When you have about a month left of school, it inevitably happens. You feel the tug of summer break but also the despair of all you didn't do. Your school day feels like it's fraying at the edges. The flow isn't working. Things aren't happening. It feels broken.
Perhaps you feel tempted to entirely throw in the towel and sign your kids up for school next year. Perhaps you are tempted to call it quits early on this school year so you can plan next school year to fix all the problems.
Of course the year doesn't end as strongly as it begins. You planned last school year with children almost a year younger. If your children and yourself have grown in body, mind, and spirit all school year, then the current routines and plans are bursting with the growth. Because none of you are the same as you were at the beginning, the flow also isn't working the same.
We need a summer break to reset and reorient ourselves. A healthy family and homeschool means there is no status quo, so we'll always have to be adjusting. It's part of our job, not a problem at all.
What we need to adjust well and maintain our vision and our work ethic even with a fraying schedule is conviction.
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
--Yeats
Facing conviction
Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece Les Miserables. He is a convict, imprisoned for stealing. Under the social assumptions of the time, stealing is his nature, and is a black blot on his character for all time.
So, even when released, he must show his “yellow” papers that announce to all that he is a thief. He finds this label and his long imprisonment have given him an identity he can’t shake, even in his own eyes and his own conscience. He begins to own the identity of a convicted thief.
That is, until he becomes convicted by someone else’s perspective. After stealing from a Bishop who showed him kind hospitality, the Bishop continues to show him love, kindness, and generosity in such a practical way that Valjean is not arrested for his egregious theft, but forgiven and sent away with enough for a fresh start.
The change does not happen immediately, but it happens. The love he’s experienced works on him, waking him up to the possibility that he might not have to be a thief forever. Under a new name, in a new town, he begins a new life. Now he is a convict of another sort.
Convict, convince, and conviction all have the same Latin root: con = with and vict = conquer. In the sense that a convict receives a conviction, a prison sentence, it is the law that has conquered the individual. In the sense that our conscience is convicted, again, too, God’s law has conquered in our hearts and brought us to a place of repentance.
A convincing argument is an appeal that conquers our reason and persuades us. To have conviction, a firmly-held belief, is to have been conquered by an idea, to be so thoroughly convinced of a truth that it changes our identity.
We all need conviction. We need to be conquered by the law and by the truth. Perhaps we are conquered not by law and truth, but by our failures, by our expectations, or by our disappointments.
If our past– even just our past school year– has us imprisoned, trapped as a convict to an old way of thinking and living, we must encounter God’s love and truth which sets us free.
If we’ve taken identities that let us off the hook, we must replace that convict status with a new one. If we say, “I’m just Type A, so it’s ok for me to always be stressed out,” we need a change of conviction.
If we say, “I’m just Type B, so I don’t really get anything done,” we need convincing of another way. The problem is not in Type-A-ness or Type-B-ness, but in using our type as a conviction, a life-sentence of excuses.
Rather than being sentenced to our particular brand of weaknesses, we should be convicted toward repentance, for in Christ change is not only possible but also commanded. Change worked by the Holy Spirit is called sanctification, the journey of ever becoming more like Christ, day by day.
Conviction to love
We must be convicted with our minds and our hearts that our job is to love our children (love is not irritable or resentful), educate our children (in the fear and admonition of the Lord), and grow in Christlikeness ourselves (with fear and trembling).
When we have this sort of conviction, our perspective on our daily duties shifts. The problem is no longer a difficult math equation, but stubbornness or irritability or fear.
It’s not that we turn every lesson into a mini sermon (we should not), nor that we shrug off the actual learning to be done (we should not), but that we see what we’re really about as we hold our kids accountable to their work.
We’re helping them overcome their fear of failure by being there with a hug and a ready “well done.” We’re helping them overcome their reflexive anger by not being affected by it, but holding on until they learn to diffuse it and replace it with a new habitual response.
We also ask them to be faithful stewards of their work set before them because God is asking the same of us.
It is not only the children who must learn and grow, but so must all Christians at any age. Praise the Lord, the intense lifestyle of homeschooling is the perfect ground for being made aware of our weaknesses and being forced to deal with them.
If we didn’t have to live all day long with so many others, we might be able to mask and ignore our sins. But the iron-sharpening-iron friction of living alongside one another brings our sinfulness to our attention. This is a design feature for our good. Conviction of sin is not punishment for failure, but an opportunity for repentance and growth.
Personal conviction as mom
It’s alarming but true: the kids are learning more from the way we handle life when it doesn’t go our way than they do from their books and assignments. So how we manage throughout the day and how we treat them and speak to them matters far more than anything else.
When I notice the habit of complaining or laziness creeping in, I can always see that it actually started with me: children are mirrors, magnifying glasses, who follow our lead and express the same responses in less socially adept ways.
So we have to own the attitude problems and fix our own always and first. Living a full life in relationship with others is our continuing education program into wisdom and virtue.
Yes, education includes facing the math test, diagramming a sentence, and reading good books. But those tasks on the checklist are only a partial picture, and as the orchestrators of the entire upbringing of our children, we need to remember the complete picture that cannot be measured analytically.
Homeschooling is not about being perfect or feeling successful, but continuing in faithfulness and love – both we and our children with us.
God has given us a stewardship. We steward the time He gives us, the money He gives us, the homes He gives us, the children He gives us. All these blessings come from His hand, as resources to be used and invested for His kingdom, not our convenience and comfort.
We don’t bury what we’re given in the sand and our heads in our pillows. We step out in faith to faithfully fulfill the work God asks of us and equips us to do.
God has given our children a stewardship. He has placed them in a Christian family, with a heritage of faith. He has given them the opportunity to learn about Himself and His world. He gives them time and talents to steward, just as He has given them to us.
Will they act like the Prodigal, spending their inheritance on themselves foolishly or will they invest themselves and reap more so they can invest greater things in God’s kingdom later?
The tears might be falling on the math page, but sometimes the tears are tears of giving up convenience and comfort. It is painful to grow. It’s ok to cry through the growing pains. It’s a good work.
It’s not about the math page, but the math page does matter. Through the challenging math pages, minds and hearts and wills grow and expand.
Maybe it would be better for us, also, to let the tears fall on the planner page, rather than close it or never open it when we know it will bring us pain.
Let us be willing to cry the tears of giving up convenience and comfort for the good works God has called us to this day. It’s not about our school day plan. Doing the work and shepherding the children into places where they will flourish in mind and body does matter.
Rather than wait for a feeling or a mood or a certain amount of caffeine-induced energy, we need to take a deep breath and be willing to open the plans, open our hearts, open our hands, and steward the day and the work and the children given to us.