Who Am I?

Happy New Year! Today is January 1, 2013, and while it is just another day on the calendar, we cannot help but appreciate new beginnings. We cannot help but reflect on what we would like to see change, stay the same or evolve in our lives in the coming year. Even so, I decided long ago that resolutions are not useful to me at all. Choosing an arbitrary date of my life to mean that something new and different needs to occur is simply an exercise in planned failure.

Rather than reflect on what I want to do this year, I have decided to reflect on who I AM and who I want to BE as a mom, and who my children are. 

• I am first a follower of Jesus, a Christian, a believer in the truth of the gospel and its implications for life and death. I do not believe in Jesus in a religious sense--I know him personally. He has been savior, healer, friend, companion, and strength to me both through the scriptures and through his Spirit's presence in my life, closer and dearer than my next breath. I owe him the first and last moments of my day--to acknowledge him above all, in all and through all. I will continue in the reading of the Word and prayer. 
• I am the wife of my wonderful husband. I owe it to him to take care of myself physically, spiritually, and emotionally so that he has a sanctuary to return home to every day. In this constant care our children and our relationships remain stable and secure.
• I am the mother of two beautiful children. I owe it to them to care for myself physically, spiritually, and emotionally, so that our home is safe and secure and that they have a model of health and balance on which to build their lives. I owe it to future generations to be strong, healthy, spiritually centered, and emotionally balanced to provide a legacy of health. 
• I am a leader in this household, alongside my husband. Lately it has been become ever clearer to me what common sense already understands: Leadership happens through action alone. Words, while necessary, are not deep--actions are. I must demonstrate commitment to reading the Word, exercising, eating well, keeping a schedule, and above all, loving my family with acts of service.

I am all of these things FIRST. Before I ever started teaching my kids to read and write and do math, I was cuddling them, nursing them, playing peek-a-boo, and making food for them. I was protecting them from falling and choosing people to be around that I hoped would be a good influence. I was first a nurturer--a mom.

It seems that so often the task of "homeschooling" becomes this overwhelming thing that causes everything else to fall by the wayside. I think that for years I have been focusing on the wrong thing--the "doing" of school and not the "being" of it. While I understand the importance of setting goals and the modeling of doing so, I do not want my home to become a school. I want learning to be part of our life. This year I want to weave the learning and the growing and the eating and the gardening and the exercising and the relating into one lovely tapestry, not have them all be separate components that look like little overwhelming boxes that must be checked off.

All around us in society we feel the pressure of statistics, rules, and outcome-based instruction. We are led to believe that output equals success. I am not immune from falling into this trap. I have to ask myself--who are these children that God has given me? Who do I want my children to be? Eventually what they do to earn a living will flow out from who they are, not the other way around, and if we look around, we will see lots of middle managers and hamburger flippers NOT living their dreams, NOT doing who they ARE (Does that make sense?) They probably don't even know who they are.

2012 was a wonderful year for us--We grew so much as a family. 2013 will be a year to deepen roots, I think. I am excited to see what comes...Happy New Year.