So, at least for the summer, this seems to be my Monday morning thing to do!   If you'd like to participate in this meme, visit Carol at ThreeLittleLadies, and be sure to leave your link so that we can check in and see what you're up to as well.

As an individual, I…

love how the Lord uses us, even in our unworthiness,  to minister to one another.   Our family drove to Baton Rouge to spend the weekend with another homeschooling family that we met a couple of years ago.    They were traveling from the D.C. area.   We didn’t have as long to connect as I would have liked, but I was so in awe of God as the mother shared with me how much I had encouraged her over the relatively short time we’ve known each other.     She has homeschooled all of her children’s lives; for that, I am envious.   Yet, she struggled with the legitimacy of homeschooling, and especially of her efforts.   She is a college-educated woman whose parents expected her to continue through graduate school and maybe (she never said this) work and achieve before marriage and kids—very much the life I lived.    Instead, she married right out of college and grappled ever since with being, in her words, “just a wife and mom.”    This society—pardon me, this very jacked-up (or skewed, for those who long for more eloquence) does such a number on our collective psyche about what a woman or a man should do, and sadly, those who love us most can also be most guilty of trying to force fit us into a place that’s comfortable for them.      I believe I’ve shared this story before, but, had I followed my own dream, I would have been a journalist—the only way I knew at the time to make money and follow a passion for writing.   However, one of my sisters very disapprovingly told me that journalists make no money.   As a young teenager—about the age that my oldest is now—I needed approval, and when I didn’t get it, so went my dream.   It would be difficult to look back at my life now with regrets, but I told my friend that she need not concern herself with never having worked in corporate America and “having a level of personal achievement” (again, her words).    When you work for someone else, you have to subject all that you are to fulfill someone else’s dreams, and you often are working in environments and trying to befriend people whose values have little to do with your own.    What is the personal achievement of that?   Anyway, my friend said that hearing me talk about what the kids were doing from time to time allowed her to see that being a wife and mom is a worthwhile pursuit, and that it is hard work.    She said that when I shared, it made her think, “She really takes this seriously,” and it has allowed her to take plotting her children’s course more seriously as well.   Praise God that my rambling is helping someone.

Two seems to be my magic number, as in two formal workouts per week for the last several weeks.   I won’t even go into the normal “this week should be better.”    I’ll just keep plowing away at it.    I hate the way that men’s and women’s bodies respond so differently to diet and exercise.   We received our Wii Fit as a Christmas present.   While unemployed, my husband worked out just about every day.   Now, however, we work out about the same number of times a week; we eat the same diet (he actually eats more).    All of his clothes are falling off, and I’m just praying not to have to buy new ones for myself.   I must have a metabolism that a slug could outrun.

As a wife and homemaker, I…

am concerned that our older kids don’t know how to do more around the house.     They have chores, but the oldest’s list of “can-dos” is substantially shorter than mine when I was 14.   Because of everything else we’ve had going on this summer, I haven’t been able to coach in some of the areas I wanted to.    Our son helps with cooking; the oldest is usually moving too slow to spend time in the kitchen.   They were to wash dishes on weekends, but that hasn’t happened yet, and when the oldest asked my husband how to wash a bowl on last weekend (in part to fake ignorance and attempt to get out of doing it, I’m sure), I felt as if I was slipping.    It’s so easy at times to do things yourself rather than to slow down and teach them to someone else.    Last week, all three children and I got down on our knees and cleaned the upstairs baseboards.   True confession: I’d never cleaned them in the almost 10 years that we’ve lived in the home, but they honestly didn’t look too bad.   The kids did a wonderful job.    As crazy as it sounds, I flirted with having the girls do this rather than asking our son to help.   Admittedly, this was a slip back into my traditional thinking about what men do in a home as opposed to what women do.   I quickly dismissed it because 1) the five-year-old wouldn’t be able to clean as well as he could, and 2) I don’t want to raise a slob or a chauvinist.     As I look at a sofa full of unfolded clothes (another gap between the oldest’s skills and mine), it occurs to me that I need to tighten this up.

As a mom and homeschooling parent, I…

am plowing along in this area as well.     I’ll work with the youngest on math, phonics and reading as soon as I finish this entry (if she allows me to complete it with little interruption—not likely).

We completed American history—hooray!!   I think that, now that we’re practically into July, the kids can actually begin to feel like it’s a summer vacation (smile).   Without knowing what all will transpire over next school year, it intrigues me to see how much the kids would ask to do over the summer if I left it totally up to them.   Maybe next summer…

As a business owner, I…

am preparing to speak at the Heart of the Matter Conference in August.  More immediately, I am back in editing mode and looking forward to adding some great new reads and activities to the elementary curriculum.

God bless your week this week, too.