Stumbling on the Path
I hate failure. It makes me angry. In my perfectionism only complete success is good enough, so often nothing ever gets accomplished. So it is a source of tremendous frustration that I find myself stumbling on the path that was so surprisingly easy at its beginning.
My eating disorder is flourishing and I don't know why. This drives me crazy. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I never schedule my own needs into Mi Vida Loca. Everyone else's needs take priority to my own. My counselor said, in the last group session I attended, what two months ago that Eating Disorders are born out of the idea that it is wrong to have needs. Huge light bulb moment. I have actually said that I was not allowed to have needs. That I did not have time to have needs. So what do I do. I overschedule myself and then drop my needs in order to make the agenda I have comitted myself to work. Why? Why do I do this to myself again and again? Why can I not be ok with inconvenencing others in order to take care of me?
At least I am becoming self-aware enough to know it is happening before it gets totally out of control. I have stumbled. I have not left the path. Perhaps this is not failure? Perhaps, maybe, this is a tiny, small but significant success?
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Monday, August 11, 2003
I love the way homeschooled kids play
I love watching homeschooled kids at play. They are SO accepting and accomodating of one another. We had our teacher's meeting today for our co-op and had in attendance 30+ kids ages 2 to 13. Black and white kids. Boys and girls. Two with special needs. All body shapes and sizes. And they all played together without any fighting, scuffling, hurtful words and in ways that included everyone. They organized a game of kickball. Automatically moving in closer and pitching more softly to the littles so they could be successful too. They played in the sand box, making sand cakes decorated with pea gravel sprinkles. My daughter, all 85 pounds and 48 inches of her, was never called "Fat". She shines as the leader she is. I rejoice in her confidence in herself. I was already neurotic about my body size and shape by the time I was her age. She will be 6 on the 5th of September. By the time I turned six I was already on Weight Watchers for the first time. I looked across the play area today and I saw in front of me Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream being lived out. Children enjoying one another and evaluating one another strictly on the content of their character. I love watching homeschooled children play...it gives me hope for our future.
I love watching homeschooled kids at play. They are SO accepting and accomodating of one another. We had our teacher's meeting today for our co-op and had in attendance 30+ kids ages 2 to 13. Black and white kids. Boys and girls. Two with special needs. All body shapes and sizes. And they all played together without any fighting, scuffling, hurtful words and in ways that included everyone. They organized a game of kickball. Automatically moving in closer and pitching more softly to the littles so they could be successful too. They played in the sand box, making sand cakes decorated with pea gravel sprinkles. My daughter, all 85 pounds and 48 inches of her, was never called "Fat". She shines as the leader she is. I rejoice in her confidence in herself. I was already neurotic about my body size and shape by the time I was her age. She will be 6 on the 5th of September. By the time I turned six I was already on Weight Watchers for the first time. I looked across the play area today and I saw in front of me Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream being lived out. Children enjoying one another and evaluating one another strictly on the content of their character. I love watching homeschooled children play...it gives me hope for our future.
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Finally, A post about Homeschooling
I have a teachers meeting tomorrow, the first of THREE this week. I am a homeschooler, how and why do I have not one but three teachers meetings to deal with? This is one of the paradoxes of homeschooling...the use of a CRS (church related school) commonly known as an "umbrella school".
An umbrella protects you from the rain. An umbrella school protects us from social services and the truant officer. In Tennessee homeschooling is governed by something called the "Jeter Memo". Basically there are three ways to legally homeschool in Tennesse. The easiest by far, is the use of a CRS. But it is a trade-off. Isn't life ALWAYS like that? For the protection offered by the CRS, our home is considered a satellite campus. This means that I am faculty. And once a year I must attend a faculty meeting. Tuesday night is this year's faculty meeting.
But that is NOT my first teacher's meeting this week, Oh no, my first teacher's meeting is tomorrow morning at 10 am. Because I have an only child, I DO worry even more than the average homeschooler, about the dreaded "S" word.
Socialization
Socialization is one of the reasons we choose to participate in a homeschool co-op each week. Last year I taught art and science. This year I've dropped the science class and am teaching Art/Music to the K through 6th graders and Bible to the 7th through 12th graders. Tomorrow we have a mandatory teachers meeting.
Finally we are charter members of the "Keepers Club" (think Girl Scouts meets AWANA) and we have a planning meeting for that group on Thursday night that IS essentially a teacher's meeting.
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE homeschooling. I LOVE each of these groups. It's just that I HATE meetings! Call it a social, a fellowship, a luncheon, something...but please, DON'T call it a meeting. I hate meetings. And this week I have three of them
I have a teachers meeting tomorrow, the first of THREE this week. I am a homeschooler, how and why do I have not one but three teachers meetings to deal with? This is one of the paradoxes of homeschooling...the use of a CRS (church related school) commonly known as an "umbrella school".
An umbrella protects you from the rain. An umbrella school protects us from social services and the truant officer. In Tennessee homeschooling is governed by something called the "Jeter Memo". Basically there are three ways to legally homeschool in Tennesse. The easiest by far, is the use of a CRS. But it is a trade-off. Isn't life ALWAYS like that? For the protection offered by the CRS, our home is considered a satellite campus. This means that I am faculty. And once a year I must attend a faculty meeting. Tuesday night is this year's faculty meeting.
But that is NOT my first teacher's meeting this week, Oh no, my first teacher's meeting is tomorrow morning at 10 am. Because I have an only child, I DO worry even more than the average homeschooler, about the dreaded "S" word.
Socialization
Socialization is one of the reasons we choose to participate in a homeschool co-op each week. Last year I taught art and science. This year I've dropped the science class and am teaching Art/Music to the K through 6th graders and Bible to the 7th through 12th graders. Tomorrow we have a mandatory teachers meeting.
Finally we are charter members of the "Keepers Club" (think Girl Scouts meets AWANA) and we have a planning meeting for that group on Thursday night that IS essentially a teacher's meeting.
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE homeschooling. I LOVE each of these groups. It's just that I HATE meetings! Call it a social, a fellowship, a luncheon, something...but please, DON'T call it a meeting. I hate meetings. And this week I have three of them
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
An Idol called NORMAL
For most of my life I have wanted only one thing, to be normal. That was all. Just to be Normal. It didn’t seem to me too much to ask. I wanted desperately to fit in, to blend in to be invisible. To simply be normal.
I was different. I was an only child. I was a gifted only child. I had a rapport with adults that other children my age didn’t. I genuinely wanted to please my parents, my teachers my mentors. I was reading fluently when I began first grade. I had to arrive at school an hour early for special instruction and my classmates resented the “help” I was assigned to give the. Even at that very early age, I was not NORMAL. And I wanted to be. I wanted that more than anything in the whole world.
I have, to this very day, strove to be normal. It was my goal. My desire. My obsession. My idol. Yes, my idol. Today I have been convicted that my idol is this illusive thing called “normal”.
I wasn’t called to be normal. And God isn’t willing to let me settle for normal either. Normal is being conformed to this world…and God has called me to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Normal is Peter denying Christ with curses as the rooster crowed. Normal is an idol and today it fell.
God showed me what I was asking him for when I kept begging to be normal. He showed me that normal was my Tarshish when I was called to go to Ninevah. For those of you that don’t get the reference…think three days in a whale belly. Only I’ve spent THIRTY YEARS here. God called me to himself. He anointed me to proclaim freedom to the captives. He didn’t commission me to be normal. He commissioned me to lead. And that frightens me. The scripture that He gave me as my “marching orders” is the same scripture that almost got Christ stoned for blasphemy when he claimed it as his commission. I have a call on my life, a charge to keep and what was holding me back from it was the siren song of “normal.”
Truly, none of us were created to be “normal” we are told again and again that we are called according to God’s purpose. From the moment of our conception, when God knit us together in our mother’s womb, he had a plan for our lives. The trick is finding it. At least now I’m back on the path…not off chasing a rabbit trail called “normal”
For most of my life I have wanted only one thing, to be normal. That was all. Just to be Normal. It didn’t seem to me too much to ask. I wanted desperately to fit in, to blend in to be invisible. To simply be normal.
I was different. I was an only child. I was a gifted only child. I had a rapport with adults that other children my age didn’t. I genuinely wanted to please my parents, my teachers my mentors. I was reading fluently when I began first grade. I had to arrive at school an hour early for special instruction and my classmates resented the “help” I was assigned to give the. Even at that very early age, I was not NORMAL. And I wanted to be. I wanted that more than anything in the whole world.
I have, to this very day, strove to be normal. It was my goal. My desire. My obsession. My idol. Yes, my idol. Today I have been convicted that my idol is this illusive thing called “normal”.
I wasn’t called to be normal. And God isn’t willing to let me settle for normal either. Normal is being conformed to this world…and God has called me to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Normal is Peter denying Christ with curses as the rooster crowed. Normal is an idol and today it fell.
God showed me what I was asking him for when I kept begging to be normal. He showed me that normal was my Tarshish when I was called to go to Ninevah. For those of you that don’t get the reference…think three days in a whale belly. Only I’ve spent THIRTY YEARS here. God called me to himself. He anointed me to proclaim freedom to the captives. He didn’t commission me to be normal. He commissioned me to lead. And that frightens me. The scripture that He gave me as my “marching orders” is the same scripture that almost got Christ stoned for blasphemy when he claimed it as his commission. I have a call on my life, a charge to keep and what was holding me back from it was the siren song of “normal.”
Truly, none of us were created to be “normal” we are told again and again that we are called according to God’s purpose. From the moment of our conception, when God knit us together in our mother’s womb, he had a plan for our lives. The trick is finding it. At least now I’m back on the path…not off chasing a rabbit trail called “normal”
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