13 Lessons...#13 Hold Lightly

Well, seeing how it is Friday the 13^th and that I never finished my 13 Lessons Learned in 13 years of Homeschooling last year, perhaps it is a good opportunity to say that this first week of school has been somewhat of a disaster, at least from a coordinated, scheduled, organized and new-textbook shiny point of view.  And yes, I did see that blog post featuring that beautiful little schoolroom with the library nook and everything so tidy and conducive to proper education!

Monday was our first day of school on the calendar. We had gone out of town on the previous weekend, expecting to return by 9  Monday and hit the opening note on a wonderful school year.

The previous Friday’s wee first hours of the morning sealed our fate for the week.  A huge storm swept through following weeks of sunny, gorgeous weather, with thunder and lightning like we’ve not seen out west.  Come Friday dawn we had a few surprises.  Like chasing down two driver's licenses that had been inadvertently left at a meeting the previous night across town.With quite enough already we were just climbing in the car to head out two hours late when we got a call: the mountain pass we were crossing had been closed due to landslides, requiring a longer journey around.  Really, the last straw. Well, without going into details, we had an awesome day anyway arriving 8 hours after planned, and a wonderful weekend.  But Monday morning we found that the second Pass we’d come over on was also closed now.  With more complications than are interesting to you, we found ourselves home at 6 that night.  All day long I kept reminding the kids it was the first day of school after all, but they wouldn’t buy it.  Especially when I looked longingly after the water-skier out on the placid lake and envied; this sealed my fate against being a suitable or effective schoolmarm.  We did, however, listen to Voddie Baucham’s Why All Children are Resistant to Education, which may become an opening staple.

Back to our Friday surprise.  In some bizarre exploit of the storm (another explanation please, someone?), all the windows on my husband’s car opened during the night.  And the sunroof.  Three inches of rain in the cupholders, so one can imagine the state of leather seats and floor. What exactly does one do with this?  We packed the one car while mopping and shop-vac’ing the other; and left it with a heater going inside. 

Which of course blew the breaker and so it and garage appliances were off all weekend.

And the storm also blew the phone and internet box.  So bright and early Tuesday, our second (first?) day of school, the internet and phones are down for two days.  No matter that they have a number of online classes starting in those two days.  Really, we don’t believe in hanging out at coffee shops and friend’s houses to attend class, but ya gotta do…

Did I mention that one of them came down sick all week?  And that my aging mother who lives downstairs had a severe flare-up of health issues, almost landing in the hospital? 

 

Because after that we have to talk about how my husband read that coffee grounds helps get odors out of cars, so he the-man-who-thinks-coffee-solves-all-things had some fresh ground at Costco and spread them all over in his car.  Except that his carpet is a very light tan.  So this morning at 5:45 the girls are wondering why they are hearing the shop-vac going? And ten blackened rags later I’ve got most of the stains removed from the carpet.  Except that the person we’re meeting for PE is calling and wondering why we’re not there yet, and of course I forgot entirely about that part of the morning.

Really, I could go on.  There’s much more.  But the fact is, the two remaining students of the three are excited to be starting, are not daunted by a very heavy school load this year, and have cheerful and interested attitudes about their studies.  So we’re blessed in beginning this journey for the 14^th time.  And all the things that went wrong were still mere accidentals, things that people in other countries deal with daily as a matter of course.  Then we can never forget those suffering greatly across the world in the conflagration of epic national demises, even now on these days that we count petty mishaps.

And about the disastrous week.  And that 13^th Lesson…from Indonesia, where plans changes minute by minute and nothing can be counted upon except that the sun comes up, our son brought home this lesson: that regardless, God is faithful, and that shifting and changing schedules (they missed their planes both going to Singapore and coming from Tokyo), messed-up plans and seeming disasters are all in God’s loving and sovereign care, and that the way He eventually works all things to His glory and our good is far in excess of any story we could ourselves imagine.  We don’t see the intertwined providences that unwind over years and generations.

He wrote out a little presentation he gave at church, and ended with this:  “Throughout the entire trip, the recurring theme was “hold lightly”.  Hold lightly to our plans, to our schedules, to our possessions, to our aspirations, but hold fast to the promise of God that His mercies are new every day.  And when all plans are stripped away and we have nothing left, that He will give us enough strength to make it through that day.  And the next.”