Pride!

There are 2 kinds of pride that I wish to discuss in this post.

One is the kind of pride that I feel when my children excel in something, like this morning when my children won several awards at school. My two oldest children had participated in an essay contest on the topic "Why Kids Need Great Schools". Hope won an award for good sentence structure and Joy - the one who hated writing when I was homeschooling her - won first place in the entire competition! They were awarded with certificates and McDonald's gift cards. And, Hope also won an award for exemplifying the school's monthly moral focus of "self-control."

This is in addition to the other awards they, along with the other children, have won this year for the moral focus themes of wisdom and respect (I think - see, I can't even remember because they're winning so darn much!) And I have to brag that their teachers had nothing but good things to say about all of them at parent-teacher conferences a few weeks back. And they have good friendships and kids who want to hang out with them at recess "just because they're nice." And children keep calling our house to speak to them and invite them over, etc.

Yes, indeed, I am a proud mama!

Here's the other kind of pride: the kind that says, "I can do it all. I can provide everything my children need. I can homeschool them even if my health and mental sanity are falling apart!" Read back in my blog a few months and you will see that I had a tough time letting go of homeschooling. I really wanted to be good at it and I wanted to be the one to teach my children everything. But God is so good that He gave me the grace to let go of my children so that other people could educate them better than I was capable of doing.

And God gave me the grace to do as much with them as I did when they were homeschooled. He brought them much farther than I thought possible.

I'm so thankful that the Lord doesn't let us decide what's best for ourselves! I'm very grateful for the awesome school my children atttend and for the new lessons they're learning in school and in life. I'm thankful that I have the time to rest and to address my health issues. I'm thankful that now I can just be Mom.

I'm quite certain that, when I'm ready, God will have a new way for me to serve Him (in addition to the daunting task of being a parent). Once the word was out that I was done homeschooling, I got about 5 requests to serve in different capacities - in the campus outreach, serving as a spiritual advisor for college women, serving in the high school youth group. . . . to all of which my husband gave a resounding "no"! That is, until my health issues are under control. Then I will be ready for what God wants to do in my life!