Sharon McKeeman Blog » Blog

“I used to think God guided us by opening and closing doors, but now I know sometimes God wants us to kick some doors down.” – Bob Goff

Thankful that I have not had to kick down any doors in the public school system and that at least in the state of California there have been other parents, teachers and servants of the people that have done that for my family and so many others. The above images are my boys getting ready to head off for the first class-day of the school year at their Charter school. Also check out a peek at our first Home Day this year. I homeschool them three days a week and they attend class at a school that feels like home two days a week. So grateful that they get the classroom experience that my husband and I didn’t have as homeschooled kids and that I get a little break that our moms didn’t have while homeschooling us. The support that I receive in addition to their class-days is so essential and I truly could NOT imagine homeschooling completely on my own. My hat goes off to all the moms who live in states where this isn’t an option and soldier on daily on their own or organize co-ops and such themselves.

I do alter my curriculum somewhat from exactly what the school provides as do most parents that are involved in the charter. It’s amazing to me that my kids are receiving such an organized educational experience while we still have the freedom to tailor learning styles to what will benefit them most. Parents frequently ask me for curriculum suggestions or homeschooling resources. My go to starting point for the How and What is A Well Trained Mind by Susan Wisebauer. And my inspiration for the Why is For the Children’s Sake and When Children Love to Learn, both books on the Charlotte Mason Philosophy.

There are still tears and frustration and doldrums on a frequent basis but there are moments of magnificent discovery and quiet contemplation that I would not miss for the world. I can not imagine our lives any other way during this season. I know the time will pass and they will grow and I do not know where this journey will take us and often that causes me to worry . . . What will high school and college look like?  Will I have prepared them adequately? How will they find jobs, 10, 20, 30 years from now that feed their souls and support their needs? Who will they become? How will they look back on their time learning at home? What will they think of me, a mom that has never been able to just be Mom as I also fill the role of their teacher? Last night during the beautiful worship service we attend every Sunday evening we sang of His love enduring forever, and ever . . . and I was reminded that the world is no better and no more broken than it has ever been. Nothing can crowd out his love or cause Him to stop working on earth through His people. Nothing will ever be perfect and religion is NOT the answer. Yet He will be just as faithful to enter into relationship with my children as He does with me. They will make as many mistakes as I do and I will make as many mistakes as my parents did. Still they already call Him their Saviour and that is more than enough to carry them through their life. My goal each week is to discipline and train their character and skills so their journey will not be unnecessarily difficult, while allowing them freedom, stillness and time to explore His creation and hear from Him.  I fail miserably.  Yet He wraps forgiveness around us all, drenching us in mercy and grace and speaking soft into our hearts of love beating stronger than the oceans, burning fierce as the sun.

I sang last night and rested in the words, “If our God is for us, then who can stand against.” He is higher and deeper than any other. He who crafted balls of fire overwhelmingly larger than our humble earth and keeps everything spinning in perfect cadence. His perfect love directing an epic dance of stars and sea and allowing us to live a story of work and failure, conflict and loss, romance and friendship that will be told for ages beyond time. Though I can not prepare my children for all they will encounter on their path. I am thankful for a coming together of diverse community to equip them, and for the promise that He will ever walk alongside and hold their hand.

“We should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and spiritual life of children; but should teach them that the divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.” – Charlotte Mason

“Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, wether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical, symphony; but we must sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food” – Charlotte Mason

9-29-12 . 28mm . morning light inside and out

We teach our children not to ask the question.

In the midst of the questioning that grief brings, my pastor told me not to take one step down the long road of – Why?

I have shut myself off to this word, this deep probing inquiry. Little did I realize the baggage it carried, the labels I had unconsciously attached to it. Plastered like a beat up suitcase with stickers from everywhere it has been dragged along – childish, rebellious, foolish, unproductive, and most of all Dangerous.

But high in the mountains, surrounded by artists passionate, they told us they treasure that word and hold themselves up to it’s light. Their words broke through the static – static always piling up to overrun the truth. Their words broke through…

Why?      They said to ask it, daily, hourly, minute by minute. About everything – in every way. Don’t do a single thing without asking . . . Why?

The Sunday School answer of course – for Jesus.  But excuse me what the hell does that mean in this broken world, in my heart always run astray? I scream inside through so many days . . .  What does it mean?   Why?   How?   What am I to do?

A friend has been in pain this week. I know that hard path, her body numbed to the searing pain and her mind and heart will take time to learn all they feel in this moment. Friends, acquaintances, passerby’s, people are in pain every day, every moment. A husband lost,a precious baby gone, a child run away, dreams shattered, existence too mundane.

I sit here, tea in hand, seventy degrees give or take, running water, food to eat, my babies safe, a man that loves me. Why do I still have a hard time with happiness, gratitude, contentment? Why am I always Meg Murray raging at what life throws her way? Why can’t I smile and say thank you and love? These are the whys I constantly ask and cover up, never spoken, never typed…

so why am I compelled to sit at this keyboard and write it all down, get it all out…

because I know there must be other mothers who wonder – WHY? Why would God give us these good gifts just to take them away or watch them be destroyed? Why even though I love my kids like breath itself, do I seem incapable of actually LOVING them in the trying moments, with my actions, with my speech? HOW did this become my story? Will the laundry and dishes and mess and screaming ever end? And oh God how will I survive when it does? WHAT do I need, what do I do to make it all turn out ok? The What is blasted to us at every turn – more time, a bigger home, a better car, things, accolades, beauty, even truth is sold for a price. But those won’t fix a world right trashed, my suburban existence as riddled with imperfection as the depths of poverty and war are with horror. And How is just as hopeless, since a self help book has never seemed to fix me or the planet we ride spinning on.

Why is the only question that stands against the storm, that isn’t shot to smithereens when you really stop and think. Stop and quiet all the voices. Stop and listen and ask – Why?

Because He loves me.

Because He is good and the story will end well.

But along the way there is going to be a lot of sh##.  And alot of magic too if I can just be unselfish and awake enough to see it.

We got the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years at the Don’t Give Up Project. In it Donald Miller tells how he learned to live and tell a better story. My whole life I have been obsessed with story, how did I miss that my existence was one? I’m sure I knew down deep, but it takes brave artists to say the things of truth so they are layed out in front of us as a road we must walk down or deny. So in the book he talks a lot about story and how to live a good story and it’s all very inspiring and I devoured the book like a starving man. When I turned the last page I thought I would be happy, joyful, filled with gratitude and ready to conquer the world. Except that I wasn’t.   I was pissed off.   And depressed.

I spent the next day driving around, running back to school errands with the face of a martyr, because really Target can feel like you’re being burned at the stake. Where was the magic, where was my grand adventure? How had I gotten saddled with procuring the toilet paper, scrubbing poop stains and trying to fit math into children’s brains? See it’s not the thing of storied legend, I feel silly even typing out my daily activities. I put Perth on repeat and listened to sublime loveliness do battle with the percussion of marching cadence as I drove through the mist. When people remarked on the “rain” I wanted to scream that NO, this is not rain! Rain beats on the window pane and crashes through the sky! I’m afraid to drive in rain and I’m not afraid to drive in this! Rain wraps cozy round you in your home and makes you feel silly for running out and spinning round till you’re soaked. This mist doesn’t do any of these things. It’s not that I hated California and it’s crowded perfection for a moment, it’s not that I wanted danger or comforting. Standing as if chained to the red cart and steering wheel, I just wanted freedom. Freedom to live an unrealistic idealistic story of my own drafting.   I wanted it all.   Kids and home and family and sailing around the globe and an epic story without any inconvenience or God forbid pain. Can you tell me you have never felt the same? Maybe you haven’t because really I can be quite a ridiculous human being.

Donald Miller says good stories are made of good scenes and I just came back from a time in the mountains where every scene was beyond words good. I want to soak that up but I’m too weak, too tired, too selfish to make my own scenes. When children won’t do their math and dinners burn I want to do the hard work of making magic but all too often I don’t. I give up, give in, a million times a day and then I moan and groan inside about a life lived short of utopia. Donald Miller says utopia isn’t out there, isn’t coming. He says we should all be more Danish, they have lower expectations which makes them happier than us the studies say. God says it another way, love covers over a multitude of sins. Love looks the other way when children snarl and husbands scowl. Love even gives ourselves grace when we fail our own expectations daily. Love gives hugs and speaks soft and sees the blond hair bobbing instead of the baby screeching. Love covers right over wrongs and delves down into souls and spills magic there. “Whimsy” as Bob Goff says, “the nagging idea that life could be magical . . .”

So I come home with my ragged worn out heart and my foul mood. I put dinner in front of hungry mouths and finish my duties before I crawl in front of the computer screen. I scroll through stories, and stories of stories, until my gut is full to bursting. Seasick in a wash of words and pretty pictures – it’s not that they aren’t beautiful stories, it’s that they aren’t mine. Mine holds three rascally boys and one adventuring man. Mine is full of all the unpretty things that you only see in person. My story is drenched in glory I can not even tell. Like how their eyes light up with the ocean’s fire and how we laugh silly over mouths full of donuts every chance we get.

And my story includes teaching my children at home. Yep. Squeezing math and phonics into little boy brains and wanting to inspire them at the same time. Acting out the great moments in history and exploring the vast world of science while making peanut butter and jelly and chasing a crazy baby man. It’s not a story for everyone but it’s beautiful and trying, holding my children close all around me, learning life together. It’s what we have chosen and I couldn’t imagine our story any other way . . . but it’s hard. Really hard. Every day this daunting task holds moments of supreme fulfillment followed by pure frustration and feelings of failure. Starting a new school year I was throwing a fit inside. Thinking that I should be able to rearrange life a little easier and that it’s just to hard to compete this task . . .

because really what made me mad on that last page of a Thousand Years, was a man made in trial, a holocaust survivor saying . . .

“We had to learn ourselves and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must exist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets before the individual.”

A reminder that I can’t rewrite the story. I am not in fact superhuman and the downs make a good story as much or more than the ups. A reminder of the answer to my Why –

To live a good story with my family, no matter what twists and turns the plot may take.

To live a good story and help other’s see and share their miraculous stories.

My Why.

and with that Why solidly in mind, we had a lovely first day of homeschool this year. Filled with little ups and downs and so much beauty that the magic danced before my eyes.

8-27-12 . 28mm . 1st day of 4th year of homeschooling . morning light indoors