It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

 There is a reason that I have not posted anything for two weeks, that reason is that I honestly didn’t know if I could do this.  I didn’t know if I wanted to do this. I know what I said in the last post about sharing the good, the bad and the ugly but I truly had not been prepared for how hard these last few weeks have been.  By the end of our fourth week of homeschooling, I had experienced every emotion and changed my mind on every decision more than once.  I was overwhelmed, exhausted and frustrated.  This past week had been especially hard.  There was and incident with the two year old locking herself in her bedroom and another “situation” involving a diaper explosion that I’d rather not get into.  There were temper tantrums and tears on my part as well as the kids.  I sat down on the couch on Thursday night feeling defeated.  I felt that I just couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t home school to a preschooler and a kindergartener, I couldn’t keep the two year old and ninth month old happy, I couldn’t keep the house together; it was all just too much and I was ready to give up.  I sat down that night and opened the computer to face book and the first things I saw on a friend's page was a link to this post.

 http://rachelmariemartin.blogspot.com/2012/08/dear-sweet-mom-who-feels-like-she-is.html

It was like the author was speaking directly to me at that very moment.  Every word rang true.  I read it and then I read it again and then I cried.  The good “get it all out” kind of cry you just have to have sometimes.  I am still amazed by it, I needed to read it and there it was right in front of me.  Sometimes you just have to step back and thank the Holy Spirit for stepping in.

So, “best of times” or “worst of times”?  Our first month has definitely been both!  There have been many frustrating hours of trying to teach with every distraction the two year old can throw (and I mean throw literally. How many times can she throw a marker at your head before she finally gets bored?).  There have been failed lessons that I spent hours planning that the girls thought were “no fun” and as I said before there have been plenty of tears. I have learned though that it is easy to get overrun by the negative and it truly wasn’t all bad. We did have some fun somewhere along the way and I’m pretty sure some actual learning took place.  I will share some of the “best times” of our first month in some upcoming posts. 

I have taken the words of Rachel’s post to heart.  I have thought about them over and over again for the past three days now. Am I still overwhelmed? Yes.  Am I still exhausted? Yes. Do I know what I am doing? No. But, I am not giving up, I am not failing.