Startling Revelation

I wrote this several weeks ago, but didn’t post it because I wanted to read it when I wasn’t in the midst of the hard time. I’ve reread it now and decided it’s worth sharing.

I’ve had a revelation.

Homeschooling is hard.

I’m not sure why that is so startling to me. I’ve been doing this for 6 years now. I know it has been hard. It’s just that I’ve had in the back of my mind that it’s not supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be wonderful with happy, smiling children who are excited about learning EVERYTHING and cheerfully do all their work ALL the time. So, since that hasn’t been my experience, I’ve sought to fix the problem.

That’s what I do. I want to solve problems. I’m very pragmatic by nature. If something isn’t working, then I’ll do whatever is necessary to fix it.

So when my son doesn’t want to write everything down on his assignment I’ll let him do it orally. He’s still learning right? When he doesn’t want to drill math facts or Latin declensions that’s fine because he really does know them. Why should we make homeschooling not fun?

Well guess what.  Sometimes work isn’t fun. Training for a race isn’t fun. (Neither is racing either for that matter.) We have to work to achieve our goals. If something doesn’t immediately solve a problem, that doesn’t mean that it’s the wrong answer.

So when my children don’t want to have to work, why am I surprised? Why do I expect them to just do something when it’s hard for them when I often fail at it myself? It takes continued effort when something is hard to see the benefit. Remembering the benefits can be helpful when things get hard again.

There are going to be times when homeschooling is hard. When that happens I don’t need to try to make it better. I need to persevere. I need to teach my children to keep working when something is hard. My evaluations need to be made when I’m not in the midst of a hard time. Too often I have given up on good things because I didn’t try hard enough.

Hopefully every minute of every day isn’t going to be hard. But there may be some days when it seems to be. There may be seasons where homeschooling is mostly hard. During those seasons, I need to make all efforts to look for positive things and to focus on our goals. I must continually give our homeschool over to the Lord. I pray that we will emerge from the difficult seasons much stronger.