Cancelled, now what?

My mommy friends,

So, by now, most of us got the orders that official classrooms and playing fields will be cancelled for the remainder of the school year.

What now?

A. Well, I can start drinking.  Continue Drinking.  Eating.  Continue overeating.  Fret.  Freak out.             Worry.  Get pissed.  Get and stay scared.  Start scrambling for a plan.  Become an expert and               share that plan like I'm the expert.

B. Or....perhaps this is a part of the Great Journey.   Re-evaluate.  Grieve.  Reset button.

   1) Reset the journey?

        It is being reset whether I like it or not.  

• Put the wine and the chips down and listen up.  I can look at this as a time to just be.  Reset.  Reset expectations.  However, this fights my normal of doing. Hurry up and DO Anything.  Something, anything! Sometimes doing something seems like I am getting somewhere and solving problems.  
• For me - my doing something is working out, getting out and being by myself.  Praying.  Reading. Writing. Teaching, cleaning, cooking, showing up. Pontificating and sometimes escaping.

• However, this is not a time where I can just do anything.  In fact, most governments are mandating we stay put in our God given homes. My home is not clean and my classroom is being changed while I examine my motives for waking up every day.

• Like yours, my very livelihood is being challenged on every side. Like a lot of folks in this time, we are out of work, with what seems like no end in sight, hunkering down together and examining what makes us tick.

         Another challenge to our current life, is while I have been homeschooling my kids by choice for           8 years this crisis has set a tone that is far from homeschooling.  

“But Hanya, surely you must be doing fine, you have been at this for so many years.”  Not quite the same in a crisis.  This is not homeschooling. This is crisis training.

   2)  What now?

 Grieve.  

….expectations.

      1)  What are those expectations?  My list is too long.  In the end, on the deathbed of this wish              list,    what's left?  This list is much shorter.

      2)  Grieve every one of those things on my wish list.  Every one.  What's left on the list?  

      3)  After the bans get lifted, are there any things on that list that need to stay cancelled?  That can        be anything from expecting a perfect homeschool environment to an unhealthy             relationship(s)….and   all the activities I fill up in between to keep pace with my community, society, and expectations.

Restart.

When the heck can I restart?  

  

Do I scour the media to inform me? Or scrutinize the words being told behind the scenes? Become an expert on what is happening in every state and country around me?

I, for one am getting crazier by the minute for a PhD in “knowing it all.”  This is one of the things on the list I am destroying.  Having to know everything to stay in control.  I AM NOT IN CONTROL.  So, what the heck can I DO?

Have perspective.  Do I really want to look back on this time as a time where I woke up every morning and asked, “Christ - am I going to make it through another day?”  Then 5 o'clock rolls around and I pour another round of the Vintage '08 Forget My Problems? 

OR can I look at this time as a season that can be redeemed? 

So, my perfect ideas of homeschooling have been derailed.

My workout plans for a perfect mom bod have exploded.

My jet plane of escape has been grounded.

Today, I restart.  By asking myself, how will this time be remembered?  How can I best grow from this?  And if you are reading this and thinking I have some kind of head start on you because you have never homeschooled your kids beyond helping them with homework, I have

a perspective for you to ponder....

Think back to when you were in school, and you just got the news that you have a substitute teacher for a few weeks.  Do remember what it felt like?  I do.  It's different than having your daily teacher.  Were you elated?  Relieved?  Ready to slide in your studies?

Did you make it out of that time ok?  Did you eventually graduate?  Did you go on to do what you are doing now?

There will be some of us in that substitute teacher’s class who obeyed, some of us who slacked, some vacillating in between.   If you are reading this, you it made it, with a story.  Or maybe it

was a non-issue and you forgot.

Today, you are that substitute teacher in your child's education, youth sports, arts and theater activities etc.…for the time being.  

There will be good days, and bad days but there is no subsitute for knowing and loving your own child.  Take the pressure off.  Play between the work.  Cook together. Walk together.  Dance to AC-DC or Bach.

Like you, when you see a child playing do you see pain or delight? Our children also see the delight in our eyes and the smile on our faces.   Isaac told me yesterday while I was reading to him, Mommy, I absolutely love your smile.   This delight is inspiring and can start and continue the fire for a lifelong Love of Learning, A Love of Being.  I’m counting on it for me.

And if you are not a parent, you know someone who is.

This time is not an accident.  Be blessed in redeeming this time for

Such a Time as This.  

and Please pray for me!

Hanya