A Deliberate Life

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of life, 

and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

~~ Henry David Thoreau 

Shortly after I started this blog, I considered alternate names for it -- I humbly acknowledged that "Karen Edmisten" is not particularly clever, and I daydreamed about what I might've named my blog had I given it more thought before I hit the "Create Blog" button. My favorite alternate-universe name was A Deliberate Life.  It summed up what I want my world to be: Deliberate. Thoughtful. A life with love and purpose. Conviction.

"Deliberate" also tends to conjure the notion of "A Plan." But I've never been terribly good at plans, and certainly not at anything like The Five Year Plan.

But not to worry, because "deliberate" and "planned", it turns out, are not at all the same thing.

I can think of numerous deliberate lives that were not particularly planned.

Take Robert Frost, for instance. Although he went to Dartmouth and Harvard, he never earned a degree. He worked at a variety of jobs just to make a living. A biography at Poets.org notes that "Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel." From the outside, before anyone knew that Robert Frost would be Robert Frost For Heavens' Sake, he might've appeared to be something of a slacker. A job hopper. People perhaps shook their heads over the college dropout.

But he was deliberate.

He was a poet. It's who he was, and he knew it.

Van Gogh was an artist. He was a mess, but he was an artist, and he knew it. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta fed the hungry for Jesus, even when she felt dry and far from His embrace. It's who she was. Marie Curie was a scientist, Madeleine L'Engle was a writer. Though difficulties and sufferings came upon them, they lived deliberately. They knew the essential facts of their lives.

At my house, we will embark this week on our twelfth year of homeschooling. My life has been full of meanderings, changes, about-faces, and periods when I appeared undoubtedly to the world to be a slacker. But, since my conversion, I have been living that deliberate life. Unquestionably still full of twists and turns, alarming developments -- such as becoming a mother, becoming a Catholic, becoming a homeschooler -- and messy days and sometimes anguished nights. But deliberate.

I know who I am.

And I can only hope that as we continue to follow this adventure that is homeschooling -- as we look at the final year of "high school" (whatever that is, really), and college, and job and life possibilities, and the swirling middle of the teen years for another daughter, and at an age that the world calls "fourth grade" for yet another --  that I can pass on to my cherished children the essence of the soul-calming peace that comes with knowing how you want to live.

I followed Jesus because I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of life, 

and see if I could not learn what Jesus had to teach, 

and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not loved Him.