the periods of doubt I experienced that first year.  At the end of that year I began to question again.  I prayed frequently over the summer trying to know if I should continue down this path or not, but I couldn’t seem to get an answer.  Finally God sent me an answer in the form of a friend.  I had just finished another prayer and gotten off my knees when there was a knock on the door.  My friend, who has all of her children in public school, had felt the need to come and tell me how much she admired what I was doing.  She told me how impressed she was with Harrison, and how she wished she could do the same, but didn’t feel able to at the time.  When we finished our conversation I began to cry and got down on my knees to thank the Lord for sending me such a clear and meaningful answer to my prayers.  I still thank that friend for listening to, and acting upon the promptings to come and talk to me that day.  Although there were still times when I wondered if I was “messing up” my kids by keeping them home, I never again questioned that this was what the Lord wanted for our family.

As I went along I kept reading.  I read about several different homeschooling methods.  If you don’t homeschool, you would be amazed to know how many different ways there are to do it.  The amount of information and resources out there can be overwhelming.  I have personally tried several of them.  Half way through second grade I decided that “the classical method”  we were using was just not working for us.  My kids might end up being the smartest in the neighborhood, but they would end up hating me by the time they went off to college.  I took a break the second half of that year and began “unschooling” my kids.   Have I mentioned that I am a person of extremes?  By the beginning of third grade, now first grade for Isaac, I was feeling a need to add more structure to our routine. I finally found the method that challenged my children academically, but allowed them to still be children.  It also helped us to bring the most important part of education into our lives, spirituality.  It brought joy to our homeschooling and family life.  Through lots of reading, experimenting and prayer, we were finally led to the Charlotte Mason philosophy and amblesideonline.org.  This is how I “do” homeschooling, but it is not the sum of our homeschooling experience.  I have come to discover that the most important part of a child’s education is not the facts that they learn, but the strength of character that they develop.  This quote by a former prophet of our church sums up my feelings on the role of education in our lives.  This is what I am striving for in our home.  This is what I hope I am teaching my children.  Sorry it is so long, but it is so good...

"If we spend our mortal days in accumulating secular knowledge to the exclusion of the spiritual then we are in a dead-end street, for this is the time for man to prepare to meet God; this is the time for faith to be built, for baptism to be effected, for the Holy Ghost to be received, for the ordinances to be performed. Contemporary with this program can come the secular knowledge, for even in the spirit world after death our spirits can go on learning the more secular things to help us create worlds and become their masters. . . . A highly trained scientist who is also a perfected man may eventually create a world and people it, but a dissolute, unrepentant, unbelieving one will never be such a creator even in eternities. Secular knowledge, important as it may be, can never save a soul nor open the celestial kingdom nor create a world nor make a man a god, but it can be most helpful to that man who, placing first things first, has found the way to eternal life and who can now bring into play all knowledge to be his tool and servant. Our training must not only teach us how to build dams and store water to dampen parched earth to make the desert blossom as the rose and feed starving humanity, but it must prepare us to dam our carnal inclinations and desires with self-denial, creating reservoirs to be filled with spirituality. We must study not only to cultivate fertile acres, plant seeds therein, and nurture them on to harvests, but we must plant in the hearts of men seeds of cleanliness and righteous living and faith and hope and peace. We must not only know how to kill weeds and noxious plants which befoul our crops, but learn to eradicate from the souls of men the noxious theories and manmade sophistries which would cloud issues and bring heartache and distress to men. We must not only be trained to inoculate and vaccinate and immunize against disease, set broken limbs, and cure illnesses, but we must be trained to clarify minds, heal broken hearts and create homes where sunshine will make an environment in which mental and spiritual health may be nurtured. . . . Our schooling must not only teach us how to bridge the Niagara River gorge, or the Golden Gate, but must teach us how to bridge the deep gaps of misunderstanding and hate and discord in the world."  (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball p. 390-391)

Why Homeschool? (Part 1)

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. 

-Albert Einstein

I, like most reasonably responsible adults who have chosen to homeschool,  am often asked what on earth possessed me to homeschool my children.  The reasons I started homeschooling are not the same reasons I am still homeschooling.  Let me preface this by saying that when I started this journey, homeschooling was the farthest thing from my mind.  I had never personally known anyone who homeschooled their children and I thought that anyone who did it had to be crazy, or weird, but probably a little bit of both.  

It all started because my son Isaac, then four, was in preschool and hating it.  Isaac has always been my happy care-free spirit, and I could see that something in his two hour a day, three days a week preschool was squelching that.  I went to observe his class one day, to the chagrin of his reluctant teacher.  I could see why he hated it.  They did worksheets, then they would stand and sing a song, more worksheets, then a story, and finally some more worksheets.  The teacher stressed that I needed to get Isaac prepared for public school the next year and he needed to learn to stay in his seat because that is how school is.  I pulled him out of the preschool the next week.  Being the conscientious parent that I am, I didn’t want to let Isaac get behind while he waited at home for Kindergarten so I started looking for things I could do for preschool at home with him. Meanwhile, my then 6 year old son Harrison, who is a great “follow the rules, do what you’re told, and don’t ask questions” kind of kid, was bored with school by the beginning of first grade.  He already knew everything they were teaching and I was feeling frustrated about having to send him to school for seven hours a day to learn nothing.  In my search for things to do with Isaac I came across information about homeschooling.  

I am a firm believer in divine guidance.  I know that God gives us what we need, when we need it, and he prepares our hearts to accept what he gives us, if we are willing to listen.  For some reason the things I read online about this “crazy homeschooling philosophy” resonated with me.  Apparently I had been prepared.  I went to the library and checked out everything I could about homeschooling.  The book I was led to really read was called “The Well Trained Mind”.  It described a method of teaching called “classical education”.  To my mind, it was the kind of thing that would turn out a child who would score a 36 on the ACTs and get them into any college they wanted by the time they were 16.  It excited me.  After a month of research and lots of sleepless nights.  I went to the elementary school and pulled Harrison out of first grade.  We were now officially homeschoolers.

To be continued...

Austin!

A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on. -Carl Sandburg

My brother Paul and his wife TeAhna just had their first baby on Tuesday.  He is so beautiful!  He weighed 7lbs. 11oz. and was 19 inches long.  Nothing compares to the miracle of a newborn baby.  Nothing fills you with more humility and awe than realizing that God has entrusted this perfect, helpless little being to your care.  Congratulations Paul and TeAhna!

Introductions

“Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also with eternal joys.  It affects not only the two people involved, but also their families and particularly their children and their children’s children down through the many generations.”  - Spencer W. Kimball

I am new to the “blog scene”.  In fact, I have actually visited very few of them.  Why did I ever decide to start one?  Like most major changes in my life seem to occur, I felt strongly prompted that I needed to do this, (about two weeks ago) so here I am.  Two things actually led me in this direction. First, a leader in our church recently made a statement urging members to use blogs and other forms of media to “contribute to the national conversation” about our religion.  Second, we own a Mac and just got the new version of iLife, which made it really easy and not too intimidating to try to create one.  Now, if only I could hire a writer to record my thoughts in a really witty and intelligent way, all obstacles would be gone...

Now for the introductions.  We are a homeschooling family, and are members of  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Until 6 months ago we were a family of all boys and a mom.  In July we were finally blessed with a little girl who quickly became the center of the boys lives.  My husband Doug and I(Andrea) have been married for 15 years in March. My how time flies when you’re having fun.  He owns a graphic design company and works dutifully to support our family so I can stay home with the children.  He often laments that our roles can’t be reversed so he could spend more time with the children.  He is a wonderful father and the kids relish their time with dad.  He served a two year mission for our church in France and Switzerland and therefore speaks French fluently, which we are trying to pass on to our children. In his spare time (when there is any) he is a cat.3 cyclist and an artist.  

God is the center of my/our life.  At least I hope He always is.  I am constantly grateful to Him for the abundance He has blessed me with.  Primarily, the five people mentioned in this post.  He led our family to begin homeschooling 3 years ago this month.  It has been a wonderful blessing for our family, and consumes most of my time and thoughts.  I will share more about that topic in a future post.  I love to read and am usually trying to tackle three or four books at a time, because there are always so many things I am trying to learn about at any given time.  I like to cook and have a tendency to experiment with new recipes a lot and then I can never remember what I have made that we all liked.  I teach piano lessons a few days a week, and work with the youth in our church.  Add a 6 month old baby into the mix and there isn’t time for much more in my life right now.

Our oldest child H. Man is 9 and is a joy to our family.  He is such a help to mom and is everything a big brother should be.  He loves to read, and devours every book he gets his hands on.  He is an absolute Lego-maniac.  Our basement is literally overflowing with Legos.  My biggest stress in life is making sure that all of their Legos stay contained so that our 6 month old, crawling baby doesn’t end up choking on them.  H. Man plays the piano and does remarkably well for a 9 year old.  He would say that he hates to practice, but he can often be found playing a song he likes just for fun.  He is also planning on competing in the Juniors Cycling division this year.  He rode his bike to the top of one of the mountains in our area last year and amazed us and every other cyclist that was on the mountain that day.  

I. Mac is 7 and is the sweetest, most loving child.  If you ask I. Mac what his biggest strength is, he will tell you it is his tender heart, and it is true.  His pet rabbit Ruby died last month and that was a tragedy that was hard on the whole family, but which Isaac took particularly hard.  He is still struggling with it.  I. Mac is very tall for his age and we are always asked if he and H. Man are twins.  He also plays the piano.  The thing he is anticipating the most in his life right now is his Baptism this year.  He has a wonderful imagination, and he and his younger brother can play their “made up video games” or “made up movies” for days on end.  He wants to write a book about them, and keeps urging mom to give him some of her time so that he can dictate them to her...  

G. Diddy is a very active 5 year old.  He loves to play on the Wii that he and his brothers bought last year.  He was not satisfied with Christmas until he finally opened the Mario Galaxy present he had been asking for since April.  He loves to play made up games with his big brother and he has a great sense of humor.  He wouldn’t say that he likes to sing, but he can constantly be heard making up the funniest and most imaginative songs.  G. Diddy is very strong willed, but very loyal.  He gets upset if anyone is treated unfairly and is careful to dole out his affection equally to everyone in the family.  G. Diddy's main goal for the coming year is to learn how to ride his bike.  For some reason this skill has eluded him longer than it did his brothers.  He just hasn’t seemed to care too much.  Without the motivation it hasn’t seemed worth the work and bother to him.  He definitely marches to his own drum.

Little C. is 6 months old and takes after her brother G. Diddy, in looks and personality.  She is so active!  She could hold up her head by herself from the day she was born.  She was scooting across the floor before she turned 6 months old and is constantly trying to get into anything she can get her hands on.  She is also the happiest baby I have ever seen.  Her face lights up when anyone gives her attention and she has the biggest, cutest dimples.  She rarely cries and has slept through the night fairly consistently since she was 6 weeks old.  She just got her first two teeth this week.  I love boys and have always said they are my favorite, but having a girl sure is fun!

Well, I have rambled long enough.  Hopefully you will get to know a little more about us in the future.