Mother of Divine Grace

I'm tied in knots.  I'm obsessing again, fixated on the kids' schooling.  It is not what I want it to be!  I want to do Mother of Divine Grace with them.  I want to sit with each one and do the necessary things and juggle the schedule and be with them all all day.  I want to go to daily mass together again.  I want to read to Carolina and have her narrate back what she's heard.  I want to read aloud to them all.  I want to teach David and Carolina concrete math.  I want to explain grammar to John William in a way he will understand.  I want to have him reading and narrating, reading and narrating.  I want Sophie to be doing the same, and Madelyn to be reading and writing, reading and writing.  I at least want someone to be doing these things with them.  It doesn't have to be me.  I have enjoyed being with my three little ones and having the time to change diapers in a timely fashion and feed them when they're hungry and read them picture books.

But I don't want the big kids to come home after a long day with a backpack heavy as a bag of bricks on their backs, to do homework all evening and have no time to play outside or pursue their interests.  They don't have time to take piano lessons or go to choir practice or play a sport, not if we are going to have dinner, pray the rosary, and get in bed at a decent hour.

I would be willing to sacrifice the time, perhaps, if I felt they were getting the education I long for them to have.  I have always been on a quest for this education since we started homeschooling, and I agonized about it to my husband every day for seven years, until he finally got involved and sent them to this school... this school that I found when I was searching for some kind of Catholic classical educational option up here in Greenville.

My friend came to visit yesterday. She homeschools with Mother of Divine Grace.  Her kids are a rare breed.  They glow.  They have a generosity of spirit that I have not often seen.  Her boys, 15 and 13 years old, play with my 9-year-old son without a hint of reluctance.  They played twelve hours of football yesterday in the front yard.  Somehow she has taught them to give themselves as a gift to those around them.  Somehow she has trained them to look for opportunities to offer something to others instead of focus on themselves.  It's quite impressive.

I look at the formation and education her children are getting, and I like what I see so much.  It doesn't make me feel bad about what we are doing, but I do feel sad.  She said something about sending her oldest away to college.  She said she felt like a limb had been cut off, like someone had died.  And she said now every moment is precious, every bickering fight, every inconvenience, every moment.  It's not long enough.

It makes me think I only have five more years with Madelyn at home.  I want them to be good years.  This is for real.  I want to do it right.  We've only got one chance to live these five years together as a family.  What are we going to do?

I want to see my kids being schooled with Mother of Divine Grace.  We could go off and do it on our own.  We have been doing that for seven years before this.  Of course we were always in some kind of group.  But we were homeschooling. It took me so long to be open to someone else setting the curriculum.  Finally I decided Mother of Divine Grace does education the way I feel is the best way, and I could trust them and outsource some of the work.  But now we find ourselves in this school, this Battle of Lepanto school.  Tommy, the headmaster (yes, Tommy!), has the outlook we want.  But the education is not there yet.

Tommy and his family are coming for lunch November 17.  That is the feast of St. Anthony.  I'm going to pray to St. Anthony of Padua, worker of miracles, for a crazy miracle.  I'm going to ask for a hybrid school that does Mother of Divine Grace, all the way up to November 17.  How do you like them apples?

A Thought Before Bed

I have so many things to say.  I went to Kansas with Teresa and saw my cousins at TJ's wedding.  They all have a story.  There are too many to write about in the fifteen minutes I have right now before I crawl into bed.  I just finished the chocolate covered strawberries for tomorrow, and it's one a.m.  I'd like to tell you about Noel.  He's struggling with depression.  I'd mention Martha. She's a prophetess.  She's wants to do whatever God puts in her to do, and sometimes she's way out there and driving her family crazy, but her heart!  She is willing to die for God.  

I'd mention this house.  It fits us like a glove.  I never thought I'd feel this way about a house.  I never knew what it meant to have "a few nice things."  You can't have nice things if you don't know how to take good care of them.  It helped to get rid of everything I didn't really care about.

I want to tell you about the move to South Carolina and sending the kids to school for the first time after homeschooling all these years, and how I cried for the first month and felt like I had no purpose in life anymore but that now we feel called to really support this school and do something no one else is doing:  commit.

But what is sticking out to me the most right now is Mary and how she followed me around while we prayed the rosary. She had those little pink sunglasses on the top of her head and her purse over her arm, and she was "nursing" her baby just like I was and pacing and jiggling just like I was, just like she always is following Mommy and "helping" Mommy, doing whatever it is I do, like I'm the model for everything she wants to be.  I can tell her to take the wet clothes from the washer, put them in the dryer, and start the dryer, and at two years old, she can do it.  

Read, Write, Think

I think five days might do it, a retreat at the beach or just some hole in the wall by the freeway. Of course, unfortunately, by the second day missing my kids would be a physical ache. But I could really use a big chunk of solitude and silence, just to think, read, write, read, write, think, oh, and sleep.

Mary

A great mystery - about who we are, who God is, who He wants to be to us and us to Him - is revealed in her.  She is the path by which he came to us, the site of the convergence of the human and divine.  If you want to know Jesus, contemplate his mother - the deep truth about God and his relationship to us is made known there.  The great saints go so far as to say if you really want to bless Jesus, bless his mother. She is the very simplest, easiest path to him.  There is no better way to become as a little child than under her calm, cool, protective guidance.

Marginal Sleep Deprivation

Finding that balance of enough sleep. Staying up on that hump of feeling full of sleep (never stuffed - someday, maybe I'll have a chance to indulge in that again.) I used to sleep so long I would get that nightmare of not being able to move. So easy now to fall into the black hole of sleep deprivation, where my brain functions slowly, fuzzily. I find myself wasting a lot of time walking back to where I started from so that I can remember what I came for.

The potential of flight

I'm huddled here on the edge of the picnic blanket ("huddled" just because I'm sharing it with three sprawling children) under the ligustrum, half-listening to childish chatter, marveling at a perfect specimen of florida weather, watching the flying things. It's always the flying things that bring me back to life. Sometimes at my most despairing, just seeing a butterfly lifts my heart. It's because I think He sends them to me constantly as messengers. They tell me, first of all, that He's thinking of me, and second of all, that I too will take flight because I'm meant to.

After our walk, I came in and danced with my son while the girls were in the bath. He always asks me to dance when the music is on by putting his hand in mine as I hold him. And I remembered what I had on my tongue yesterday: God's very Body, and what I had in my throat: His Blood. And I know I will continue to be fed, and satisfied, as with the richest of foods, even after this beautiful flash in the pan. But I won't denigrate for its brevity the brilliance and color of its light. I won't downplay because it's it's own thing the unique, delicious taste of this feast prepared before me, in the presence of my enemies. It's real and in my heart forever. I know now God put it there, and it's beautiful with a Beauty it alone has, and mine. I won't ever do this play again with these people. I've never been good at letting go. The passage of time has a poignance that hurts me.

But I know He will reveal himself to me again as he did these last two months. I see him with his wings folded there in the dark and I see their colors, black and navy and colors without names, only radiance and mystery and beauty. He's perching there. He will unfurl his glory, and I will see it.

(2011)