I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:5
I know I’ve been something of a random poster these days; sometimes once a week, sometimes less. There are various reasons why, but today I thought I’d share the most complicated one of them with you.
You see, quite a bit has changed in my life lately. After 15 years of full-time motherhood and 10 of homeschooling, my oldest two (tenth grade and eighth grade) are attending a private school. While I still homeschool the youngest, this has been a rather dramatic alteration in our lifestyle and schedule.
Now instead of letting the kids sleep until 7:00, the older two get up at 6:00. The youngest gets up at 5:00 — don’t ask me why. She’s just like that. We do our Bible studies in the predawn hour but in separate rooms. It’s kind of cool, actually.
Instead of a quick trot to the school room, I am now hauling two of them on a thirty-minute drive south. That’s thirty minutes one-way, which means an hour is spent in the morning commute.
The youngest either comes along or stays home and works on her own schooling, depending on my husband’s schedule. Also, depending on his schedule, that hour commute is sometimes doubled. Either way, there I am standing with one foot in two worlds.
And then, of course, there are activities and extracurricular events. There is church and community group. There is striving to find the time to stay in shape — or rather, in some semblance of shape — despite an odd assortment of injuries I have managed to accumulate, apparently just to keep things interesting.
I am also endeavoring to learn Hebrew; a task at which I am progressing at a snail’s pace. A dead snail’s pace. But it’s great fun, probably because I am the quintessential nerd.
Also at this stage of my life, there are the teenage years and puberty happening all around, along with the great emotional needs that accompanies this life stage, much more intense and exhausting than the toddler years as far as I can see. Or maybe I’m just exhausted because of age… or because of chronic migraine and its various treatments… or just because.
And so on, and so forth.
But to me, personally, the biggest, most exciting, and yet most frustrating new thing is that I have finished the first draft of a novel.
No, really. It’s true. It doesn’t seem possible to me, but it is true.
As a matter of fact, I am writing these words now with something of a guilty conscience, mainly because I am taking a break from rewriting a stubborn paragraph that simply will not come together.
All the while I am hiding from my intractable characters that have chosen this night not to behave and docilely speak sensible sentences as they ought, my Hebrew vocabulary cards are staring at me balefully, reminding me that I have not even glanced at them today and here it is eight o’clock at night.
But that’s another matter. The crazy, exhilarating, and intimidating truth is that I have actually typed out an entire novel and am working through the revision.
So what’s next?
Who knows? I consider it highly unlikely the thing will be published, but then that is in God’s hands, as is everything else.
Either way, I look to Him for wisdom in all of it — the rewriting, putting out feelers for publication, raising my teens and tweens, homeschooling, private schooling, being a wife, facilitating a small group, prayer meetings at church– all of it. It is either all for His glory, or it is worthless.
Either way, I am praying almost all the time these days because, frankly, I need God every second of every minute of every day no matter what I am working on.
So that’s basically all that’s new with me! Drop a line sometime and let me know what’s new with you. 🙂
Running the Race 
Sounds like life is great! Similar to ours, except we’re (for now) all homeschool, and our kiddos sleep in! How far along are you in Hebrew? Do you have textbook you are using? Hebrew is such a beautiful language. I’m so glad I spent the years learning it. My dad and I are taking a Koine Greek class right now. It’s a big switch from Hebrew, but I think it’s in some ways easier, other ways much harder.
What genre is your work? I took a brief respite from college once and tried the author life. Never got anything published and just got one agent interested (for a time), but the time I got with Jesus through the process was worth it’s weight in bestsellers for me.
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Life is great, with all its challenges. I am learning to be content even in the difficulties and trust that God has a plan even for that, which honestly makes it all wonderful. I am not very far along in Hebrew. Using the “Basics of Biblical Hebrew” text and video lectures and only just now on chapter 12 of 36 chapters. But, it’s a fascinating language, fulfills my inner nerd, and will hopefully help me achieve my goal of reading the Bible in Hebrew someday! I sincerely wish I had stayed in college and applied myself then, but of course then I wasn’t a Christian and would have simply wasted the time in some other way. 😉
My work is pretty much full-time homeschool mom with all the bells and whistles. I do a little freelance writing (only occasionally published) and a little freelance photography (mostly favors for friends or barter system). My husband’s job is very demanding, so I pretty much stick with housework, helping him where I can, homeschool, chauffeuring the others to school (which is new this year), and various things I do for our church. Oh, and praying; lots and lots of praying!
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It fulfills my inner nerd too. I think that’s why I geek out on it all the time! It’s a very alien language compared to English, but once I got in the swing of things, especially on the grammar side with the binyanim and various verb conjugations, it got a lot easier for me. And now I’m just on that long stretch of highway through the desert of vocab memorization. At least the major authors of Hebrew language lit are up front about it. One of mine starts his preface with Job 19:2, “”How long will you torment me and crush me with words?” haha. But I feel it. I used Cook and Holmstedt’s Beginning Biblical Hebrew as an intro book and I thought it was excellent for getting started. But it does leave off some really critical points on the various binyanim, in my opinion. But with other books I had a good experience with it.
You know, my wife quit after 2 years. She was early childhood ed and she just wanted to be a mom. That was it. And after the kids grew older and left she just wanted to volunteer. She stayed in mostly because of pressure she felt from society and she finally just walked. She has thought she might go back one day, but then again, we might end up living at an orphanage in Kenya in 15 years. God only knows, but she’s happy.
That’s exciting to get some stuff published! I never got to that stage. I had several really demanding jobs and God has just recently blessed me with a very lenient, laid back one. Ironically, I’m actually up late tonight doing work that I missed at the office today. I wish I could take on a decent share of homeschool, but it’s just not feasible with my schedule. I try to sneak in some hear and there though.
Oh praying is one I am always doing! Can’t get enough of it. I love “filling the cracks” of my daily tasks with time with his Spirit, such a joy to be in his presence 🙂 We’re getting pretty involved in our church, we just started leading a small group and both of us serve in the kids ministry (which I absolutely love doing). It’s good stuff! Great blessings from God.
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I only just started the first chapter on verbs, so I am waay behind you. You are right — it really is very alien compared to English or even other Latin-roots languages like Spanish. My Spanish is pretty rusty, but I found the thought process behind the words easier to comprehend. However, that’s part of the fun with Hebrew — trying to get my head around the Jewish mindset; for example, why “long-nosed” is a metaphor for patient!
I am glad your wife is happy in staying home. I really do think we women are designed to be at home, at least in most cases, and it definitely isn’t something society values. I’m at that crossroads where, if my youngest decides to give private school a go (and if the Lord even provides for it), I may be looking at reentering the workplace after 15 years out of it. I know that God will show us what to do when the time comes, though.
We lead a small group, too. Well, actually its me and a close friend of ours due to my husband’s work schedule. The core of our group have shared fellowship together for 10 years and we really feel our brotherhood in Christ! There are various other things, too, but it’s all so good just to be serving God however He calls us. I have learned big lessons in saying “no” when I need to — not something I was good at before, but that’s another long story.
I’d love for your wife to contact me if she ever wants to ‘talk’ to someone who’s been there with homeschooling. 🙂
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Yes! And also why “ahf” “nose” can also mean “anger,” which I think is because of the snorting sound some make when they are angry. The mindset is very different, but there’s some interesting logic behind it.
I couldn’t agree more. I think most women are designed by God to be at home and our society in America unfortunately disdains that role. I’ll pray for God’s wisdom and guiding hand if you do choose to go back to work. I work in a pretty entrepreneurial environment and it’s it’s a lot more about trying to carve out value in the market than just being apart of a company…it’s weird. The whole reality of a marketplace. I’m still wandering down the rabitt hole with God on this one.
Oh that sounds like fun, a fellowship of 10 years sounds wonderful. That’s the dream we are pursuing in ours, hopefully it will sprout into something similar. What is your small group like and what material do you study? Any good suggestions? We are doing Crazy Love right now and really like it.
I’ll let my wife know that! Thank you! She always loves connecting with other homeschooling moms. She connected with our coop leader today and we’re really excited about where it’s going.
Also, what kind of curriculum for homeschool are you using right now?
God bless!! 🙂
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Also, are you learning modern as well or just biblical?
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I’d never thought of the snorting sound! That gives me a basis for the idea at least. Thanks! 🙂
Our small group really is wonderful. We currently have 2 retired couples who are parents of some friends as well as families in a similar life-stage to our own. I couldn’t love it more. We have the benefit of wisdom and experience, which is incredibly helpful. We have done different things in the way of study. We went through T. W. Hunt’s “The Mind of Christ” which I highly recommend, and we have done several studies on various books of the Bible. My friend and co-leader found some excellent ones from Dallas Theological Seminary. Most of the group are fairly mature believers, so we have incredible discussions. Service projects are also something we try to do together, too.
As for homeschool, I’ve used a variety over the years. Some things stick, some I switch around based on the needs of the year. Currently for my 7th grader, I am using Bob Jones for Literature and Grammar. I’m using IEW for writing, so we are skipping the writing portions of the grammar book (BJU lumps grammar and writing into one book). I am also using BJU Life Science which I cannot recommend enough. I used Apologia for middle school science with the older two, and I do not feel that they were as well-prepared for high school with that. It’s fine for elementary, but I truly recommend BJU for middle school as far as rigor goes. Now that being said, if you have an artist or a writer rather than a science major, stick with what works best the kid. Let’s see… Mystery of History and going over the Middle Ages this year; Apologia’s worldview curriculum for Bible (first year I’ve used it, but it’s good); and Saxon for math.
As for my Hebrew, I am trying to learn Biblical mainly, but want to get to modern Hebrew as well. I’ve a couple of apps I am trying out to help me with pronunciation that are for modern Hebrew, but again, I’m just barely getting started. 🙂
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