"1 Corinthians 13 for Homeschool Moms"

For those of us who homeschool and even for those who don't but still take the time to train their children at home and desire to "bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord"1, I thought this was a great reminder of the foundation we need to use in undergirding all of our training.

1 Corinthians 13 for Homeschool Moms

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and teach my children Latin conjugations, Chinese and Portuguese, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, and no matter what I say, they will not hear me.

If I have the gift of prophecy, and know my children’s bents and God’s plan for their lives, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and am the keeper of the teacher’s editions and solutions manuals, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, and even keep up with my giant piles of laundry and dishes, but do not have love, I am nothing, even if all the people at church think I’m Supermom.

And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and my formal dining room gets turned into a schoolroom and our family vacations look more like educational fieldtrips, and if I surrender my body to be burned, never having time to get my nails done, put makeup on or even take a bath, but do not have love, it profits me nothing, because all my family cares about is the expression on my face, anyway.

Love is patient with the child who still can’t get double-digit subtraction with borrowing, and kind to the one who hasn’t turned in his research paper.  It is not jealous of moms with more, fewer, neater, more self-directed, better-behaved or smarter children.   

Love does not brag about homemade bread, book lists, or scholarships and is not arrogant about her lifestyle or curriculum choices.  It does not act unbecomingly or correct the children in front of their friends.  It does not seek its own, trying to squeeze in alone time when someone still needs help; it is not provoked when interrupted for the nineteenth time by a child, the phone, the doorbell or the dog; does not take into account a wrong suffered, even when no one compliments the dinner that took hours to make or the house that took so long to clean.

Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness or pointing out everyone else’s flaws, but rejoices with the truth and with every small step her children take in becoming more like Jesus, knowing it’s only by the grace of God when that occurs.

Love bears all things even while running on no sleep; believes all things, especially God’s promise to indwell and empower her, hopes all things, such as that she’ll actually complete the English curriculum this year and the kids will eventually graduate, endures all things, even questioning from strangers, worried relatives, and most of all, herself.

Love never fails.  And neither will she.  As long as she never, never, never gives up.

Misty Krasawski, December 8, 20082

1. Ephesians 6:4b
2. From Misty's website HomeschoolBlogger.com

"This Is the Stuff" Life is Made of!

A friend posted this on facebook today - it's a song and artist I'm not familiar with, but it reminded me of our conversation at Kajiji Girls this morning.  It's a fun, light-hearted ditty about the things that can drive us crazy, and the things God uses in our lives to grow us.  About trusting in God as He knows best what's going to work in teaching us different necessary virtues.  I was also reminded this morning by my dear KGs to not lose sight of gratefulness even in the midst of tough times or even mundane times.  It's something I'll be working on (See, Stacy? How's that for a New Year's Resolution?). :)

Happy Three Kings Day

In celebration of Epiphany (which is tomorrow and signals the end of the 12 days of Christmas and the Christmas season), I'd like to include a poem here by T.S. Eliot I came across.  It's called The Journey of the Magi.

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.*

I wrote about Epiphany and my discovery of its rich tradition in a previous post - if you'd like to read more about it yourself, feel free to check it out here.  Hope your Christmas season was wonderful and your New Year is blessed!


*To read more about this poem, its background, symbolism, etc., go here.