Posted in Lessons from Life

This blog entry was chosen as the "Blogger's Choice" winner in HSB's Juggling with Hamster's writing contest, and will be featured in Jane Bullivant's new book, "Juggling with Hamsters-Raising Amazing Kids Without Chasing Your Tail." It will be in the chapter about being a true winner.  Her book will be released next year, and I'll be sure to let you know when it is available. Thank you so much to everyone who voted for my story about my amazing son, BJ, who is indeed a true winner.

Through It All

In my mind's eye, I can still see the little boy who stood in the middle of the hospital lobby reciting poetry, with wide blue eyes and his little-boy lisp, to an adoring audience of elderly cancer patients. Most were graduates of one-room schoolhouses, and had learned many of these same poems themselves. This little boy, my youngest son BJ, was as at home on the local cancer floor as he was in our living room, since the first months of homeschooling first grade were spent at the hospital helping care for my mother, who was dying of kidney cancer.

What a little trooper he was, never knowing from day to day whether his classroom would be our living room, the chemo lounge, the radiation center, Grandma's lovely home, or a hospital floor. Each day he was surrounded by the very sick and dying. And each day he entertained them all with his reading and recitations. How those people looked forward to seeing a child that young being taught in the same way they had been taught in those little red brick schoolhouses of their childhood.

His grandmother's pain was relieved for a time as she sat there just being proud of this special little boy who was always at her side. She took such joy in introducing him and showing him off to everyone. As a retired elementary schoolteacher, she would often help in his daily lessons.

Even at the age of 7, BJ learned about life and death, compassion, kindness, joy in the midst of great sorrow, how to relate to those who are ill, and how to be there when someone needs you. He was the best medicine many of those patients had each day, for he made them think of better days and better times in their lives, and tapped into long forgotten memories. He brought them joy.

He was there as his grandmother passed from this world into heaven. He will always remember that he was the last person that she spoke to, and remember the special bond they had, because he was able to be there, through it all .....

Through it all meant many things in our years of homeschooling. BJ was homeschooled on my sickbed, in our car, at the home of a family friend who had very ill children, and in so many other unusual situations, both good and bad.

It seemed so fitting that these last two years of BJ's schooling are ending much as they began. As he gave up his dream of graduating early, he was helping his sister realize her dream of helping her baby survive a pregnancy fraught with problems. When she was admitted to the hospital for complete bedrest, he helped to run her business. He learned to run a business, to work harder than most adults, and the meaning of self-sacrificial love.

His niece Ellora was born and made it all worthwhile for 10 all-too-short days before her sudden, unexpected death. And BJ was there for his sister as she handed her child from her own arms into the arms of Jesus.

This fall finds my son busy planning on how to keep his 82-year-old grandfather, who was diagnosed with lung cancer, busy through the fall this year. He plans to take him deer hunting as they have done every year, and to make sure that they both continue playing on the church dartball team. Grandpa is the most important person in his life, and I know that BJ will be there through it all for him, as he has been for so many others.

You might ask if his schooling has suffered. Perhaps, in the traditional sense. But in the areas that will help him succeed in life, he is far ahead of his peers. BJ has proven himself a leader and a doer.

Where did he learn these skills? He learned them while entertaining dying cancer patients, helping a sick mother, spending months helping a sick family, spending hours in the car to help with the family business, helping to bring a niece into this world through his self-sacrificial love for his sister and helping her cope with this precious child’s death, and by helping his elderly grandfather to continue to live life to the fullest. He learned to be the incredible young man he is today because with homeschooling, he could be there...through it all…

“Through it all…I’ve learned to trust in God”