I've seen this quote several times now. First it was a Pinterest fitness motivation thing. It caught my attention as much because I'm working on learning that pose as anything. I have scoliosis, so balance poses are a particular challenge and this is a very long term project.
Then I think I saw it in my Facebook feed. It came up the other day again, just as I was starting to think about a year-in-review kind of post, which made me think about it in a whole different light.
This has been a tough year.
The old job decided to make working on the Sabbath mandatory; we quit instead, last January. There were other things going on too, but that was the thing that tore it.
But remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all they work: but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work...
-Exodus 20:8-10
We had a go at a business, but market fluctuations following the Brexit forced the Daddy back into a day job.
We thought for a while we might lose our house, but things stabilized.
The new day job is an absolute nightmare, and the pay is a lot less, the hours longer, and the physical demands more punishing than the old one. And the bosses... oi.
Lingering bills from our NICU stay are still complicating our finances; even with insurance, a NICU stay is expensive.
And now the new job is pondering seven day work weeks: Sunday work.
Which we still. won't. do.
Which we still. won't. do.
So it's been a challenging year. Now, thanks to this quote, I'm looking for how it's changing me. I'm still not sure what it's doing for me, honestly. Sometimes it's hard to see these things in the fire, in the process. But I think that it's significant that this started out as a fitness quote.
Fitness isn't something that has ever come easily for me. I left school convinced that I couldn't run, couldn't throw, couldn't catch: that's what they taught me in gym class. Turns out it's all a lie; I can do those things: my body is not a lemon. There's reasons why running is so difficult: scoliosis means that my lungs are perpetually squished. Which makes breathing hard when I'm working. Like when I run. And once nobody was mocking my efforts, once there was a little bit of encouragement instead of scorn from teachers and peers alike, turns out throwing and catching are things that I'm merely inexperienced at -- but can learn. Still. I spent a long time thinking that I couldn't, and there's habits and patterns that followed that have to be overcome --and the small matter of healing my spine-- before I can have an athlete's body. It's a long journey; the vast majority of it happens between my ears.
Fitness makes a nice metaphor. I tell my kids that learning is like growing a muscle: you do it, and it gets easier, because the "muscle" grows stronger. There's lots of stuff -most things, actually- that works like that. This year has been growing some muscles for our family. How to work together, how to find a way to keep going. How to lean on the Lord, to trust Him to make good on His promise to make it possible to keep the commandments. That's a pretty good "muscle" to have well-developed.
Fitness isn't something that has ever come easily for me. I left school convinced that I couldn't run, couldn't throw, couldn't catch: that's what they taught me in gym class. Turns out it's all a lie; I can do those things: my body is not a lemon. There's reasons why running is so difficult: scoliosis means that my lungs are perpetually squished. Which makes breathing hard when I'm working. Like when I run. And once nobody was mocking my efforts, once there was a little bit of encouragement instead of scorn from teachers and peers alike, turns out throwing and catching are things that I'm merely inexperienced at -- but can learn. Still. I spent a long time thinking that I couldn't, and there's habits and patterns that followed that have to be overcome --and the small matter of healing my spine-- before I can have an athlete's body. It's a long journey; the vast majority of it happens between my ears.
Fitness makes a nice metaphor. I tell my kids that learning is like growing a muscle: you do it, and it gets easier, because the "muscle" grows stronger. There's lots of stuff -most things, actually- that works like that. This year has been growing some muscles for our family. How to work together, how to find a way to keep going. How to lean on the Lord, to trust Him to make good on His promise to make it possible to keep the commandments. That's a pretty good "muscle" to have well-developed.
PS. To see what other homeschool bloggers are saying about their year, stop by:
