Throwing away the crutch!

When fear is excessive it can make many a man despair.
- Saint Thomas Aquinas

Sometimes I feel like fear holds me back quite a bit in life. One must not take unnecessary chances or make foolish decisions, like moving a family of eight out of state in this horrible economy without proper thought and prayer and discernment. But one mustn't also let fear paralyze oneself either to stay stagnant because it feels safer that way. Time goes by quickly - that much I do know!

My oldest is now teetering on the brink of becoming a teenager. I distinctly remember when I officially began homeschooling her; she and I were in our kitchen in our home in the burbs. I was cooking and she placed herself on the step and we were going through the alphabet one letter at a time. I would say the letter, she would repeat the letter and then make the "sound" of the letter and give me a phonetical example. She had just turned four at the time. Six short months later she was reading her first book, "Look at Bump" a book about an elephant. So long ago...

And now she does her work in the dining room with her sister and brother and when the spirit moves me to get her five year old younger brother in there to teach Kindergarten; him too. I love the life of homeschooling - I actually loathe the task of homeschooling. Perhaps it is because I now have an 8th grader, 4th grader, 3rd grader, and Kindergartner doing actual work as well as a pre-schooler who is eager to do work and a 20-month-old eager to tear up the work of the older siblings. I also have my transcribing jobs to contend with as well as massive amounts of laundry that always needs folding and meals that always need to be cooked and dishes that always need to be cleaned.

The conundrum: I love the life homeschooling has afforded our family. Our children are each other's best friends. We live and work as a family unit, yet we each have our own identity. The children also have their own set of friends outside of the family unit. I love that we are together. Yet there are days I loathe that we are so together, especially when my work is backed up and I am trying to transcribe difficult audio and I have children shoving books under my nose, asking me to quiz them in spelling, asking me to pour them some more orange juice and informing me the baby has just knocked over the plant and is tangled up in the ivy strands. Yet there's always the "on the other hand" isn't there? I think back to my oldest child and her reading me "Look at Bump" and me being absolutely floored that I taught her how to do that. In fact I taught three of my six how to read so far. Not an easy task under stressful circumstances, and we have had many stressful circumstances through the homeschooling years! The question hanging over my head lately, should we or shouldn't we place the children in a traditional school setting? There are two schools on our radar that we would like to place them in; one in NH and one in MA, so both states are in the running for our move out of NJ. But at the end of the day, is it what we really want to do? I don't want to go backwards into a more radical traditional circle. I am finally realizing I am a square peg in a round group of traditionalists and a move like those two would make me, well....even the more square(er) let us say. After homeschooling for eight years and seeing some fruits of our labor, would a traditional school setting be the answer for this family? I am realizing in a very bold manner what a life long sacrifice homeschooling ones' children really is, because as it stands I still have 16 years left before my last one will graduate.

My confessor frequently tells me that I am "too hard on myself" and this I know to be true. I do not know what it means to relax. God did try to force my hand when He decided to put me in the hospital for five weeks with Philomena (see earlier posts) and I did HAVE to make myself slow down and try to relax. Should I realize my potential and understand what it means to relax, enjoy my children, educate them for eternity then perhaps I can embrace homeschooling instead of fighting against it all the time. Maybe that is the secret key? If this IS indeed the key, then Maine is at the top of the list for the move for there is NO school up there (at least none that we would choose to send our children to), although I was told there is an active Catholic homeschooling community outside of Portland. I have to check into this a little bit more.

And so we continue to discern and pray. We hope to soon make a decision and ask God to bless our decision. Our goal is simple: Go where the cost of living is a bit easier on the wallet, the way of life is a bit slower and where we can really start living the Liturgical life in our home.

I may save this for another post, but the long and short of my thought process is this: I feel we have been particularly blessed to be apart of a wonderful, active traditional Catholic parish; a very unique parish indeed. Because our parish has all the trimmings we have, well we have become a bit lazy in our own home - not really living our liturgical life at home the way it is supposed to be lived out. As I reflect on this I feel in part this is because we can just show up at Mass and get "all the stuff" we need to fill our lives spiritually. For the past seven years, at least for me, I have used our "active, social parish" as a crutch; replacing the liturgical life I should have been living in our home! I became a bit lazy, I must admit, knowing the parish would fill the gaps that weren't being met at home. What made me reflect on this? Well, someone once told me, "If you want your children to lose their faith, move to Maine." This coming from someone who actually was moving away from Maine to an "active Traditional community". That statement never left me and actually drove a deep fear into me. But once I took a sufficient amount of time (about a year) to reflect upon what she said I began to realize that Catholic children can lose their faith no matter where they are! I have seen Traditional Catholic teens lose their faith all over the spectrum and I have seen nominal Catholics become inflamed with their faith while heading into their 20's. We can only pray for our children, do our best, raise them up in the spirit of God, live out the Liturgical life at home to the best of our ability and entrust them to the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. If we let fear trap us then we truly are not placing our trust in God wholeheartedly. What I believe WE need to do is get rid of the crutch we are so used to and start living out our lives at home the way we are supposed to!

I think I will post more on this later.