Do I Stay or Do I Go?

This is from the archives, and was originally published by Faith & Family several years ago, but I think the topic is always worth revisiting. It's about listening to God's scheduling memos: When to volunteer? When to pull back? It's an ever-changing push-me-pull-you, but I find that when I pay close attention to the memos, the message is usually clear.

I'm reprinting the article in its entirety below, and you can go to this archived link to see the original and comments.

~~~~~

Memo From God 

“But that’s my birthday!” my daughter protested. “How can you go on my birthday?”

My husband and I taught baptism classes in our parish, and I’d signed us up for June, oblivious to a date that should have been uppermost in my mind: the day my second daughter would turn 13.

“Ummm,” I fumbled, “well, you know we never seem to do parties on the actual day. We already talked about having the slumber party Friday night, didn’t we?”

She murmured assent and slumped away, carrying on her shoulders the weight of a forgetful, busy mother who (even with a constantly consulted day planner) had failed her.

It’s true that we’ve always been flexible with birthday party plans. Really. But, we still make a big deal of the day, party day or not, so I felt terrible. And guilty.

Prayerful Discernment
I’d been praying about the classes, and whether to continue or not. We share the teaching load with several other couples, and Tom and I are called on only a few times a year. But, in the last couple of years, whenever our turn popped up, we encountered a conflict with our kids’ schedules. Still, I told myself, stick with it. Surely such a minimal time commitment isn’t a big deal. But somehow I couldn’t avoid feeling nudged to give up this particular commitment.

And now, here was yet another conflict. I’d asked God for confirmation about my gut feeling and it seemed to have arrived. We stepped down from the teaching team.

Focus on Vocation
This isn’t the first time I’ve needed to pull back from a commitment or a committee, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. My primary commitment—to being an at-home, homeschooling mom—means that Tom and I must regularly tweak our schedules to keep them in harmony with our family’s goals.

That doesn’t mean we won’t volunteer again. But it does mean that we do it with a discerning eye. We step up to the plate when we feel clearly called to, but we’re equally willing to pull back when we see the need. It’s all part of adapting to the ever-changing circumstances of our growing family.

When we began teaching the baptism classes, our children were young and the parish offered babysitting each week (for both teachers and attendees.) We took the kids with us and emphasized to them that helping with the program was our family’s way of serving the parish together. But, as the kids grew, and their schedules changed, we began to wonder if this particular form of service was still right for us.

Continual Reassessment
In the past, we’ve made similar adjustments. Shortly after I was received into the Catholic Church, I joined our parish RCIA team. At the time we had only one child, and I actually loved getting out of the house once a week. Yes, I was giving my time, but it felt more as if I were receiving—I loved the riches of teaching, spending time with other committed Catholics (my husband was not yet Catholic), and offering support to those on journeys of conversion.

So, although RCIA was an intense time commitment, it didn’t feel like one in that season of our lives. It worked for us, and worked well until sometime after we had two children, with a third on the way. At that point, the demands of RCIA began to clash with my family and our homeschooling life, and it was time to step away.

And so it goes with every consideration of my time. As I live out this vocation of motherhood, I find I must frequently reassess how everything fits into that, rather than shoehorning my family into something I want to do, however good the “something” may be.

Sometimes I fail—I become the forgetful, busy mother who has disappointed her almost-thirteen-year-old. When that happens, it’s time to pray. I ask for some heavenly scheduling help, and then I read God’s memos and tweak accordingly.

He’s even better than a planner.

Covering Subjects in a Non-Traditional Way: Part the Second

Image Chef

The original question was:

"Where can one find examples of how common, daily activities with kids fit into 'subjects'?"

So, let's start with the activities, rather than starting with the subjects, and we'll start with very young children, because we all have to start somewhere.

A few everyday activities and their relevance to education (and life):

Breakfast (home ec, nutrition, health)
Reading to the kids over breakfast (reading, reading comprehension, faith [if you read Bible stories or other faith related books], history [if you read historical works], English [hey, it's a book!], vocabulary)
Morning routine (personal hygiene = health ... threats about what will happen if we don't wash and brush teeth = science)
Morning chores (citizenship, faith and self-discipline as those relate to family cooperation)
Daily Mass (faith, history, recess if you go for donuts afterward)
Make cookies (math while measuring, home ec, science, kitchen chemistry)
Make lunch (home ec again ... lots of home ec)
Break up a fight among siblings (explaining interpersonal communications = psychology ... repentance and forgiveness = faith ... learning to get along = management and human resources skills)
Trip to the post office (social studies, community study, citizenship, how government works, art ... yes, art! Aren't you going to examine all those stamp designs?)
Drive home (point stuff out -- geography of your town)
Watch an episode of Magic School Bus (science)
Take a nap (health)
Wake up from nap (science: explain the necessity and importance of sleep, explain the difference between night mommies owls and insane morning people.)
Take a walk (a nature walk! Science! Charlotte Mason is so happy with you right now!)
Tell children to play while you check email (play is serious business, people!)
Check email some more or call your best friend (hey, your sanity is important ... explain to children that social contact is vital. This is psychology and sociology.)
Start dinner (home ec! Again! Lots of home ec!)

You get the the idea. This is the easy stuff. When they're little, you really don't have to worry about record-keeping the subjects but do it if it makes you feel better, as it often made me feel better, or if you need to report on your schooling in your state. And do it for practice, for later days.

And as they get older, the connections, the overlap of subjects, the science of relations becomes clearer in so much of what we do with our children, and in what they do on their own.

More to come.

Getting Organized (In Which I Consider New Planning Systems and Just as Quickly Discard Them)

I like organization.

Yeah, yeah, I'm unschoolish and flexible but I need a plan. If I don't have a plan from which to deviate, how can I know where I began, where the deviation occurred, and where we are or will be when it's all over? (Atticus used to tease me that I was great at being spontaneous as long as I had some notice.)

I'm the Planning Unschooler, the Unschooler With a Plan, and I don't usually worry about how others go about doing stuff, I just do what works for us. I ponder, and make book lists, and put together a basic game plan for our year. Then I sit back and see what unpredictable stuff life has in store for us.

Though I have long-standing methods of organization, when it comes to systems, I occasionally start flitting around the internet and suddenly the planning grass looks startlingly green over the fence.

I peek over that fence, see something sprouting, and think I should try it out. The latest planner? "Oooh! It looks all-encompassingly perfect." All-Digital-All-the-Time organization? "That's an intriguing idea! Maybe it's time to try that." (Except that when I did, I ended up having my phone beep at me just as dinner guests were arriving. Guess what it was telling me? "Dinner Guests tonight!")

I don't know...whatever it is, whatever attraction I have to Planners-and-Their-Ilk, the sickness hits me the same way the Siren Song of Curriculum Catalogs seems to attack. It makes me want to window shop, dabble, and consider...sometimes I even try something new.

And yet, I always go back to my tried and true methods. I live and die by:

• the white board in the kitchen
• the wall calendar that the whole family can see
• the To Do list that sits on the kitchen counter
• A small notebook in my purse at all times (anything that is scribbled on it while I'm out is transferred, upon arrival home, to the board, the calendar, or the To Do list.)

Organization Central is the dry erase board in the kitchen. For years, my girls have known that this is the place to go to get the scoop for the day.

This isn't my board, but it looks just like my board looked once upon a time. Clean, shiny, and new. 

Here's a past image of our white board in action on a snow day:

A more typical list on the white board might look like this: 

The left side of the board holds the daily stuff, the expectations, a class, some errands. "Behold, daughters: the plan for the day!" We all love this kind of stuff. It satisfies our OCDishness and helps us with our forgetfulness. The white board keeps me on track and gives me a place to send people when they say, "What are we doing today?" or, "What is someone else doing today?" 

The right hand side of the board is for those bigger "To Do" things that I'd forget if I didn't jot them down. These things sometimes end up in two places -- on the board (if, for example, I am trying to flag someone's attention ... ahem, Atticus) and on my paper To-do list on the counter. 

The other thing that keeps me organized is the wall calendar. It sits right next to my laptop and it holds everyone's appointments, meetings, book clubs, and library due dates. It's also where I make note of upcoming radio interviews, writing deadlines, and work-related tasks for me. The wall calendar satisifies my need to see the big picture. I like seeing the whole month at once, for a couple of reasons. One, I like to be able to see if I am overscheduling us, and two, I like to have a central location that shows me everyone's schedule (and where those schedules might overlap or conflict.) 

The white board and the wall calendar are Grand Central Stations, but the To-Do list on the counter is just for me. It's really a combination of short-term goals (errands, chores, appointments I need to make, school-related prep/thoughts, writing ideas, phone calls, emails to compose and send) and long-term planning (notes to myself for "Next Month" or "Before December" ... that sort of thing.) I love the wall calendar, but I need my own space, too! 

The little notebook in my purse is a substitute planner (and idea catcher) for me. I've found that it serves two purposes. It allows me to avoid carrying a master planner with me, and I like not having to haul my entire schedule with me wherever I go. If something comes up while I'm out, I jot it down in the notebook and promise the person I'm talking to (whether that's myself or someone else) that I will check my calendar at home and get back to them. That brings me to the second purpose of the notebook -- this method keeps me mindful of what I'm saying yes or no to. If I must wait until I get home to make a decision, I have granted myself time to think about a request or an opportunity, and I've given myself the space to see how it really fits into my schedule, my family, my life. I love my little notebook. 

Wow, this post got away from me. More than you ever wanted to know about my planning methods, methinks. 

It's the Most Plannerful Time of the Year!

I love to plan.
And I'm currently planning for the school year to come.
And today I plan to rerun a post from '06 that sums up what goes into my planning.
I'll be back soon with planning updates.
~~~~~~~

Maureen Wittmann pointed me toward Maureen of Trinity Prep School's "Seven Habits" meme. This one's more than fun, though -- it's full of encouragement and ideas from all kinds of homeschoolers.

Trinity-Prep-Maureen used a literature theme for her list, so I decided to go with a fun theme, too -- haiku. If badly written haiku annoys you, just click away right now (or, as my kids love to say: "Don't look at me! I'm hideous!")

Here's my list:


1. Pray

Can't do it alone
Must turn to my God for help
He is always there

2. Look back

Hindsight sure does help
I can see what worked last year
and the failures too

3. Look ahead

Our destination:
Are we just filling a pail?
Or lighting fires?

(with thanks to William Butler Yeats who said, "Education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of the fire.")

4. Talk to the kids

What delights my kids?
How can I include passions?
I must know their hearts

5. Find the right books

We so love our books
Books, like friends, enrich our lives
We'll read loads this year

6. School supplies

Supply shopping's fun
No matter where your school is
New stuff still delights

7. First Day
(this one will require two haikus)

We start out with Mass
Then we go out for breakfast
It's a tradition

With God and coffee
Our year starts out perfectly
Who could ask for more?

Filing, Planning, Ending, Beginning

 Officially, our school year is over.

I've been filing and reviewing, documenting, keeping and tossing, and taking old artwork off the walls as I await fresh replacements.  

I've also started to think about what lies ahead. I will have (roughly speaking, since we don't entirely "do" grades) a junior, a freshman and a third-grader.  Hmmm.

That makes it, as I said last year:

That time of year
thou may'st in me behold
when curriculum catalogs
or none or few
or many
do hang about the house.

If you are homeschooling a high schooler, I'd love to hear more about what you're doing.

Keeping It Simple

This is a rerun from '06, but it nicely sums up where I am with much of our school planning this year -- aside from a few major items (Teaching Textbooks for the older girls, a lecture series from the Teaching Company, biology materials), I'm doing a lot of shopping on my own bookshelves, just as I mentioned here.

*****

In School-proof, Mary Pride reminds me of the things I love about homeschooling, and of what is possible: the simplicity, the directness of the teaching, the wonderful eschewing of all-things-clutter.

One of the reasons I love homeschooling is that the kids and I get to make decisions about what we do, what we study, what we read and when we read it. My standing joke in our first year at home (after having my eldest attend Kindergarten) was that I would never again be caught off-guard by a last-minute note requesting three large soda bottles for a "fun and educational craft project." Such notes inevitably left me whining, "But we don't even buy those big bottles!"

In a chapter entitled, "Educational Clutter's Last Stand," Mary reminds us that an awful lot of what passes for curriculum is just busy work. As homeschoolers, we can easily identify busy work when a child is in school. But sometimes we lose sight of it when we become the teachers. All those delicious curriculum catalogs, those exciting ideas, the fun-and-educational projects ... they're so tempting, aren't they? And before we know it, we're the bad-guy, sending ourselves a last-minute mental note to scrounge up three large soda bottles. Yikes.

I like rereading Mary's book because she keeps me grounded in a simple truth. She says,

The secret is out -- the better teacher you get to be, the less you will need expensive curriculum and supplies. A beginning teacher can teach all her children to read with a prepackaged curriculum and have them reading years ahead in six months or less. A good teacher can teach phonics with a few simple readers, flash cards and a chalkboard. A great teacher can do it with library books and a pencil and ten sheets of paper! The difference is simply that the great teacher knows exactly where she is going and how to handle each roadblock or opportunity along the way.

Meet Me at Faith & Family Live today!

I'm over at Faith & Family Live today, talking about listening to God's scheduling memos.

When to volunteer? When to pull back? It's an ever-changing push-me-pull-you, but when I read the memos, the message is usually clear.

Visit Faith & Family here to read it.

That Time of Year

That time of year
thou may'st in me behold
when curriculum catalogs
or none or few
or many
do hang about the house.

More fun book arrivals

I've found plenty on our shelves, but I have been busy with some book-orders, too ....

Thanks to the ever-resourceful and helpful Theresa at LaPaz, I found out about these record-keeping notebooks from the Notgrass Company. They could be used as planners, but for us (just as for the LaPaz gang) they'll work beautifully as an "after the fact" record of all that we're doing, reading, studying, and stumbling upon. I love the many categories, which include, as noted on the Notgrass website:

* Spiritual Life: Bible Study, Worship, and Christian Fellowship
* Learning to Work: Chores, Service, and Life Skills
* Relating to Others: Character and Relationships
* Learning About God's Creation: Science and Technology
* Learning About People and Places: Geography, Government, and Foreign Language
* Learning About the Events and People of the Past: History and Biography
* Learning About the Thoughts of Others: Reading and Literature
* Being Creative: Art, Crafts, Music, Drama, and Other Creative Activities
* Learning to Communicate: Letter Writing, Grammar, Handwriting, Creative Writing, and Journaling
* Caring for My Body: Exercise, Sports, and Health
* Learning Math, Problem Solving, and Thinking Skills.

*****
I've always ordered the handy Living is Learning Curriculum Guides from FUN Books each year. Now that Anne-with-an-e is in high school (egads ... can it be true?), my set is complete. The 9th-12th grade edition has lists of and ideas for subjects and projects to cover in high school, suggestions for resources and real life applications, and forms for record keeping.

FUN Books was also my resource for some audio versions of Romeo and Juliet, and Shakespeare for Children by Jim Weiss.

*****

Friends Lissa at Here in the Bonny Glen, and Faith of Two Thirds Unschooling and Dumb Ox Academy, both of whom are logical sorts of women, led me to detect and then order The Fallacy Detective.

*****

Betsy specifically requested that I order D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. I last ordered this book in July of 2004 (I know this because Amazon tracks my every move. Hey, Amazon ... how many chocolate chip cookies did I eat tonight?) We attempted to study Greek mythology that year, but my then-delicate daughters were so thoroughly disgusted, grossed-out, nauseated and otherwise repulsed by the first couple of stories that they couldn't bear to go on.

Clearly, we've grown less delicate in four years' time. The gross-out should arrive via UPS any day now.

Our plans this year: Faith

Faith.

It's the "area" ... the "subject" ... the "curriculum" to which I give the most thought, and, yet, it may just be the area in which I unschool the most.

I want our faith permeate our whole lives, and so our "faith studies" are woven through everything else we do. I share my faith with the kids, and try to encourage them in theirs, no matter what we're doing.

Reading literature together? I talk about how to process and analyze through the eyes of our faith.

Science? It begins with respect for the Greatest Scientist, and awe at His intricate, miraculous creation. (And lovely resources like Genesis 1: House of the Covenant, from Hedge School are very helpful, too.)

Art? We talk about how, at one time, art was meant to express the ineffable ... art was faith, and faith was art.

Math? Uh ... we just pray for help here. (Just kidding. Discussion can go back to intricate and miraculous design, of course.)

History? Not tough to figure out how we can incorporate discussions about good and evil, morality and faith into our days as we dig into history. We read about a lot of saints here, too.

A lot of what we do that will ultimately be recorded as faith study is "just" reading and talking. Talking about life, about choices, about our will vs. God's will.

I plan more formal things, too. I do like the Faith and Life series from Ignatius Press, and this year we're doing several of the books as read-alouds (which, again, leads to great discussion and covers so many topics and Church teachings.)

We have art plans that will incorporate looking at Mary through the eyes of several different painters and celebrating the liturgical year with crafts. We'll learn more about Pope Benedict XVI this year (if only there were a comic book), and we'll continue to learn new prayers and to incorporate more daily Mass into our lives.

Praying, reading, talking, praying, thinking, doing, talking ... those are our plans this year for faith.

A word about all these planning posts

I just mentioned, in the language arts post, that I don't usually break our life down so neatly into these things called "subjects."

I rambled on about subjects in this post.

I'm not abandoning my position, though it may seem that I am. ("Hey, Karen, I thought you disliked subjects ... and now you've got one post after another about your subject plans this year ... whaddaya, schizophrenic or something?")

Well, yeah, I am.

But, there's a method to my scattered brain. And it's called, Take Advantage of the Beauty of Homeschooling and Do What Works for You and Your Kids.

Back to that in a minute, but first, the subject at hand.

Even though I'm breaking our studies down into "subjects" -- partly for my own convenience, partly for my off-and-on, anal-retentive tendency toward "neat and tidy" -- I still believe that nothing breaks down perfectly, or perfectly neatly, into one "subject."

Our history studies are full of literature. Our literature covers history. When my kids read a good book and later tell me that they understand how awful WWII internment camps were, I can check off a box called "reading comprehension" without ever purchasing a workbook made for "reading comprehension." (I don't actually have boxes labeled "reading comprehension" mind you ... unless you count the anal-retentive boxes in my brain. I check those off frequently.)

Our science, similarly, overlaps with literature and history. And faith. Our faith overlaps and envelops everything. And, math ... wait a minute, math is just a specter, haunting us, taunting us ... no, sorry, not true ... We have Math-U-See now.

You get the point. "Subjects" are never neat and tidy, and life is too integrated to fully separate them.

Subject labels can, however, be helpful in planning and categorizing, and that's what I'm doing, in my schizophrenic way. So, back to Take Advantage of the Beauty of Homeschooling and Do What Works for You and Your Kids.

What works for us this year is to incorporate a bit more structure and planning than is usual for me. For various reasons, I feel the need to have a few more prefabricated resources "in place" as we head into this school year. I fear the unschoolers among us will toss me out, but, this is what will work best for us this year. Next year may be different, but that, again is the beauty of homeschooling. It's fluid and flexible and adapts to our ever-changing needs.

I love that in an education.

Our plans this year: Language Arts

I don't usually call what we do "language arts." Yes, it's true that we read, write, spell, expand our vocabularies and strive for correct grammar and usage.

But, the reason I haven't called it "language arts" is that I haven't really broken these things into their own separate "subjects." More about that later. For now, here's what we have in mind for the coming year:

The girls have enjoyed doing a little bit of writing on their own blogs. Though their poor blogs have been quite neglected this summer, we'll get back to them soon. The blogging's been good for coming up with fun and creative ideas for posts, for spelling skills, and for typing practice.

We've been tossing around the idea of a writing group with a couple of friends. Several things about that are up in the air, and I don't know if it will come off, but sharing writing with friends can be a great way to hone skills.

We dabbled in spellers from Catholic Heritage Curricula last year, and to my surprise, the girls both liked them and wanted to do them again this year.

Betsy is a checklist kind of person, and she also requested a grammar book. I'll use a little of CHC's Language of God for her checklist needs.

I haven't done much formal grammar with Anne-with-an-e, but I've seen her grammar skills develop quite nicely from all of our reading and real-life writing. This year, we're going to run through Grammar Smart Junior to see if we're as on-track as I think we are.

I also got my hands on Hillside Education's Lingua Mater for writing ideas that the girls can pursue independently whenever they like.

As always, we'll read, read, read, and talk, talk, talk. History and science and faith all offer opportunities to read some wonderful stuff, and Betsy wants to read some Shakespeare.

That'll be Ramona's lot in life this year, too: read together, talk, laugh, point out words, talk, read together, watch Leap Frog's Talking Word Factory, read, talk, write, copy everything she asks to copy, talk, read together. You get the idea.

We may not often call it "Language Arts" around here, but the art of language is one we love.

Our plans this year: Science

Last year, I cobbled together our curriculum, as it were, from a multitude of sources, ranging from the library to long-forgotten books on our shelves. I admitted that I love to buy new books, but that I don't always need to.

And, last year worked well for us. I had fun researching, gathering, discovering good things at the library. But, it was, alas, quite a bit of work.

This year, I gave in to my inner curriculum junkie and we're looking more structured here than we have in awhile.

For science, each of my girls wanted her own book. So, I've tailored things to their desires and interest.

Anne-with-an-e is very interested in all things animal, and for the last two years has been insisting she will be a vet when she grows up. I know that most girls, at some point, want to be vets when they grow up. And, it's true that this may be a passing phase, but it may not. For this year, anyway, we're focusing on the life sciences with this book from Catholic Heritage Curricula.

Life Science: All Creatures Great and Small is recommended for Anne's age, and appears to be a good fit. It's more textbook-ish than we're used to, but I have no qualms about adapting such resources to our needs, style and purpose. I tend to leave out the busywork and get to the core.

Add to the above Anne's almost daily habit of reading the encyclopedia for recreation, and some volunteer time at the local animal shelter, and we've got science.


Betsy was a little harder. She wanted variety, and so did I. I was looking for areas in which we may be weak, may have overlooked some things. Then I found this Science Daybook at Rainbow Resource. It combines reading about the day's science topic with journaling and looking at related snippets of literature, poetry or magazine articles. It appears to be a living sort of textbook, and Betsy is pleased with what she's seen so far.

I am, too.

I also plan to stick to my commitment to follow up on the idea in this post of Melissa Wiley's, wherein she notes:

I've been looking for the passage I know is in one of Charlotte Mason's books about making sure children have one or two favorite nature-spots to visit on a regular basis: a park, a garden, a particular wood, a shore, that is visited over and over in all seasons, so that the children may grow familiar with the plants, birds, and beasts that live there, and see how things change throughout the course of a year.

We were at a local lake yesterday, marveling at how much its banks have risen with the recent buckets of rain, and spotting a variety of wriggly little creatures that we don't always see when the lake stays within its usual confines.

I imagined us returning much more regularly this year, through every season. And, now I'm itching to buy some lovely, new nature notebooks. Oh, I know the ten-cent ones from Target will do, but ....

Snippets of our days

I'm

still

planning.



~~~~~

Jennifer kindly alerted me to this Illuminated Lettering Kit. At a great price.

~~~~~



You know those very cheap
little plastic letter holders?

They make very good little book holders:

~~~~~

Things I love about Anne-with-an-e's brain: Today, when I asked her what she was thinking about, she said, "Oh, nothing. Well, actually ... about how monkeys can get malaria."

I also love that she has used ear buds as little defibrillators.

~~~~~

I'm not done spending money. Did I say I was? Nah ... you must have misheard me.

Dover Publications has several great little books about The Book of Kells. See here and here and here and here.

~~~~~

Mr. Cable Guy was back today. We are no longer obsolete, thank you very much.

~~~~~

Ramona's assessment of the quiche we had for dinner: After pushing aside the very tiny helping of quiche that I'd placed on her plate, she pointed to the cantaloupe, the honeydew, and the crescent roll, and pronounced, "These are the items that I like." Pointing back to the quiche, she said, "This is the item I don't like."

We've had these quiche conversations before.

~~~~~

I'm still planning.

Stop! My budget can't take you people ....

I'm getting lots of great ideas for our trek into the Middle Ages.

Check out the comments on this post for suggestions and much enthusiasm.

I know I said to keep the great ideas coming, but I think I promised Atticus that I was done spending money on books. For now.

For this month.

For the first part of our Middle Ages study ....

Our plans this year: Art

I love this book.

We haven't used it yet -- I just got it -- but I love the look of it, love the ideas I've perused, and love the method it employs.

Discovering Great Artists uses the work of the masters to teach techniques as well as art appreciation. Very nice.



Ann Ball's Catholic Traditions in the Home and Classroom: 365 Days to Celebrate a Catholic Year will also fall under "faith studies" and "observing the liturgical year," as well as history. I just got this book, too, and so far, I'm very impressed. There are so many ideas that it will be easy to pick, choose, and plan ahead.




And, especially for Ramona, because she loves St. Francis so much, I found Francis of Assisi: Activities and Coloring Fun for Children. It has paper dolls, coloring pages, connect-the-dots, mazes and puzzles, stories and a poetry activity.

It's enchanting.

Artist of the Month

Last year, I was loosely following some of the ideas for artist studies on the 4Real forum. I love the idea, and it fits beautifully with my informal approach to these kinds of studies. I'm also very grateful to the wonderful moms who took the time to put together the monthly artists and composers. Thank you to Amy, Mary, Sarah, Helen, and Stef for all the work they put into their monthly posts (and to anyone else I'm inadvertently omitting), and thanks to Elizabeth for starting that 4Real ball rolling in the first place.

This year, I'm going to take a slightly different approach. Our artist of the month will be based on various depictions of the Blessed Mother, and the paintings we look at will be a springboard to other works from that month's artist. The pictures above are from an old calendar I saved years ago (those packrat tendencies can come in handy, no?) We'll start with the three above -- Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, and Murillo.


Composer of the month

Same idea as above.

Another old calendar from this packrat.

My Broken Rosary

I've been talking about plans, and in doing so, I was reminded of this piece that I wrote several years ago for New Covenant magazine. This was after our fifth miscarriage, and before we had Ramona (the four-year old mentioned here is Betsy.) It's a piece about dashed plans and a broken dream. But, it is also about renewed hope and strengthened faith, and I offer it today to anyone who has ever lost a baby.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Broken Rosary

It was November, just before Thanksgiving and I was at the doctor’s office. I was pregnant, and cautiously hoping I would carry this baby to term. Though we have two beautiful children, after multiple miscarriages I take nothing for granted. The image on the ultrasound screen was not what it should have been.

“I’m concerned it may be ectopic,” said my obstetrician, “but this early, an ultrasound can fool us.” He told me to come back in five days, as “a few days can make a huge difference in what we see.” He did his best to assure me that all would be well.

I left the office feeling frightened and terribly sad. I was seven weeks along. We should have seen a heartbeat. The possibility that "all was well" seemed remote. I prayed. I hoped. But I feared.

Five days later, the picture did look different. There was no sign of trouble in the fallopian tube, and the baby was indeed in the womb. Still, we could not detect a heartbeat. My doctor wanted to try one more ultrasound in a few more days -- couldn’t we have miscalculated the date of conception, he wondered? Not likely, I said, for a couple who knows the finer points of Natural Family Planning as well as we do. And, given my history, I feared the worst.

I reported the news to my closest friends with great sadness. “No heartbeat,” was all I could manage to say. My friends offered me prayers, comfort and shoulders to cry on.

But I had one friend who remained upbeat. “Hang on until the next ultrasound,” she urged. “We have no idea what God has in store for your little one. Pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the protector of the unborn.”

Of course! Our Lady of Guadalupe! And so began the rosaries, asking for her intercession. A few days later, out of the blue, I received a beautiful rosary in the mail -- it was a gift from a pro-life organization to which we had donated, and it bore the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. My heart jumped, and I dared to hope this was a sign of an impending miracle.

The next day, on our way out of the house to go to the doctor’s office, my four year old begged to hold the pretty rosary. I handed it to her, and we drove to the home of a friend who'd offered to watch the kids while I went to the doctor. When we arrived at my friend’s house, the rosary was in pieces. “I’m sorry, Mama,” my little girl said with sad eyes. “It broke.” Indeed, beads and links were scattered everywhere.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “Things break. You didn’t mean to.”

But inside, I feared that my “sign” had broken too. I had been hoping and trusting in my prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe and now the rosary, that unexpected gift that prompted me to hope for a miracle, was in pieces.

Later, at the doctor’s office, the final news came. No growth... no heartbeat... no sign of life. Blood tests over the next week confirmed that my levels of pregnancy hormone had dropped; the baby had died.

In my grief, I forgot for a time about my broken rosary, but then a strange thing happened.

Though I mourned our lost child, circumstances surrounding the miscarriage led to amazing resolution regarding an old and painful emotional wound. In other words, had I not miscarried, I would not have been healed of this old wound. What an amazing grace, I thought, and I thanked God for what He had done for me through the short life and the death of my child.

It was then that I remembered the rosary. As I pieced it back together, I saw that I had nearly all of it. One decade was missing two beads, and my tinkering with the links left it looking a bit crooked here and there, but it was repaired.

Gazing at it, I was struck by the incongruity. This once-perfect thing was now bent, crooked and imperfect, yet still beautiful. It was like us -- like our lives. Though we were made in the perfect image of God, we are bent and crooked with original sin; even after baptism we are still crippled by its after-effects. We stumble through this life tarnishing the perfect image while our Lord repeatedly tinkers with us, repairs us, and heals us.

I remembered the sinking feeling I got when I saw that the rosary had been broken, how I felt all my hopes instantly dashed. I had imagined that the gift of the rosary meant that I would receive the gift of my baby. What I received instead -- the healing I received -- was a great gift that I could not have predicted.

I couldn’t have known how beautifully the Lord would use my child to heal me; I couldn’t have known how this unexpected rosary would become the symbol of God’s work in a broken part of my life. Now, when I pray with my broken rosary, I think of my baby and I know that my friend was right -- we had no idea what God had in store for my little one.

He is always, ineffably, and so unexpectedly, making crooked ways straight.

(This post also appears on the Catholic Exchange blog.)

Getting back to that five-year plan ....

Or, "What's Rick Blaine doing now?"

A few days back, in this post, I talked about being cornered one day in the office in which I worked in another life, and being asked, "What's your five-year plan?" I didn't have a five-year plan, and I couldn't even begin to imagine one. And it turns out that my Blaine-ish ways weren't really so off the mark, because even if I'd drafted, proposed and attempted to execute a perfectly constructed five-year plan, it would have looked nothing like the way things eventually unfolded for me.

I ended the post with:

My point is that I can make all the plans my organized little heart desires, but God (as I now call Him) can force me into flexibility at a moment's notice.

So, given that reality, should we stop making plans altogether?

Then, in the comments, Willa beautifully summed up what I was leading up to. She said:

My thought is that you keep planning, but that like with everything else, you hold on to the plans loosely and keep in mind what the plans are for.

I always think of St Francis of Assisi, who planned to be a soldier, and planned to build a church. It wasn't that his plans became a joke, or irrelevant, it was that they were fulfilled -- consummated? -- in a unique way.

Karen, like your life, mine has been so full of unexpected, grace-filled twists and turns that I can relate to everything you say.

Yes! That's it!

I was thinking, too, of St. Therese of Lisieux, who wanted to be a missionary. As I wrote in the essay mentioned here (which I called "The Little Way of a Little Family"), St. Therese's dream was also fulfilled in a unique way. I wrote:

St. Therese had big dreams. She wanted to be a missionary, evangelizing the whole world. Instead, she was given a short, hidden life, full of mundane little tasks in the convent, tasks she learned to do with great love. And now, this Doctor of the Church is evangelizing the whole world through her intercession from heaven.

Most of the time, we don't have a clue, do we? God is too big, too cunning and crafty for us to outguess Him, dodge Him, or stay one step ahead of Him. Oh, sure, occasionally He lets us coast along, thinking we're in control, but it's usually a set-up. A grand one, I'll grant you, and a really well thought out one, too. And one with great results, because He's -- you know -- God. He's good like that. But it's still a set-up, because suddenly - bam! - we can't help but think, "Whoosh ... never saw that one coming."

And, so back to the question I asked myself: "Does that mean we should stop making plans altogether?"

If the answer were "yes" I'd have to get pretty irritated with God. After all, He's the one who gave me this affection for planning. To never be able to use it? That would be a cruel joke. Having left Rick Blaine in the dust, I do now plan beyond next week.

I plan ahead for a school year. I look vaguely ahead, two or three years, down the academic roads I expect us to travel. We plan for the kids' college and for our retirement (oooh, wait ... we may have to pick one or the other ... Sorry, kids.)

So, I plan. For things big and little, I plan.

But, what I strive not to do is to worry about the plans. Because, if God chooses to change them, or to allow them to change, I know -- I believe it down to my core -- that it will be for my good.

So, I happily plan away. And, I think God nods his wise head, full of affection for my silly attempts at control; I think He feels the same rush of love that I feel for my daughters when they do something that is immensely cute but utterly useless or destined to fail, something that I find so incredibly endearing that it makes me want to squash them with a hug. I don't love them any less for doing those things. I actually love them more, and I like to think that God loves us more, too, in the same way.

I picture God the Father nudging Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and saying, "Look! Aren't they cute, those little people We made? They're using all the faculties We gave them. Well, bless their little hearts. And prudence! Hey, they're actually putting it to use. Now, that's something a Father can be proud of. Huh. Sure will be hard to crush them when this plan falls apart [much nodding of Divine Heads at this] but, oh, well ... A God's gotta do what a God's gotta do, eh?"

And then, the Trinity shares a good laugh at my expense.

But, that's okay. It's a laugh that shakes me to the core and then somehow, every time, rebuilds me from the inside out.

Because that's what God is all about. Making me new.

"Behold, I make all things new." -- Revelation 21:5

And that includes my plans.

So ... what's my five year plan?

To keep planning, to keep letting go when I must, and to keep allowing God to make me new.

'Cause He's good like that.

What's Your Five Year Plan?

In this post, I mentioned that I wanted to get back to the subject of planning, being flexible, and changing direction.

Cliches crop up for a reason, and clearly the the cliche about telling God our plans resonates with most of us. We've all had carefully laid plans mercilessly dashed.

Of course, ultimately it's mercy-full, but we often cannot see that at the time.

When I was a young atheist, working in the business world (hmmm ... sounds like the title of something: "Young Atheism!") I already knew that God enjoyed dashing plans. Of course, I didn't call Him "God" back then. I called Him "fate" or "destiny" or "the forces at work in the universe" or "luck" or "karma" or "my crummy life."

I had never planned to work in the business world, you see, and yet that's where I'd ended up.

Backing up a bit, I hadn't planned to go to college, either, until my senior year of high school. But, since I didn't know what else to do, and I wanted to be an actress, I decided to go major in theater for awhile. Then I added on an English major and a philosophy minor. I stayed as far away from the business people as I could (no offense to you, Business People ... I was a bigoted thing back then.)

So, how did a Theater-English-Philosophy girl end up donning suits, working in business, traveling to New York, and visiting clients, all the while feeling she was an imposter playing dress-up?

I had to eat. And pay bills. And the acting jobs in Omaha, Nebraska weren't exactly rolling in. Neither were the novel-writing or philosophizing jobs.

And, so the fact that I enjoyed not starving forced me to take the first job that came along, and because I had nothing better to do than work hard (okay, my obsessive-compulsive tendencies were also at play, making me ultra-organized) I got promoted and ended up going on those business trips, marveling at things like seeing the Waldorf-Astoria from the inside.

And, while I was working and being promoted and going on business trips, I was asked by a colleague, "What's your five-year plan?"

I almost spat coffee all over my desk because the question sent me into a fit of laughter.

"My five-year plan?" I asked, recovering from the near choking. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, where do you see yourself in five years? Do you plan on working on an MBA? Do you still want to be here?"

Still laughing, I said, "I don't even know where I see myself next week. I certainly didn't plan, five years ago, to be doing this with my life. I can't imagine knowing where I'll be five years from now." And, because I regularly quoted lines from Casablanca, I added, "I never make plans that far ahead."

And, in a way, I still live by Rick Blaine's philosophy. When my colleague asked me where I'd be in five years, I would never have guessed that the answer would be, "In a small town, living the life of a newly baptized Christian."

Or, that five years after that, my answer would be, "I'm Catholic."

Five years after that? "I'm homeschooling now. And -- oh, get this! -- my husband is now Catholic, too."

Nope. Wouldn't have guessed a bit of that when I was sitting in my room at the Waldorf (that was only once, by the way ... business accommodations were usually a bit more humble) enjoying a drink from the fully stocked fridge.

My point is that I can make all the plans my organized little heart desires, but God (as I now call Him) can force me into flexibility at a moment's notice.

So, given that reality, should we stop making plans altogether?

To be continued ....

(ETA: The follow up post is here.) 

Ending, Beginning and In Between

Our "school year" is over. Although we tend to be unschoolish in some ways, we still have beginnings and endings, though not entirely (as noted in this post, in which I mention that learning never ends and is always beginning.) But, because we live with a public school teacher, we tend to live more "by the school year calendar" than some homeschooling families.

I arbitrarily declare "We're done!" at some point, then the kids run a victory lap around the house and proclaim that summer has begun.

But, it isn't really over for me. Because I haven't even begun to start planning next year yet.

What about you? Do you plan in the spring, before the school year ends (and then get to proclaim, "I'm done!")?

Or do you plan over the summer?

Or do you school year-round, and thus have various planning times interspersed throughout the year?

I'm known to plan and then discard the plan, so even if I plan over the summer, I end up planning at other times, too.

I'm suddenly quite tired of the word "plan" so I can only imagine how you feel. Must be time to sign off and dive in to what promises to be a busy day.