Find Your Joy! If you belong to one of the homeschool support groups I belong to, you’ll sooner or later here me singing this song!

When you belong to a support group, you will find that they depend on the members to step up to plate and help things work. You will find you have to do something. Now, you have plenty of choices, usually. Field Trip Coordinator; Teach a class for the co-op; Baby-sit the children of the teachers & those who have younger children; Phone Tree; Organizer of some party, get-together, or whatnot; Newsletter Editor; Board member; or….the list can be endless. Now you can choose something for yourself, or you can be roped into—umm, enthusiastically recruited into doing something you’d rather not do. Look at their list, won’t it be more pleasant to do something you’d rather do?

Here’s where my song comes into play!

Find your joy!

What floats your boat? What brings you joy? Or conversely, when it’s a hard list to choose from, what brings you down, is a chore, or something that sucks the life out of you? Scratch those off your list…whittle the list down…. Look for your joy.

For myself, I don’t “do” phone calls well at all. I hate doing “cold calling” where I don’t necessarily know the person on the other end or when they are not expecting my phone call. (And hate is a strong word. I try not to use it much, but phone calling is in that category for me. Strange, I know!) I’m also not fond of teaching a class. One of the reasons that I have always worked in the church nursery with the bed babies and have not been a Sunday School Teacher. What I do presently is just right for me: work the preschool hallway, helping the teachers in the room with things they might need, or taking children to the restroom. I don’t really have time for committee meetings…but you know what really floats my boat? Newsletters! Putting them together. Taking the diverse pieces of information and placing them in the “just right” spot in the newsletter. In some ways it’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together, so the newsletter looks right and flows well.

So of the three groups I belong to—what do you think I do? I’m the newsletter editor for each of them! Two are homeschooling support groups and one is the dog obedience club in which I belong. One of the homeschooling groups takes June & July off from the newsletter, so there’s a breather there; while the other two groups go year-round. That’s OK by me! LOL It’s because I have found my joy in serving the groups I belong. It’s not a chore or a hassle for me. That’s what I hope you can find in the area where you have a need to volunteer in whatever organization you belong….

Find Your Joy!

Donna Conner lives with her husband, Glenn, their son, Mike, and their beloved dog, Lucia, and calls Fort Worth, Texas home. Donna and Glenn have been homeschooling their son since the beginning of his education. Mike completes his homeschooling within the next two years. Donna is an artist and has always enjoyed writing. She wrote Homeschooling Only One three years ago, after discovering that there were many other families homeschooling only one child. Her website is devoted to those with only one student in their homeschool, with listings of online resources. You can visit her website at http://donnac.com and read her blog at http://homeschoolblogger.com/DonnaC

copyright © 2006 Donna Conner
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