failure

Monday Morning Randomness

/ Regina Walker / Leave a comment

Good morning! This is just a post with a few random thoughts.

I never understood how mom’s could get so excited about cloth diapers. Until now. Every time I hang ours up to dry, or stuff liners in covers, I feel this sense of accomplishment and excitement. Like I’m doing something right for the environment, and our budget, and it is good. So I get it now. (Please excuse me if my cloth-diaper lingo isn’t up to par.)

I got the privilege of being a beta reader for my author friend, Angela. She is an amazing woman, mom, wife, friend, and writer. Her talent blows me away! I am praying and hoping to see her book on shelves before long, and yes, I will post, post and repost the info when it comes out!!

I have always wondered what my “niche” for online writing should be.

I am extremely passionate about parent-child relationships, family dynamics, and divorced/remarried homes. I have been for a long time.

I didn’t think I could write about it, or that it would matter if I did, until recently. But I think the time has come for me to begin writing about it.

Church yesterday was amazing. The message was about laying down our need for approval. It struck a chord within me, because I’ve struggled with this my entire life. And I still do. In fact, I live believing I’m one mistake away from losing the important people in my life. I usually feel like a horrible failure, and it gets really bad when I am struggling to keep up with all of the stuff I have to do. Like right now, newly married, with a new baby, 3 brilliant boys to homeschool, the dogs, the rats, the house… I feel like I’m holding my breath, waiting for someone (the hubby, the oldest boy’s bio-mom, the boys, etc.) to just give up on me. And yesterday, at church, listening to the message, I thought “Oh, I’ve got this!” Living for God instead of the approval of others, yes! Exactly! There were so many great points. But this morning, just the very next day, I’m struggling again. I am afraid of being this major disappointment, of not doing my part, of not doing enough. (Yes, Mom. I know we just talked about this on Friday.) And the really insane part is, I feel like the only woman/wife/mom/writer who cannot educate the kids, take care of the baby, keep the house spotless, prepare great and wonderful meals, crochet, scrapbook, write, and catch her favorite sitcom on Monday nights. I’m just lucky when we get school done, the baby is fed, dry, and held, the cloth diapers are washed and hung to dry, and everybody has had a corndog for lunch.

My kids eat more processed foods than I can stand, but I have given in to “ease”. The house is almost always an utter disaster. (The hubby did a remarkable job this weekend getting it straightened out.) I could get more done if I would put the baby down, but she won’t be small for long and I want to hold her while I can.

I know that people with lives that appear perfect, don’t have perfect lives. They have struggles, too. But I live with just my struggles, and it gets really easy to compare myself to others and find myself lacking. Don’t misread this or get me wrong… I love my life. I love homeschooling. I love our baby girl. I am so happy, blessed and thankful that we just got married. I’m just terribly afraid of being the one that ruins it all.

I need to listen to the messages I missed, one about feeling inadequate and one about control, they all tie in with the message about approval. And I need to pray. I know God doesn’t want us living in this kind of fear, and I know He can heal me. Plus, I know that living with this constant, nagging sense of failure is destructive.

Do you struggle with feeling this way? If so, what steps are you taking to grow and heal from this?

So much for a light-hearted post of random thoughts…. Happy Monday!

We expect teachers to do what?!

/ Regina Walker / Leave a comment

Hi. It’s almost 2 in the afternoon, and today was a new adventure for me. I officially homeschooled 3 kids today. Not just the usual 2, but 3. All 3 of which are very active boys, with very busy minds. They range from 8th grade to kindergarten.

And if I measured today’s success based on someone else’s measuring stick, I’m pretty sure we failed. We didn’t get through nearly as many “lessons” as I thought we would. On top of managing 3 that are doing school, I have a 3 year old and a 2 year old keeping me busy. And as I manage a total of 5 kids, I’m scratching my head thinking, “We expect teachers to handle 20+?” Now, granted, they are all the same age and they use one curriculum, and teach the same material to everyone in class. But does that really make it easier to manage them?!

I had to stop sitting and directing to cook lunch and school fell apart. But I don’t know how to make soup and sandwiches and make three kids stay on task. So, we put school aside, I finished cooking, we ate, and now they are outside. I almost started doubting this whole idea, as much as I love it and want it…I thought “can I really do this?” But you know what? They all learned something today, they are all happy today, they are all fed today, and this is day 1 with 3 in school. That changed our entire routine.

Tomorrow, we’ll get through a little more, I’ll start a little earlier, and I’ll be better prepared to be a little stricter. Plus, I know a little more of what to expect.

Seriously though, if 5 kids can be this challenging, what causes us to expect a single teacher to manage 20+ students? I really can’t make sense of this at all… thoughts?