Are "All Things" working for good in your life today?  Or are all those "things" weighing you down?  Thanks for stopping by to say hello~by the way.  If you came here from the Front Porch, well, Welcome to Homeschooling is Lists! Er, I mean, Life. 

I have a busy day ahead and am just getting a jump start here on the computer so I can tend to more um.....live pursuits.  The kids will be up and running soon and we have so many options and opportunities that are waiting for us.  We have a lot to talk about, mountains to climb, games to play, wars to win.  We have messes to clean, good food to eat and clothes to wash.  The animals need to be feed and so does Dad :)

We had a more than wonderful day yesterday at the CSA farm that we are doing a work-share on.  I urge you to look into this for your family.  Community Supported Agriculture is a way to see what it's like to live and work the farm life......a smidgen anyway.  Our few hours of work per week are just a taste of what really goes on there 24/7, as they say.

Yesterday we cleaned and washed and bundled several types of beets for the work shares and market.  The kids got a great kick out of the "torpedo" beets!  They loved the name.  We also washed and packed Japanese turnips and did some weeding, watering and digging.  Some of the kids washed and packed fresh eggs.  Did you know that a fresh egg will not hard-boil?  It takes 12 days for them to be "boilable." 

While at the farm, a dear older gentleman began to talk to me and said that he told the farm owner that we were homeschoolers.  The owner said, "are you asking me if they are?"  The man said, "No, I am making a statement."  He told me he could tell we were homeschoolers, just by our actions.  Hmmmmm.

He said that we were conscientious and that he heard me "following through" with the kids on tasks.  He said that todays kids don't have any accountability or sense of responsibility.  I assured him that we were far from perfect, but that we were working on it and thankful for the gift of our children, and our mandate to train them at home.

He went on to tell me that there was an educational revival in the 1800's and that He believed that the Lord was bringing about another educational revival right now, through homeschoolers.  I tend to think that we have to have personal revival, it's not just he homeschooling movement itself that will effect our future.  (Our country, and our families futures.)  It was a great discussion we had about the mistakes parents make in discipline, and how realization and repentance can turn your whole family around.  I was blessed.

Back at the beginning of this entry I posed the question; are All Things working for good in your life today?  We are sum of all our experiences, are we not?  And things past and things present can certainly affect our here and now, can't they?  In the recent edition of TEACHmagazine, Cindy Rushton has an article called "Women with a questionable past."  Oh, gee, I thought.....maybe I ought to read this......

Well, Cindy was writing about women of the Bible.....but I was thinking: "Me."

True confession time.  There are a lot of things in my life that were shameful.  Even though I think I tried to be "good" for many years in my young life, the tide swept me along.  I eventually succumbed to the pressure and started living for the moment.  With not an inkling of the future or even immediate consequences of many of my actions, I went completely off the deep-end.  And the very sad part of it was that I was conditioned by "society" to think it was all acceptable.

I will spare you the gorey details.  Someday....if I feel the Lord leading me to share more, I will.  It grieves my spirit to think of how thoughtless, ignorant, arrogant and careless I was for many years.  I hurt a lot of people.  And I hurt myself.

"But God in His Great Mercy touched my life."  That may sound a bit cliche' but it is true!  One day I found out that I wasn't just a mistake or an accident or a cosmic experiment of random chance.  I had a purpose and a name.  And God knew me and knit my form together in my mother's womb.  That realization completely changed my life, inside and out.

So now I am perfect and just live happily ever after, right?

Well, no.

Life is still a journey, and I still have a questionable past.  BUT, although it may have been meant for evil, God meant it for good.  I can use my experiences for His Glory.  Not mine.  Although sometimes I get a bit cocky here on my blog, please, don't think I have arrived and expect your allegiance.  I love the comments, the praises, but Give God the Glory, not me.

Spunky posed a question about what are our greatest challenges as homeschoolers. I think we tend to think of the day-to-day stuff, or the individual needs of our kids.....those were my first thoughts.  But thinking deeper I realize that it is my past that is my greatest challenge to my homeschooling efforts.  The bell ringing-lecture-peer relationship garbage of public school experience that is ever present in my make up trips me up.  The mistakes I made "hanging on" in my mind just waiting to jump out and ruin a perfectly good homeschooling day.  My stumbling block is trying to get past the things that are ingrained in me, those things that I hate and don't want in the lives of my children----but are ever present in who I am, or hopefully, "was." 

The task of renewing my mind is the greatest challenge---old habits and ideas die hard.  The change from degenerate to REgenerate came instantaneously, but the processes and paths of daily living need to be re-worked, re-newed.  Much of our lives are one giant reflex.  We do things every day, because we have done them every day.  Change is hard!  Ask anyone who is trying to lose weight, kick a habit or change their thinking.

It may be a challenge, but it IS possible.  God's word tells us to renew our minds.  "Do not be conformed to this world, but be Transformed by the renewing of your mind."  We can be transformed by a lot of new ideas, but let's be renewed by the age-old wisdom of the one who created us.

He forgives, and in Him ALL THINGS are made new!

Hang in there today.  If God is for us, then who can be against us!

Nancy

Homeschooing Is LIFE!

p.s. my friend was featured on Crosswalk.com this week.  Now here is a gal who can write!  Oh, and while you are blogging, check out this contest at Lorrie's blog.  Only a couple days left to enter to win a book from her.

Related Tags: homeschooling challenges, spunkyhomeschool, home education, community supported agriculture, TEACH magazine