Ever wonder how some people manage to do it all, do it well and keep their sanity? Listen very carefully because I'm going to tell you how. Two short and simple four letter words. They Don't. That's right, you heard me. Nobody manages to do it all, and if they are trying to do it all, they aren't doing it well and they won't keep their sanity for long. Martha Stewart? She does not do it all. It has been brought to my attention that she has a tomato intern. Tomato intern? Uh yeah.... Go Martha. My enthusiasm is understated.

So as I layed my protesting body down on my bed for the fourth time today to feed my strapping little four month old who weighs (and probably eats) as much as some one year olds, and looked at the hampers of laundry waiting to be put away, and the hampers of laundry waiting to yet be washed, the stray toys trailing across the floor out my door and into the landing, pictured the kids rooms in utter disarray and started to mentally calculate all the things I *didn't* get done today, my heart sank. But then I started to think. So often when we look at people, and set them up as ideal role models or examples of what we would like to achieve, we don't see the tomato intern that's backing them up. If you look at the women in bible times, they didn't do it all. Lots of them had nurse maids feeding their babies (what a load that relieves, not that I'd want to take anyone up on it, just saying is all...). Most of them were not the only wife in the farmhouse if you get my drift. They were not solely responsible for it all.

So girls, if you're feeling like me, or anything close; run yourself a hot bubble bath tonight. Light some candles in the bathroom. turn on some gentle background music to muffle the noises of a busy household. Grab your novel and sink yourself into some well deserved relaxation. Calgon take me away.... Heaven knows, it may not look like I've accomplished much today, but just keeping a smile on my face and gentleness in my voice is a monumental accomplishment in and of itself. I can't do it all. I don't want to do it all. I refuse to be defined by what I am *not* doing, and choose to focus on what I *am* doing.

I'm loving people
I'm rejoicing
I'm at peace
I'm making quality time for my Father, my husband and my kids
I'm producing as much milk as a Jersey cow
I'm cuddling a baby who hungers for touch as much as for milk
I'm processing oodles of fresh produce to feed my family
I'm washing, folding, and putting away a WHOLE lotta laundry
I'm keeping up with my dishes.
I'm sorting through rubbermaid container after rubbermaid container of off season clothing.

That's alot. That's enough. I think the key to accomplishing something is not trying to accomplish everything.

Moms Rock.

meeting in the midst of the mundane.

And when I say mini, I really mean mini. Oh and for the record, this will probably fall under preposterous for the majority of you, but this is me, and preposterous is just part and parcel of my personality. Alrighty then. Moving right along....

The Path to Berry Girl's House....

Isn't it funny (well not really, but proverbially speaking) how you fight so hard to be understood only to realize that in your zeal you have forgotten to make a very important qualification that kind of changes the way everything may or may not be received. In all of my posts explaining why we homeschool, why the arguments against homeschooling don't convince us, etc I just realized last night that I have completely forgotten to make a very important qualification. While I have stated repeatedly that I am not *anti* public school, I have never expressed the full truth of the matter, that we are actually *pro* public school. Everything I have shared has been our convictions on raising our *children*. There comes an age where *children* become young adults. And as such, everything changes. People don't stay disciples forever. There comes a point where they are ready to step out from under the wing of their teacher and start putting into practice what they have been taught.

In real life people have asked us if we intend to send our kids to school at some point and the answer is YES. Why? This is the funny part! Because many of the arguments that I am defending ourselves against HAVE MERIT AND ARE TRUE. It's all about timing for us. We don't believe that we need to send our 4, 6 or 9 year old children to school for these reasons. We WILL send our 16 year old child to school for these reasons. Maybe even our 15 year old. We don't think you can put an age on it, the teacher will know when the timing is right. Why 15 and not 5 you ask? We have likened it to the whole apprenticeship simile before. By the time our child is the age of 15 or 16 they are no longer an apprentice who works and learns under the careful tutelage and supervision of their master. There comes a day when the apprenticeship role has reached it's fulfillment and the apprentice is given more independence and more space to practice what they have learned independently from their teacher while still under their supervision. This is what high school looks like for us. The transition of a child from apprentice, to those years of indentured experience, preparing one in a new way to become their own master __________ (fill in the blank) in whatever path God has chosen for them as adults.

When I realized that I had never expressed this here, or forget to express it often in real life because I am so busy defending our choices for our little children I just groaned at my stupidity. It's funny to realize that if I add a 1 before my daughter's age I could (and will) heartily agree with some of the arguments people give me against homeschooling.

Interesting.

See that little post down there with the accented e? I don't even know how to do an accented e. That blog post is courtesty of my 2 year old pistol packer. Now how on earth......???

Moving on....

I just posted a "Keepin' it Real" type reply in the comments of my Winsome Wednesday post, and thought that in the interests of *really* keeping it real I would copy it into the general body of a new post, because it's not really "keepin' it real" if you hide it in the comments of an old post now is it?

Joy asked me... "Is your life always this beautiful?" My reply...

Ha ha ha, ho ho ho, Joy. No my life is not always this beautiful. I have crusty cereal on my lino and tomato sauce running down the front of my stove, and fruit flies invading my kitchen, and spit up running down the front of my shirt as we speak. But like I said this morning to my wonderful girlfriends at coffee time at Berry Girl's house... I work really hard to find the beauty in a sinkful of dirty dishes even though I KNOW I am gonna be enjoying a dishwasher TO THE MAX one of these days. But for now.... I take joy in the mundane so that I don't go insane. Hey, that's catchy. I like it. I'm such a card. I love life. I have to say it again, cause I was kind of intense the other day, forgive me everyone, but I really do love life. Life in general. Not just mine. I love that life is work, that we've never arrived, that we can work through stuff together, and grow. Closer to Him, and closer to one another. This is my prayer for all of my relationships, Lord... let it be so. Why I am going on and on like this in a comment that no one is probably going to read I have absolutely *no* idea, but it feels good anyway. sigh. Did I use the word insane up there? I just might be borderline.... don't leave me alone too long with my own thoughts, things get dangerous.

The other question was; "Do you carry your camera with you everywhere you go?" And my reply to that is, no, but when I'm *not* carrying it I usually regret it! I don't know, I just like to capture daily moments. It's like journaling to me, trapping a moment in time and bottling it up for future re-enjoyment. Although it's kind of funny because I'm usually so busy absorbing the current moment that I don't tend to have time to reflect on past ones, but it's an idiosyncrasy of mine anyway. Idiosyncrasies are like that aren't they?

Important. Please Read.
For the record, about Sunday's post. Have grace. I can tend to be a very abstract person and analytical, and passionate, and expressive, sometimes to my detriment (or the detriment of those around me). For the record, and I've shared this in private, but feel the need to do so in public, since the words were public (this is turning into a major run on sentence), that post stemmed from my analyzation of an abstract concept and a series of unconnected but similar situations that have occurred to me and numerous people in my life in recent months. I'm talking at least 5 isolated cases involving 5 different sets of people, one of them me.

It is a response to a common and broad, here's that word again, abstract discussion, and not meant to be directed to anyone in a personal way. If you took it personally, I sincerely, whole heartedly apologise and want you to know that this argument has been presented by 99% of the people who discuss homeschooling with us, so you are in a large majority, and if I was passionate it's because I am in a large minority, and it's hard to feel not heard or understood (or even cared about enough to be given the benefit of the doubt or even trivial interest in how we got here) sometimes. So it was completely about me "opening up my heart" in the hopes of being understood than it was a treatise against others who have used this statement .

Also, I want to make it very clear that in defending our choice (operative word here, it's a choice, there is no right or wrong), and our *personal* conviction that the best way for *us* to fulfill our mandate to train up our children is this path that we have chosen, I reiterate once again, or possibly more clearly that this does *not* mean that we secretly believe that people who don't homeschool are not obeying this same mandate. Or in any way are less passionate about raising kids to be salt and light than we are. Please understand this. My whole reason for writing the post was to express that "we care about this too", "we are passionate about this too!" not that "if you *really * care about being salt and light you would homeschool". Does that make sense? It has been brought to my attention that despite my deepest effort to *not* polarize the issue, it nonetheless could be construed that way.

This is so not my heart. And I want that to be very, very clear. My heart is that we (public schoolers and homeschoolers) understand, support, encourage and applaud one another in this journey of intentional parenting. Period. I need encouragement. I need understanding. I need support. Sometimes desperately. And I don't have it. If I express myself passionately it's a plea to be heard, to be understood, to be supported in this path we have chosen.

I have been given much grace, my heart overflows with grace, I seek consciously and determinedly to communicate with clarity and grace, but somehow, that abstract thought process part of my personality often throws a wrench in the works and makes people who view things from a more personal and emotional (rather than abstract and mental) approach feel... well I don't know how I they feel, cause I've never been there, but I'm guessing something like having been bombarded by a million tennis balls, or something. Is that what I do to people? Heaven forbid! I'm feeling terribly sheepish and insecure right now. I so want to be a sweet, loving encouraging person. I am a sweet, loving, and encouraging person, but I need to work on making sure that people of different personalities *feel* that. I'm a work in progress. Have grace. And I will have the same for all of you.

é

Okay, here's the latest installment to my homeschooling series. Touching on the argument "christian kids belong in public school because if we take all the christian kids out of school who is going to be salt and light to the non-christian kids?" Let me preface this post as I have others (and I will reitterate this later to make sure it is not forgotten) that I am not against public school. This post is my personal defense of a common argument *against* home schooling. This argument (christian kids need to be salt and light in public school) doesn't cut it with me for a number of reasons.

1. It blurs the purpose of public school just like the socialization issue does. SCHOOL is about education. It has been made into so much more, but it's fundamental and founding purpose was to educate our children in the 3 R's. SCHOOL is not a mission field for christian kids. It's not a battlefield for them to fight out their burgeoning faith amongst the waves of secularism, humanism and materialism that run rampant in our society. When kids are *in* school, it can become both of those things for them, and sometimes for their benefit. But this was not an adequate argument to convince us that we should place our children in public school. Life is a mission field. The world is a battle field. Our every step as believers in this humanist, secular, materialistic world is a struggle and victory. The argument sounds spiritual, the great commission and all, but it completely misses the point that children are *part* of the great commission, not the ones commissioned to carry it out. Christian kids are not commissioned to be missionaries. Christian parents are commissioned to disciple their own children.

2. It insinuates that any family that chooses to homeschool doesn't have the same opportunity or passion to be salt and light. I hesitate to say this, the last thing I want is to sound haughty, in any way whatsoever, but raw truth here, there are very, very few people who appear to care as passionately and singlemindedly as we do about raising our kids to be salt and light. It is our inherent desire for them, and our prayer each day as we dilligently work to train them and go about life with them. Public school is not the be all and end of all of opportunity for christian witness. On the contrary, I think it often contributes to "busy-ing" people to the point of robbing them sometimes of more valuable opportunities to be salt and light in natural, simple, down home living. But that's beside the point. Public schooled or home schooled is not the issue here, being a light wherever you walk, whoever you interact with is. We are not home 24/7, we live in this world too, we spend time with our neighbours, make trips to town, reach out to people with kids our age. And I watch my kids and I see them being salt and light. As for me, no I am not as free to run around and socialize day in and day out. But this blog has been such an encouragement to me that I don't need to be "out there" to be salt and light. I can be here, being me, doing what He has called me to do, and He can choose to use that in any number of ways. Just the fact that on any given day 70-200 people visit this blog, comment, email me or stop me in the street (this always gives me a bit of a jolt but I love it) to tell me how my words either challenged them or brought them joy, encouragement, peace or blessing shows me that God will use me where I'm at. And God will use my kids where they are at, which is usually at this point somewhere in my general vicinity. I may not be a soccer mom or supervising public school trips, but I am interacting with so many people from my community and beyond, believers and non, every day on levels that would be very difficult to achieve just passing someone in a hallway as we drop our kids off at school or sitting on the sidelines at a soccer practice. And my kids are part of this.

3. Along the same lines, there seems to be this underlying and sincere belief that "if I just put myself here or there, in public school, supervising this activity, accompanying my child to this or that activity" I will be putting myself in the position to cross someone's path and minister to them. I used to struggle with this big time. I knew that God was calling me to *not* join the rat race of enrolling our kids in overscheduled organized sports or activities that required excessive time commitments on our part. But if we didn't do these things how on earth could we ever be salt and light? We would never have opportunity to interact with all those other parents running their rat race. I've come to see this as a huge farce. Prairie Guy and I have discussed how rare it is to even have a meaningful spiritual discussion with fellow believers when you are in the same public venue, never mind unbelievers. Those are generally not the times and places that this kind of heart to heart interaction takes place (not saying it never happens). Neither is public school. I am sure that I have had deeper and more meaningful spiritual interaction with people that God brought into my path in His own timing and way here in my own home, or as I run my neccesary errands, than I ever would trying to "put" myself out there in the midst of everyone else running the rat race. 3 minutes of ordained conversation, orchestrated from above, is worth oodles more than 3 hours of bleacher or poolside banter. So much attention is given to "establishing a connection" through this superficial type of "hanging", but I am with Henry Blackaby on this one... God is the one at work to draw people to Himself, He will start the drawing, and He will invite us to enter into what *He* is already doing, the work that *He* has already begun. We don't have to make ourselves busy looking for opportunities or trying to intersect Him. We need to put our heart out there and let Him make the appointment and keep our eyes and ears open to be able to recognize it when IT COMES ALONG.

4. It tends to overlook the fact that kids are disciples, not apostles. The whole salt and light argument is a straw man argument, because the fact of the matter is that as Christians, we ARE salt and light just by breathing. At least we should be. It's our job to make sure we are. It's not a job of "discipling" other people, it's a job of walking in the fruit in every situation. My kids are no less salt and light to non-christian kids just because they don't spend 6 hours a day with them. The time they do spend with them, is their time to shine. It's quality, not quantity. As disciples, their role is one of careful observer and copying of their teacher's (the parent's) training. We look to Jesus and how he interacted with his disciples to be our example to how we should disciple our children. Jesus was WITH his disciples the majority of the time. He sent them off here and there and gave them opportunity to spread their wings, but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of the time they were physically present with him observing Him and learning from His example. We are ordered to carefully train and disciple our children, not to send our children out into the role of discipling others.

5. It ignores the stats. Statistics show that christian kids are more negatively affected by their non-christian peers than vice-versa. Recent american studies show that 3 out of 5 christian kids range from complete apathy to outright rejection of their childhood faith upon graduation and stepping into independence. Now, I am in no way blaming this on public school. The research analyzers don't blame it on schooling. They blame it on parenting. As I've said before, I believe it is an extremely difficult job to disciple your children adequately when they are spending more time under the influence of others (public school teachers, coaches, peers, even leaders of good christian programs) than they are spending with YOU. How much of an impact do we, who are called to train them, expect to have when we are running in all directions, don't see our school age children all day and then one or the other of child or parent is running in separate directions for activities 3-5 evenings a week? Even secular psychologists are urging families of the importance to a child's and family's health and well being to "slow down", "eat together", "less action more interaction".

6. It seems to scoff in the face of the months (in our case years) of careful examining, analyzing, observing, praying with blood, sweat and tears home schooling parents have spent before making their decision. It treats a very difficult choice that some of us believe to be our duty and calling in order to raise kids who truly are salt and light, with almost a superiority and a snub nosed reaction that implies "how will your kids ever learn to persevere? how can your kids ever be a testimony? how will they ever learn to mature in their faith and life if they aren't sent out on their own?" These implied comments cut to my very soul and wound. Because our first and foremost calling and ambition (and indeed part of the reason we choose to homeschool) as parents is to

In order for our children to be salt and light, they need to be seeped in salt and light. Is it possible to do this when your children are public schooled? Yes. My argument is not and has never been against people who send their kids to public school. Heaven knows many children have graduated public school, and been parented well, and turned into strong, upstanding believers. The struggles they face there *can* serve to make them strong, sometimes. My only argument is that public schooling believers should not discount homeschooling as a valid, honourable, obedient, and support worthy choice for christian parents seeking to raise a generation of adults passionate about God and His kingdom. We are playing on the same team, we care just as fervently if not more fervently than the next parent about being salt and light in the world. To have someone dismiss that important and personal choice with arguments that are near and dear to your heart is so frustrating and disheartening. As christians we are called to spur one another on to good works, encourage one another as we seek to honor God in our daily lives. This doesn't look the same for all of us. It doesn't HAVE to look the same for all of us. I don't look down on parents who send their kids to public school by any means. I look UP to them (the ones who are intentionally discipling their kids at least). They have their work cut out for them. But so do we.

meeting in the midst of the mundane. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us. The Scriptures give us patience and encouragement so that we can have hope. Patience and encouragement come from God. Romans 15:4-5

This week we will be meeting at the well to encourage one another through fellowship over the following passages;

Monday-Genesis 42
Tuesday-Judges 18
Wednesday-II Kings 20
Thursday-Job 42
Friday-Isaiah 42
Saturday-Mark 14
Sunday-1 Corinthians 16