OK ladies...fess up. How many of you can relate to the cartoon? I must admit I can. I just finished reading Grace4Gayle’s recent entry on condemnation and homeschooling. It was a good one and really got me thinking. Why do we, as homeschool moms, carry such a weight of condemnation? Why do we constantly compare ourselves to what others are doing? The condemnation is usually coming from self. I have never had another hs mom look down on me (at least to my face) for something I did or did not do. No, we are our own worst critics. Lest you doubt, here are some of my own personal (allbeit shallow) examples.
We've all been there. You run into Mrs. Jones at Mom's Night Out and find out that little Suzie (who just happens to be the same age as your son) is taking Spanish and French immersion classes. Just for a moment (however fleeting), you consider whether you should add that to your curriculum. Don't deny it...we've all been there. We hold on to those lingering doubts and needling questions...am I doing enough? Am I doing all God wants me to be doing? The enemy knows our insecurities and will nail us to the wall every time if we allow him to.
Here's another one. I’ve tried my hand at gardening several times. This past summer I finally admitted to myself that I just don’t like it. I’d rather go to the Farmer’s Market and buy the homegrown stuff from someone who enjoys growing it and then sells it to me. Why did I keep doing it for so long? Here comes the transparent me…because I thought all good homeschooling families were suppose to have a garden and more importantly, were suppose to enjoy it. Yikes! Oh my goodness…just typing that makes me realize how silly it sounds. Here I am doing something I don’t even enjoy simply because somewhere in the recesses of my mind I think this is what a good homeschool mom should be doing. What is the matter with me???
There are so many “hot topics” within the homeschool circles. We see the quiverful, dress wearing homeschool mom on the cover of the magazine who makes all her kids’ clothes, grinds her own wheat, and bakes all her own bread, her children never watch TV or eat sugar and they all study Greek and Latin. Please hear me out. If you do any (or all!) of these things, then kudos to you! My point is that we hold this “homeschool mom” ideal before us and more often than not we fail to measure up to the standards we have set. Therein lies the problem. We are looking to man’s standards and not to God’s. I have to ask myself, “What does God want OUR family to look like?” A verse comes to mind that my little brother learned to quote when he was two. (read with a slight two-year old lisp) “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8. That can look like many different things, depending on who God created us to be. We need to stop the comparison games. I would love to do some of the above-mentioned things and actually enjoy them, but I am who God created me to be. I am a Starbucks lovin’, recovering shop-a-holic, city girl who has no desire to live in the country and own animals, shops at Old Navy and couldn’t sew a straight stitch to save my life, loves Jesus and my family with all my heart, hates gardening, buys bread from the store and wouldn’t know a wheat berry if it hit me in the face kinda gal! I am a work in progress and I will not try to be someone I am not.
Wow…that felt really good!
|
