Seasons of Change.....

I have so much to write about what's going on for us right now, but will start with a catch up of what the kids are doing. This is the result of Jaden's cave experiment. The epsom salts worked really well and we started out with a stalactite and stalagmite growing and by the end of 2 weeks ended up with a column, Jaden was thrilled!!!

We've also been out and about quite a bit. This is Jaden contributing to a group artwork at the hub where they are learning about Aboriginal culture, he is obsessed with tornadoes and decided that was something that would represent him well on the canvas. We've also been going to a chemistry course once a week which he's been enjoying, they made slime last thursday but I didn't take the camera.

Bethany is looking like such a little toddler now. She is getting a lot more adventurous with her walking and takes quite a few steps before falling now. She has just started wearing some new shoes this week and it makes her look so grown up.

She actually climbed up on some equipment all by herself yesterday and was very proud of herself, and she loved these balls!!!

So that's the kids, but how have I been doing? Well to be honest I have been struggling in many ways lately and have spent a lot of time crying. For a while I was just chalking it up to being so tired and hormones, but it's more than that, I have been feeling very burdened and overwhelmed and a little bit lost and trying to find what God was doing in the midst of it all. For a start I have been seriously doubting that home schooling is our path ahead. I know I've had those doubts before, and they were linked to my own feelings of inadequacy, but this has been different. Jaden just doesn't want to do school at home anymore. He is missing his friends and despite my best efforts to tailor work around his interests he is being un co-operative all the time to the point where just getting a page of handwriting done could take 2 hours of arguing. He has been so defiant and I have gotten frustrated to the point where I know I could easily snap and hurt him. I cannot be this child's mother and his teacher or we will end up hating each other.

I have been so worried though that if I gave up on home schooling that I was being disobedient to God and was a failure at what I thought He called me to do. I have been feeling miserable, that God had thrown me into the deep end and I wasn't coping and feeling like that made me a terrible Christian too. After trying for weeks to seek God on this on my own and just feeling condemned that I couldn't hear Him, I sought some prayer with friends and finally found some peace. God showed me a picture we had used on the camp of a woman with all these bubbles above her head that were overwhelming her, like juggling way too many balls, and that's what I feel like. I had thought that once all the ministry stuff stopped things would get better but the biggest weight of all those balls for me was the schooling and I felt like it was crushing me! I felt it was finally time to lay it down and that was ok.

Yes God did ask me to home school last year and Jaden really needed that time out. He was facing a new sibling for the first time and wondering if he was wanted as part of this new family and he was struggling at school with a teacher who was not suited to teaching an aspergers kid at all, but things are different now. When I thought about sending him back to school this year I felt the local public school was our only option but had no peace about that. I hadn't thought that the Christian school he had been at was a realistic option because of the travelling involved, with 2 babies that wasn't something I wanted to do twice a day. God had clearly spoken to me about the importance of Him being the centre of Jaden's schooling, so I took that to mean I'd better keep home schooling then, but God can still be the centre of Jaden's schooling at a school too, and with my nephew at the school now the travelling is not an issue because we can car pool or I could even just give my sister some petrol money and not drive there at all for a while once the baby comes.

So we have met with the principal and Jaden is going back to the Christian school next term and I have such an overwhelming peace about that. Jaden is excited and I am relieved, and so is my husband who was sick of coming home to a war zone every day. I don't know if this is the decision I should've made at the start of this year, but I know it is definately right for now!!! So that's one big change.

The next big change for us is church. I have been at my church for 13 years and to me it is home, but both my husband and I have been feeling for a while it is time to move on and I have found that to be an incredibly hard step and have been grieving just thinking about it. I have been through a lot at my church. I was 21 when I started going there and it was the place that nurtured me when I walked away from God and ended up pregnant, the place that loved and supported me through single parenthood and many years of a healing journey. The place that celebrated with me when I got married. The place that cried with me when I struggled with infertility and rejoiced with me over my babies. A lot of people have come and gone over those 13 years and of the 'young people' I used to hang out with when I first came I'm the only one left. But it has become very evident over the past year or so that my church is not my husband's home the way it is mine. It has always been my place and he has tried to connect with other guys but hasn't really found a place he fits and it has left him in a real rut, where church is just a habit and I see no spark or joy in him that used to be there when he talked about God.

So as a family we are starting somewhere new, where it will be 'our' church and not just mine. Hubby is the one who has decided where he wants to go and visit and I am happy to follow his lead. As heartbreaking as this is for me I know I need to do this for him and God has made that very clear. I am a little excited at a whole new church journey but also scared. I was especially worried about it before we sorted the schooling out because I felt like I was drowning and that if I left my biggest support system right now I would never recover. But without the burden of school weighing me down I feel like I have the emotional energy to walk this new path and my friends have made it very clear that leaving the church doesn't mean losing them. I still plan to go to playgroup there anyway so I will still see some people.

So everything is all about to change, new church, new school situation, new baby, and although I am still quite emotionally raw with all the stuff I've been struggling through with God I am feeling really peaceful that he does know what he's doing and if I keep holding His hand I will be ok. :-)