Pouring my heart out.....

We've now been home schooling for a month and during that time most of the ups and downs have actuallly been the ones going on inside my head as I adjust to this total life change for me. My biggest concren when I started was that having so much time with a challengiing special needs child would send me insane and I've been surprised at how well we've actually gotten along most of the time, until we got to the end of this week. I think a combination of so much time togther and me having a fluey, snotty head meant I had no patience left for the attitude that seemed to keep being thrown at me over the past few days and yesterday morning I snapped and literally slapped Jaden across the cheek when his smart mouth enraged me. Definately not my finest moment :-(

Thankfully God knows my limits and since he is the one who led me to do this I have found that he is also my biggest source of support and has sent other angels along to help me out too. Another home schooling friend took Jaden to ice-skating yesterday and ended up keeping him for the day and didn't drop him back till almost 4.30pm, so my snotty head got some rest. During that time I was enjoying the peace and thought maybe I should call his nan on his dad's side cause she sometimes has him for the weekend and he hadn't been there for a few weeks and while I was thinking about it she actually rang me and asked if she could have him. Respite organised without me even needing to ask, God is definately looking after me :-)

Apart from this week's snot induced lack of patience I have also been struggling to come to terms recently with my identity and path in life. I look back to the plans I had before I fell pregnant with Jaden and then the new plans I'd just made before finding out I was pregnant with Bethany and both times I was embarking on new studies and focusing on a degree and career and then felt like I got railroaded along a different path.

When I found out I was having Jaden I had just been accepted into law at Sydney uni and was planning on being a lawyer/human rights campaigner with some studies in history on the side just cause I love studying it. I was very far away from God at that time (as evidenced by my getting pregnant) and was with a guy I'd met at uni (I was doing the first year of journalism but wasn't a really a fan of the course or career for me) and we'd only been together 3 months. He wasn't thrilled at the news and ended up later vanishing off the map. So here I was alone and about to be a mum so law wasn't really gonna work. I deferred for a year but never ended up going. I did later end up doing some of an education degree at Macquarie uni but decided that just because I love history didn't mean I wanted to teach it to high school kids, even if the life of a teacher was better suited to being a single mum. Then I ended up getting married and I never went back to uni.

After getting married (I did things the right way this time and waited!) we tried for 2 years to have a baby and it just didn't work. I figured it wasn't meant to be (that was an incredibly long and hard journey in itself) so decided that since Jaden was at school and no more babies were coming I'd get back to my dreams of a degree and a career helping people. I discovered I could do a degree from home through Open Universities in community development and get credit for some of what I'd already studied. I got started and thought I'd found my path at last. At the same time I had just gotten a brand new job with World Vision and really loved being part of their vision and was promoting child sponorship in shopping centres. Then out of the blue I found out I was pregnant. I was so excited, but also confused. I had just started a journey I thought was from God and once again my path was changed into a totally different direction.

After having a baby break from study I was panning to go back and was indeed meant to start this coming Monday. I had even already got my subject stuff in the mail. But when I looked at the workload I realised I couldn't possibly manage it while I am home schooling. I could've done it with a bub at home cause she is a fabulous baby, but with home schooling my days are full and by the time the kids are in bed at night there are dishes to do and bottles to prepare and then I'd like to actually spend time with my hubby, so where was study gonna fit? The clincher was that I am meant to be starting up a home group for young women following on from the camp we did back in July and I knew I couldn't add any ministry to my plate on top of study too. It seemed to make no sense to me to not help people who were on my heart so that I could focus on a degree to help people, why not just skip the degree and help people?????

As simple as that sounds though this has been a really hard journey for me. I feel like I've been chasing this elusive piece of paper for so many years now and to be honest I feel like a bit of a failure to still have nothing to show for it after all this time. I am a very academic person with a distinction average and yet have never lived up to the "potential" my teachers all saw in me when I went back to do my HSC as a mature age student at St Marys Senior High. I love my children but had never before considered that caring for them could be a career, and yet every time I try to step anywhere else I get pulled right back to that path and I think I'm finally getting the point that it's where I'm meant to be, but it also means grieving the loss of the plans and dreams I always had for myself.

I've also realised lately that on top of feeling like a failure for having nothing to show for all that work, I have been feeling totally inadequate in terms of usefulness, not just for a lack of degree, but because I have been carrying some words that were spoken about me last year. I did one campaign with World Vision and I was really proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and talking to strangers about poverty (one of the passions of my heart) and I felt that each person I spoke to, even the ones who didn't sign up to sponsor, went away with a seed planted in their heart to look beyond our privileged life and see the bigger world picture!!! Yet when the time came for the next campaign they didn't want me back because I was "too shy" to achieve what they expected and that was devastating to me. If my personality made me inadequate to do a job I was passionate about then what use would I be in any other job???? I hadn't even realised the extent of how much that hurt till I went forward for prayer at church a few weeks ago to ask for prayer for boldness cause I was sick of feeling like I was "too shy" to be effective! God showed me that He made my personality and it is just right for the gifts and talents He has placed in me, whether others see any value in them or not.

So here I am 1 month into home schooling having to let God reshape my whole identity!! Instead of looking back on studies and jobs as wasted, I am trying to see rather what was learnt or what seeds he planted in me through each of those experiences to make me who I am now and prepare me for this huge task of shaping, nurturing and educating my children to equip them to live for Him in this world. I think I am doing a good job in some moments, like when Jaden was horrified learning about the treatment of Aboriginals (another passion of my heart is to see much needed healing in this area of our nation's heart) and couldn't grasp how the Europeans didn't see them as people and that this was their home, for a kid with aspergers to have that kind of empathy means I am doing something right!!!!! And then there are days like yesterday when I lost it and I feel like I am totally just not up to this task at all!!!

But it's a jounrey and I'm learning and I'm sure that as I continue to be obedient to God and what He has called me to do I will feel more at peace with His path for my life, even though it looks so different to my own plans. I don't even know if anyone will read this long ramble that I'm pouring out here in cyberspace, but I felt like I needed to get it off my chest and be real and honest about all aspects of this journey, not just the good days. Now it's time for a cup of tea and then the ever exciting job of housework :-)