Knowing

"Yes, but how do you know you are doing the right thing?"

I was asked this most important question recently as I spoke to a friend about teaching the girls at home. It's a good question, really.

I can't even count the times in my life when I've found myself staring down the barrel of A Big Decision; an action that needs to be taken, a cause and effect that needs to be dealt with. I positively hate that feeling of "Should I or Shouldn't I? Is this Right or Wrong?" that nags at me in nearly everything important that I decide to do. Or not do.

Whenever faced with a choice, be it an ugly or pretty one, I pray. I can't come up with the answers all on my own folks, and I don't really want to try. There's peace in that too, a sort of giving the pressure up and letting it go.

Sometimes God's answers aren't what I wanted to hear. (Yes, it's true.) Sometimes I get a no when what I desperately wanted was a yes. But even though I don't always get what I want, it's true what they say. I get what I need.
And that is just right, too.

Needless to say, the choice to school the girls at home was at the end of a path paved with many prayers. We didn't enter into this lightly.

But we sure are having a blast.
Yes, we sure are.

Everyday I wake up and pull myself together, snagging a few Me Moments (aka Coffee) before awakening the girls. After getting them ready, we head downstairs To Start Our Day. Our school day revolves around the dining room, the family room, the kitchen, and outside. We move when we need to move, pick up where we left off, and go with along with the ebbs and flow in our moods.

I teach. They learn. Heck, I learn. And they're teaching me in the process.

At the end of our lessons, it's all put away; books and pencils back on shelves, papers sorted into folders, activities checked off lists of things to do. We take a break from each other. They in one room, me in another; a quiet repast that, in the end, will bring is together again.

Then after dinner, when the table is cleared and my mind has wound down from one day's adventures, I set it all up to start again the next day.

And do you know what the miracle in all of this is? While I'm setting up for the next day, I'm smiling. Really, truly smiling.
I love this.
I love this.
I love this.

Every moment is teachable, my friends. And I'm grabbing them all, each and every one. Sometimes I have two students and other times  I am the student.

And it's all good. It's amazingly good.

When I can go through a full day that is mentally challenging and emotionally taxing, and still get ready for the next one with a smile on my face and a sureness of purpose in my heart......
                                                       I know I'm doing the right thing.