A day in the life of The Jones Academy

So a blog I follow has been doing a series on what a day in the life of certain homeschooling families looks like.  Inspired by their very organized and beautifully flowing days, I have decided to write a blog about what our days look like at here at the Oasis at Eleanor.

I am Natasha, I am homeschooling my three oldest (8, 7, 5) while caring for my three younger children (4, 2, & 7months).  After spending the night getting little sleep because I am awoken by littles wetting the bed, wanting to nurse, needing snuggles, lost pasi's.....  I struggle out of bed around 7am.  I generally feed the baby about this time (unless I was up holding/feeding her from 3am to 5am).  My children have been trained to stay in bed until 7am but we can usually here them making noise before then.  When the clock hits 7, they burst forth, ready for the day with the dog nipping at their heals.  My husband and I pray together (sometimes the children join us, other times they run willy nilly through the house screaming) and then he heads off to work.

If I have not managed to get dressed before feeding the baby, I get that done.  Sometimes I put make up on.  Most of the time I do not.

I really like to have the bedrooms cleaned up and beds made before we go downstairs but I found that sometimes this creates a lot of stress so I just see how it is going.  What I do not understand is how, after making sure the rooms were cleaned up before we went to bed, they are such a disaster not long after we get up?  Seriously. How does that happen?

I stagger downstairs to chase down the one year old who has run off before I can change her diaper.  I dress her and maybe the four year old (if she wants to get dressed on that particular day).  The others are on their own as far as getting dressed.  The seven year old likes to get dressed, the others are wishy washy about it.

Finally, about 8:30 am, I manage to get everyone downstairs and we have something healthy (like cereal or pop tarts) for breakfast.  Every once and a while, one of them will beg for eggs and I will manage to get it done.

I like to start school at 9am.  But it is usually around 9:30.  Once I get breakfast laid out and we eat it (between hanging off the backs of the chairs, jumping on the table, swinging from the fan & spilling twelve glasses of milk), the baby usually wants to go back to sleep.  So I head back upstairs where I have to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting her to go to sleep because even though I was a Babywise nazi with my first three children, I have gotten more and more lax with each child after that and I just love the fact that she likes to look at me so much.

Then I come back downstairs and any school that we had managed to get started is no longer being done because I was upstairs so long the students have all run off.  I coral them back to the table.  I assign my son his work, I attempt to teach phonics to my 5 year old while pretending to pay attention the six year old who basically taught herself to read.

About this time, the two year old opens the refrigerator looking for more food (because in order to keep her happy, I just feed her all day) and gets out a container full of yeast and spills it all over the kitchen floor.  The four year old wanders over and refuses to play with the two year old, demanding to do school with us.  I bribe her with promises of getting to cut and paste after quiet rest time if she will just go play with the two year old while I try to clean up the tiny granules of yeast that are everywhere.

Now the 8 year old starts hooting loudly (yes, hooting... I don't know why.  Sometimes he clucks, sometimes he roars, sometimes he makes robot noises, sometimes he just hits himself in the head with his plastic lightsaber.... he IS and 8 year old boy) and wakes up the baby, who has only slept for 20 minutes.  I decided to let her cry a little bit to see if she can get herself back to sleep.  I turn my attention to teaching reading again, only to have my son interrupt to ask some random question that he already knows the answer to.  The dog starts barking at a squirrel outside and the four year old runs out the front door to say hi to our neighbor.

Somehow we manage to get through a couple of subjects before it is time to make lunch.  I feed the baby again and we go through the crazy ordeal of eating again (although, I will not lie, I have just figured out that our computer faces the kitchen table and a couple of times a week I go to pbskids.org and put on an episode of WildKrats.  The benefits of this are two fold - one, they are quiet the entire meal and two, we can count it as science).  Then we have an hour of Quiet Rest Time, where I sit on the couch and try to ignore the children who have forgotten what the word 'quiet" means.  After that, the big three finish up whatever is left while the four year old gets her promised "cut and paste time". She sits at the table and cuts up paper into thousands of tiny pieces and glues them together.

Later in the afternoon, I throw something together for dinner and then try to get the house cleaned up before my husband gets home.  It is important to get this done before the two year old and baby get up from nap because after that it gets tricky.

Around 3:30, the neighborhood kids all get home from school and start coming over to play.  By this time, if we do not have school done, it is not getting done.  Any hope of getting them to focus at this point is gone.  

Our days are CRAZY.  I have had six children in eight years.  I never wanted to homeschool.  I homeschool because God has called me to it.  A clear calling.  It is hard and my days look nothing like I thought they would when I started down this mommy journey (I had visions of volunteering at school, morning jogs down Hinson and lunches at Trios with my friends... all while my husband worked!!! ;) )
But here is what I know, it is a good life.  I have my children's best hours.  I get their best and their worst.  They get my best and my worst.  Every single day God is growing me past myself.  I have no idea if I am doing a good job of educating my children but my goals for education have changed.  The three Rs are important but my overarching goal of this whole adventure?  That they would know, love and serve Jesus with their whole lives.   And I trust He will be faithful in what He has called us to!

Oh that elf

  

We had an elf.  An elf on a shelf.  And each day that elf looked at me and reminded me that I would never be good enough.  That I would always be naughty.  He looked at me and denied the truth of the Gospel, that Christ came and died for my sins WHILE I WAS STILL a sinner.

Then he looked at my children and told them that mommy and daddy did not really mean what they said, sure there was always the threat of not getting any toys, but that threat was never realized.  My children learned two things from that elf.  They learned that mommy and daddy did not mean what they said and they learned that they could not be ever be good enough either.

I mean just imagine it, an 8 year old who is REALLY trying to be good but messes up again.  Imagine the guilt and shame they would feel when they saw the elf looking down from the ceiling fan at them.  There is no grace in that elf, he reports to Santa.  There is no sacrificial love in that elf.  And let's be honest, Santa is not about sanctifying us.  He is about rewarding our good works.

So, our little elf went back into his box.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS.  I love the celebration.  I love the songs, the food, the gifts, the decorations.  I love it all!  I love what the original St Nicholas was all about.  I think God loves a good celebration too.  The Old Testament is filled with them.  I have struggled with this.  Isn't the elf and Santa just a little bit of holiday fun?  There is no harm in that, is there?

Yes, there is.  I hate it, but there is.  We are in the middle of a battle.  A battle of good and evil.  And evil wants our children.  Evil wants our children to live lives that are just like everyone else.  Evil wants our children to look like the world.  Evil wants us to believe being set apart is not that important.  Evil wants us to believe that we CAN work ourselves into being good enough.  

Some day our children will be forced to take a stand for their faith.  A stand that will have eternal consequences.  Each tiny step we take towards a works based gospel, a watered down gospel is weakening their ability to stand up and proclaim who they are in Christ.

Celebrate the season.  Shout to the hills that LOVE came down on that Christmas day.  Celebrate that God's grace came to us BEFORE we were good.  We did nothing to earn it.  We are saved by grace.

Wow, it has been a long time since I have posted.  Our family has grown by one...  sweet baby Loryn made her entry on September the 17th.  God has been working overtime on my heart.  I was reading over some past blogs and I realized that there are some issues that I seem to doing worse at than when God pricked my heart about them a year or two ago.  Ouch.

What I do know, is that I miss blogging.  Not because anyone reads it but mostly because it is where God reveals a a lot of insights to me.  I work through things through words.

Our church has been doing a study in our small groups called The Gospel Centered Life.  I highly recommend it.  Each week, I am struck with a new insight, a deep reality a stronger truth that reveals more and more of God's love for me.

This last week I looked straight in the face of my hardest struggle.  My need for control.  I want to control everyone and everything around me.  I gain some deep peace from thinking that I can and do have it all together.  The thing I find discouraging about this is that I have been well aware of this struggle for four years.  I look myself in the mirror and ask myself "How long?  How long will you get wound up?  How long will you lose your temper and lash out at those around you, how long will you struggle with this?"  I pray and pray and pray.  But it is still a struggle.

The thing I find most encouraging is that God knows exactly where I am and He is NOT looking me in the mirror saying those things.  Perhaps the most powerful thing that I have gotten from this study and the messages at church lately is this one thought - the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, defeated death, is in me.  IN ME.  That power is IN ME.  Waiting.  Waiting for me to let go allow it to go to work.

There are several verses in the NEw Testament that talked about how "I can do all things through Christ"...  "All things are possible..."  "With God nothing is imporrible..." and yet, I struggle.  And then my heart leads me to another verse "Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief".  That is my cry.  Oh I do believe, in the big picture.  But I struggle with the day to day.  Help me to believe that when the chaos is around me, You are enough to get me through in a way that shines glory on you.  Because it is not just enough to just get through.  I want my life to shine in a way that shows Your glory each day!

Whining

So Bowden's reading assignment came from Numbers 11 today...  it struck a nerve with me...

 Then Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased.  So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me? ..... that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom....,’ to the land which You swore to their fathers?  Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep all over me, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’  I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me.  If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favor in Your sight—and do not let me see my wretchedness!”

Sometimes I feel like Moses in this passage... everyone is whining ALL THE TIME...  then it dawned on me...

the hard reality...

Moses was whining the LOUDEST... straight to God.

What a privilege it was for Moses to be called to shepherd these people, God's chosen people.  What a privilege it was for Moses to be WITH God, to speak to God.  And most of the time, he seemed to cherish that role.  One paragraph before this, God sent a fire to wipe out the whining Israelites and Moses prayed to God to save them.  But it seems like it just got to be too much for him on this day.

Like he just started thinking, "REALLY PEOPLE?  Didn't I JUST save you from the wrath of God yesterday?  Why do you not get it?  Just stop whining and TRUST HIM!"

On this day, it just seemed to be too much for him and there we find him, whining louder then all the rest...

That was me today.

I just do not want to hear it anymore.

And so, instead of praying for them to understand, I become the LOUDEST whiner in my family... 

I have missed the point, the privilege that it is for God to have chosen ME to raise these children.

I have stopped trusting Him.  I have stopped seeking Him.  I am looking only at my circumstances and how it makes me FEEL... and that is always a bad place to be!

As I read this, I realized I do not want out.  I want to press in even further.  Just as Moses prayed for God to spare them so many times, I want to pray for my children when they are at their worst!


And what I love about God, about His Word is that it found me and spoke truth to me in the midst of doing school with Bowden....

Pretty AWESOME!

Know the HOPE

It has been one of those days.  A day where our need for Jesus, for a Savior, for HOPE has been screaming at me.  It started with a text informing me about a tragic loss for a family I know.  It was followed with example after example of the need for God's love.  The need for us to realize that we ARE ALL LOVED SO DEEPLY BY GOD THAT HE SENT HIS SON TO DIE FOR US.

Oddly enough none of these pictures were from my own family today (although there are many other days where that is not the case).  No, my littles were actually quite well behaved and sweet today.  But as we moved through our day I was overwhelmed with the need to make them realize their need for Christ.  Their need for the HOPE that only He can provide.

We were wandering through PetSmart today and came across a couple with a toddler looking at animals like we were.  The mother was young and sadly enough she had the telltale signs of being a meth user.  I looked at the small child in her arms and I wanted to cry.  What kind of life would that child have, with parents who struggled with drug use?  Then I glanced at the mother and I wanted to cry even more - surely when this girl was born, her mother had wanted so much more for her.  Her hope was certainly not to raise a daughter who would slip into drug addiction.

My eyes moved down to my four girls swirling about my legs as they ohhhed and ahhed at that hamsters running on the exercise wheels and I wanted to pull them to me.  I wanted to rip them away from this world that will assault them from all sides and hide them away from the pain and suffering that is waiting for them.  I wanted to stop time and just enjoy their sweet innocence.

I wanted to pray.  Pray that God would keep them safe.  Pray that God would protect them.  Pray that they would have lives filled with all sorts of goodness and be painfree.  Then I knew what I needed to pray for.  What really mattered.  A phrase my best friend uses often when talking about her teenager.  I needed to pray that Jesus would capture their hearts.

Capture their hearts.  That He would hold their hearts in His hand and they would never want Him to let it go.  I need to pray that they would know and understand (as much as we humans possibly can) the HOPE that is in Him.  That HOPE can only come through Him.

That they would know the HOPE, that they would believe the HOPE, that they would trust the HOPE that comes through Christ JESUS.

Because here is the reality that I saw time and time again today.  Life is hard.  This is a cruel world filled with fallen people who will hurt us constantly - sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidentally.  But hurt is hurt.  I can be the best mother in the world but nothing will give my children the strength they need to survive this world with a peace beyond understand (Phil 4:6-7) other than the HOPE of Jesus Christ.

I spend a lot of time praying for my children.  I pray for their salvation, their well being & safety, their purpose, I pray that they will follow God's path and be used by Him, I pray that they will be happy and joyful.  And some of these prayers will be answered exactly the way I want them to be.  But some of them....  well some of them, God will answer in unexpected and painful ways.  And the only way I can expect my children to come through this life being able to rest in the peace of God's promises is if the know the HOPE ...

The reality is, just as God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to make the first mistake in the garden, my children have that same freedom.  They will make mistakes.  Bad grades, bad friend choices, car accidents, drinking.... They will makes mistakes.  Unwed pregnancy, drug use, lying, stealing... They will make mistakes... Rebellion, fighting, gossiping, bullying... Some mistakes will be recoverable.  Some mistakes will not.  Some mistakes will make tiny waves that leave little damage.  Some mistakes will be hurricanes that will destroy everything in its' path.

My children NEED Christ.  They NEED to know how much God loves them.  I tell them all the time that God loves them more than I do but they do not understand this.  How could they?  How can I?  I would never (let me repeat that, NEVER) let one of my children die for any of you.  EVER.  If letting one of them die meant you could live - sorry, I would not do it.  But here is the thing, I do not love you the way God does.  No one loves you (or me, or my children) the way God does.  It is incomprehensible.

Unable to comprehend.  A love so enormous that we cannot come close to ever understanding it.  And yet I need my children to know this love.  How?  Jesus has got to capture their hearts.

They are not my own, these children whom I bore, who live with me each day, who I am trying my best to train and raise.  They are His.  And He wants them back.

I have to quit thinking about how I can control them, how I can give them the perfect life with organic recipes found on Pinterest, bought in farmer's markets, that we can do crafts and have pizza family fun nights, that the house can be organized and run perfectly and all this will draw them to Christ.  I have to quit thinking that life needs to be perfect and that perfect will bring them to Christ.  Christ came for the broken.

If Christ is love, the love, the HOPE that I want my children to know, then don't I have to help them to realize that it is in the broken places that they will find Christ?  Our goal cannot and should not be perfection.  

They are His and He wants them back.

He does not want perfect people who have no need for Him.  I have been weighed down by my need for Christ today.  I have cried hard tears today, tears for a family trying to recover from a horrible loss, tears for a family struggling with a wayward child, tears for a family struggling with a dying child... and yet in those tears I KNOW THE HOPE.  I was sad, I was burdened but I was never without HOPE.  But my heart is broken for those who do not know that HOPE.

They are His and He wants them back.

And the only way He will get them back if if they know the HOPE, believe the HOPE, trust the HOPE.  So instead of trying to raise perfect children who know no sadness, suffering or loss I will try to raise children children who are able to see Christ in the broken places and know that He is the only HOPE that will lift them from those valleys.

As I sit here, I pray, God give me words.  You have given me some great words in the past.  Your words, not mine.  Words that have called me to a higher place.  Words that have rocked my world, words that have warmed my heart, words that have dug into those dark places I do not want anyone to see.

But I have not had many words lately.  Not in the past several months.  I have said it was because I have just been too busy being a wife, too busy training my children, too busy homeschooling my children, too busy being a friend, too busy being a Bible study leader....  too busy to get into His word, too busy to be with Him, too busy to hear His word ...

These are all things He has called me to...  This is the purpose He has planned for my life.  I know this with certainty.  I love my life.  And yet, I miss His words.

So I have to ask myself, would He have called me to something that would pull me away from Him?  Or am I just making excuses, listening to that wily serpent who would speak through the mouths of those who "know better"... that this time of my life is just too full to really feel "pressured" and "guilted" to spend time in the Word.

God wants me to pursue the purpose He has laid out for me but more than that, He wants me to pursue Him.  Pursuing the purpose but not the Creator just leads to tired, frustration.  Pursuing Him means I need to BE IN THE WORD, daily.  Pursuing Him means I need to meet Him in PRAYER by the hour, by the minute....  His words are there, I was just not hearing them because I was so busy pursuing His purpose that I was not stopping to spend time with Him.

There have been times in my ten years as a Christ follower that I have stumbled through parts of the Old Testament, wondering why should I read this?  Let's get the good stuff, the Good News....  But this year I started a Bible reading program with my church and have been working through the OT.  Two people really stood out to me - the first was Lot's wife.  I feel, at times, that I am like Lot's wife.  Especially with homeschooling.  God has called me to this difficult path of educating my children and I have started down the path. However, there are days, long, painful days, when I find that I have stopped.  I stop and look back at what that other life was...  I do not really like the fact that of all the women in Genesis, I relate to the woman who was turned to a pillar of salt.  But that is what I have felt like during this school year - a pillar of salt - frozen looking back at place God has called me out of thinking that has got to be better than the scary unknown of where we are going.

And the other person?  Jacob.  Jacob in the tent the night before he meets up with his brother to whom he did so wrong.  Jacob who stayed up all night wrestling with God.  Jacob, who wrestled so fiercely with God that his hip was finally popped.  I feel like I have spent an enormous amount of time fighting with God.  I can imagine Jacob, that night before seeing his brother, practically crippled with fear, fear of the future, worrying about what was going to happen, completely ignoring the words God had spoken to Him - something along the lines of "go home, I've got your back".  I read that and wondered "What is wrong with this guy?  God SPOKE TO HIM!"  I would not need to worry if God spoke to me like that.

But then it dawns on me.  God does speak to me...  or He would, if I would pick up my Bible... get down on my knees in prayer.  Instead, I lay in my metaphorical tent, worrying about everything.  Wrestling with the Truth instead of just submitting and saying "I TRUST YOU!"

I love His Word, I love His Spirit, I love Him.  Seek and we will find.  A friend told me last night that it is ridiculous for women who are in the trenches of motherhood... night feedings, potty training, temper tantrums... the list goes on and on...to believe the lie that we are just to busy to get into the Word.  I do not think we should wield that hatchet of guilt around about this but the reality if there is anyone who needs to be in the word of God, it is the mother in the trenches.  This year, I have stopped looking back and started looking at Him.  My prayer?  That I will love Him.  That I will be consumed with Him.  That everything in my life with others would simply be an overflow of the abundance of God.

She came to me early in the morning.

Bright and smiling, ready for her day of celebration.

She crawled in bed with me and was suddenly serious, "Mommy, what if one of the tea cups breaks?"

I smiled.  That is okay, accidents happen.

"But what if Macyn crawls over and gets some of the broken peaces?"

Sweet girl.  It will be okay, we will not let it happen.

"Well, I have been thinking and we should put Macyn in the bouncer so she will be okay."

My precious girl, even on her birthday, thinking about her baby sister!  What a fun day to celebrate six beautiful years.  What a blessing God brought in to my life with my wonderful daughter!

Evynn Kelley Jones