Forgiveness

I've often stumbled on the issue of forgiveness - both in forgiving others and receiving forgiveness. Not in terms of wanting to or not wanting to. I realize how much God wants us to forgive others both in the little things and the life changing dream-shattering events in our lives.

Always previously I have focussed on forgiveness being needed for my healing, a process of letting go and stopping the hurt that a situation brings. Sometimes that's a slow process. Today's thoughts came from a new angle. They made forgiving easier - cleaner, simpler.

Todays insight came with the realization that if the person I am forgiving is a believer, someone who has accepted God's forgiveness then God's Spirit will be at work in their lives and eventually whatever hurt me will get resolved, somehow, in God's timing.

If they haven't asked for and received God's forgiveness then they have bigger issues than whatever I am struggling with. It simply doesn't matter whether my issue remains on the slate or not. I can let it go and move on.

For me this is a new perspective on the issue. It has been good to clear the decks.

A visitor on a cloudy day

The kids found this little one wandering at the bottom of the garden. I hope that it was just the overcast day and not illness that brought it out into the daylight. It looked like it was born this year.

It must be Winter

The Cats have found new places to while away the day -




This is Pheobe, our official bitza. She's really small, round, demanding and has claws.....but she looks so pretty. (Never bring home a Devon Rex, Burmese, Siamese cross that wasn't socialized as a kitten)




This is Zeke - almost the perfect Burmese gentleman - cuddly, trained to sleep in kid's beds, personable, understanding and caring, except in clinging to the belief that Humans will wake up and let you out at anytime in the night that you feel the urge. (Unfortunately for him, we are too aware that some cats just don't know what roads are for.)

Teacher or Mum?

As a home school mum, their is a natural tension between being a mum and a teacher. It has taken me a few years to realize that, and a couple more to understand that even though God has asked me to Teach my kids - I'm not a teacher.

The issue is complicated that my husband is... somehow the lovely man I married (I still think he's lovely) became the classic Physics teacher, complete with semi-dry wit, sarcasm, and strict discipline in his classes ...

When our school days get unsettled - his first response is that I need to be more strict. Unfortunately, I always want to see the good along with the bad, the possibilities along with the defiance and naturally give my kids the benefit of the doubt. In other words, I'm more mum than teacher. More encourager than disciplinarian.

However, my kids know this and being strong willed they take advantage of it until my plans are in tatters and I'm struggling to see the point in it all.

My current challenge is to fit it all together - trusting that God put me, my Artist, Engineer and the Naturalist together and asked us to go on this journey. So of course he must have plan. One that isn't at odds with who we are.

Roses

This quote turned up in my daughter's dictation exercises today ...

"These roses under my window make no reference
to former roses or to better ones;
they are for what they are;
they exist with God today. "

by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

So often I wonder if the stress and drivenness I feel is simply because I want to make the grade. If I stop striving will it all fall apart or will it reveal itself in a glorious whole?

Monday on a Tuesday

Settling onto the week after a long weekend is always interesting. After all mum has had an extra day to think and to tweak things a little, and so far I'm still tweaking us towards individualized programs.

This week poetry crept back in - hopefully both reading and writing. In the last few weeks our poetry memorization has slipped, it simply doesn't fit in so well now. But I didn't want to loose it. So we still have poetry, and I will choose from the kids books which one we will memorize together. In the meantime, we have a place each week for my children to read poetry - and enjoy it. My children get to read as many of their poems as they like, decide if they like a particular poem, or poet and write down the things they like or dislike about them. (I'll add in writing poetry with the oldest latter in the week - I think she misses what we were doing in this area. )

We also went back to time based learning - simply working on a subject until the timer rings. This change is simply the realization that if my middle child isn't held accountable - he simply dreams the morning away.

Generally the changes went down well. Having poetry back and as a reading subject was a hit with the oldest and youngest. My engineer was trying hard to stay focused on what he was meant to be doing, so it will be latter this week before I see his reaction.

A New Progym Curiculum

A few months ago I recognized that my Artist Daughter was struggling with lour writing program. Classical writing was causing her more than it's share of con-fus-e-a-tion (her word for anything that gets too hard.)

Try as she and I might we simply couldn't keep the objective of the weeks exercises in our heads while we completed it. So for the last couple of months we have been working on grammar with an older text called Mother Tongue, and playing with the occasional writing program. The fun came back into my Artist's writing.

At the same time I gave in and brought the scary background books on classical education and the progym. Scary both because of the cost, and well, was I up to reading them. So far I've worked through wisdom and eloquence, and looked at classical composition by D'Angelo enough to start fleshing out our own progym.



But just as I came to pull the plans together a post of the Latin Centered board caught my eye. Someone posted about another progym program Classical Composition by Jim Selby. We tried out the first half of the sample lesson and had a lot of fun. My artist can use her creativity rather than getting bogged down in the analysis and the grammar, which more often than not had us struggling with the how much are we required to do. So I'm looking forward to its arrival shortly, Beth is looking forward to its flexibility, and I'm pleased that it is straight forward enough that I can add or subtract lessons as we need to. (Actually knowing what I am looking for when it comes to mark her work is a bonus. )

The Samples are here if anyone is interested Classical Composition.

Now we are one more step closer to having a comfortable, encouraging plan ....