Stretchable Mama
My friend (I’ll call her Lisa) homeschooled her oldest two children and is still homeschooling her third. We met Lisa and her husband (I’ll call him Jeffrey) before they had children. They eventually had three. I’ll call them Austin, Kevin, and Rachel.
Lisa first knew she wanted to homeschool when she was expecting Austin. When Kevin was born four years later, I was the first friend to hold him. Rachel was born four years after that. The children are all very special to us.
No two children are cut with the same cookie cutter and that is certainly true in Lisa’s family. Her children included one academically-oriented child, one child who loved to move, and one artist. Lisa learned what she had to do to teach each of them and to do it well.
However, this did not happen overnight. Lisa read and read some more. She tried ideas and discarded them and tried other ideas and kept at them. She figured things out on her own and found people to help when she needed help. Lisa prayed—a lot! Though Lisa is very good at homeschooling, it has not been easy for her. God gave her children who would stretch her. One great thing about Lisa is that she is stretchable. She also knows how to keep agoin’. After a particularly difficult year for her family, they had a “We Survived” party. What a great idea!
I love the homeschooling stories Lisa has shared with me through the years. One January I got this email from her:
I had to share a homeschool funny with you. Rachel made school books for her new bunny to start school today. She had a page of math problems and a page of art and some others. She was showing off what she made and then she came to a page that just had one word on it. “And here’s her grammar,” Rachel said. “Whatever that is.”
By the time Rachel was four years old, she was amazing us with her drawings. She later began creating with textiles. Lisa has kept her supplied with materials. Here is one of Rachel’s creations that Lisa sent me several years ago:
Are you trying to press each of your children into some mold you see around you or one swimming around in your own head? If you do, you just might miss out on seeing a fabric “Un-Happy meal.” Wouldn’t that be a shame? When God made your children, He made them in His own likeness. Sometimes you have to be stretchable to remember that.
In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
Genesis 5:1