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homeschool

You Can Always Come Home

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Over the past several months I’ve looked back longingly on those exhausting nights of waking children and all those witching hours when one boy would be hanging at my ankles whining, and the littlest would be needing a diaper change, and the oldest was clearly responding out of low blood sugar craziness. Without me even realizing it, those days were in my past. I put a sweet toddler down for a nap one day not realizing it would be the last daytime tuck in. And somewhere along the line, I took my final middle of the night groggy walk up […]

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Inspiring Children to Learn

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It’s no easy task. We have a lot working against us in our time and culture. Learning is usually slow, but we move fast. Learning is relational, but we spend less time together. Learning is full of creativities, but but we focus on activities. And then there’s the distraction and dominance of screens. I try not to hold  harsh opinions about things, but man, if you push me against a wall, I’ll claim that video games harden hearts and deplete minds of creativity. When you can control and experience a fantasy world free of pain and consequence, of course the […]

worship

On the Fifth Morning

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The morning started out terrible. I made a different spinach smoothie than I normally make…which didn’t go over very well with the children. So there was complaining and pouting and slow sipping….which didn’t go over very well with me. As I scrambled eggs, the children scrambled to take specks out of each other’s eyes, completely blind to the plank they had each brought with them to the breakfast table. The bickering escalated, and the louder they got, the louder I got. Before I share what happened next…don’t worry, all five children are still alive and well…I want to first say […]

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Our Theme for the School Year

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I could get specific about how we desire an environment of creation over education, how we seek inward transformation before learning outcomes, and how we appreciate assessment through participation rather than examination. Or I could confess how I would be a TERRIBLE school mom who would always drop my children off late, never sign permission slips, and rarely check or enforce homework assignments. But the bottom line is, we homeschool because we love the time it gives us with our children. SO much time….sometimes too much time…like this might be the end of me time….but mostly irreplaceable, precious time in […]

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Everybody wants to {be} love{d}

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It’s a catchy tune. But the words are even better. If there’s a theme song for our adoptions, this is it. The song of our heart, the words we want to proclaim: Everybody, everybody wants to love. Everybody, everybody wants to be loved. It’s Gospel, really. God is love. And everyone born of God is created to love and be loved. And if we don’t, and if we’re not, then we are incomplete. Not whole. Broken. This is the life of an orphan, the life of so many hurting. Those not experiencing embrace are missing out on the very thing they’ve […]