I’m tired. I’m emotional. I’m human! I struggle with myself more than any outside circumstance or person. I battle my flesh daily – or maybe momently. (Is that even a word?)  I am trying to forge ahead to the end of the year with homeschooling, but the truth is, I’d like to just throw my hands up and say, “Let’s go to the library. And then how ’bout the park and maybe some ice cream?” There are lots of articles on homeschooling that say we should do just that when we’re bogged down. I’m pretty sure there are articles about life that give that same advice: “When life gets you down, take a break. Relax. Put your feet up. Sip lemonade.” But that’s not always the proper course of action. Sure, breaks are needed and necessary. But there are times when we have to just be disciplined and push through.

In Oklahoma, there are no regulations on homeschooling. I can teach my kids all year, or six months of the year. I can teach for 8 hours a day or for 2 hours a day. While the freedom is wonderful, it does force me to be my own boss and make myself do the hard thing. Right now, the hard thing is teaching the differences between simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences. I could just say, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll never need this in real life.” But, seeing as I’m not omniscient, I could be wrong. They actually might need this stuff. (gasp!) So, I shove aside my own fatigue and my headache and I pull out the Sharpies. I try to make sentence structure understandable… for both of us.

Life is hard for everyone at some point. We can’t just quit! I think the best ideas came to people who were tired and had headaches. So even though I’m weary, and I would like to just go get ice cream, I’ll keep going.  I’ll plan, I’ll prepare, I’ll pray and then I’ll get up and do the work.

You talked me into it.