You Are On and You Are It!

What did Melville write again - "The damp, drizzly November in my soul whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses?"

Exactly. Only make it January or February.

This is the season in a homeschooler's life when you get sick of sacrificing.

Your reasons for choosing homeschooling have changed.
Whatever they were so many years ago...

There was a time when it captured your heart. Everyone said, "Don't do it. It's a big job."
No, it's not a job, you would think back. It's a vocation. A calling.
The naysayers only made you more determined.

You expected great things. You wanted to make a difference. You thought - though you didn't dare say - that you might even be brilliant.

The years went by and you discovered that a vocation feels a lot like a job most of the time. A big job.

You decide not to think of the bigness of it all - just to go day by day. If God's in His heaven, the days will add up and the big job will one day be done.

You stop wondering if brilliance is just around the rainbow's end. You work towards doing your job.

Because you've signed up for it.
And everyone's got used to you doing it.
And they are counting on you.

YOU ARE ON AND YOU ARE IT!

Then, on a January or February day, the piercing wind settles down and you can feel the sun. You know it's just a mid-winter thaw before a final blast of winter. It's not spring. But for a day or maybe two, you get a whiff of spring in the air.

Manure?

No, it's probably just rotting leaves leaving their fast frozen state. Their black nutrients penetrate deep into the soil, renewing it, feeding the earth, the yellow sod, the brave onion grass, the irrepressible dandelions.

A dandelion smiles up at you from a crack in the sidewalk. It stays low and snug against the brown earth. Your kids planted it when they picked the white fuzz balls and blew the seeds into the air - not knowing the bother they were causing speckling the yard with weeds - not knowing the joy that one brilliant survivor would bring you on a winter day.

You take the kids outside and show them. You show them the tiny buds emerging on the trees. It won't be long now before you and the kids will emerge too, from your snug, warm house. Your spirits will lift and the season of sacrifice will pass.

It is passing now, settling down like the wind, letting you feel the sun. It streams in through the dusty window onto the kitchen table where your children finish their school work. Doing their job. Day to day. Just as you have taught them.

And it's brilliant.