Thanks for joining us! I’m creating this blog to chronicle a journey that is personal, but at the same time universal. Spirit-led, and an academic journey as well.
We have been a homeschool family for several years, but in the last two years have finally ‘hit our stride’ in many ways, on most days. We have felt a nudge to step up our game to a new level recently, and are excited about it. In previous years, we’ve discovered many approaches that don’t work well for our family or our situation, or were too much, or too little, in areas that are important to us. A mom and dad, three teenagers of varying personalities, interests, and capabilities, and a goal – together to live up to our individual and team potential, to support and love one another, and to heed the Savior’s call to ‘Come Follow Me’ in all areas of our life.
Do you want to know what we’ve learned and are learning? A secret or two perhaps?
- Accept your life. Learn from it. The lessons of ‘home school’ are there waiting to be discovered. Life is home school. Home learning is life. No two families or individuals are the same, and so a customized curriculum (life) is prepared for each of us. Embrace it.
- Truth exists outside of perception or bias. Sometimes it hurts to hear it, or requires hard work or multiple failures to find it. Truth has a source, and He invites us to live an integrated life aligned with what matters most and will eventually lead us home. He speaks that truth in love, the purest kind of love. He is both love and truth at the same time. We can follow Him and learn to become more like Him.
- People matter. Family matters. Relationships require effort and patience, and were meant to provide us with opportunities to learn to love, forgive, encourage, challenge and support one another.
- Improve yourself first and always. Invite others (including your children, your spouse, your friends) along – but in ways small and large, easy and hard, DO what speaks to your own life’s work, your own strengths and struggles, whether or not others see the purpose or vision that you do. Resist the urge to judge them if they do not immediately follow. Inspire people with your example instead of requiring (or expecting) something of them. If you parent or homeschool, you will discover that they will come along eventually when they understand some essential things:
- you mean it, in an authentic way – you are BECOMING someone, growing and learning, and
- you love them, in an authentic way – you want the very BEST for their present happiness and future joy also, and
- it is worth it. The motivation to learn and improve must come from inside each soul, and life will present many opportunities to engage what speaks worth to each individual. Plant and nourish seeds instead of focusing on the harvest, and leave the rest to God. It is in good hands there.
We have and will yet have many bad (or not so good) days on this journey. Everyone does. But we end each day with the knowledge that a new day will dawn and we can try again. Before long, we notice that we have more good days than bad – even a few GREAT days. Today is a great day to try something new. It is a new year.
Glad we are here together.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
