What's it like?

What's it like, homeschooling 8 kids with 5 preschoolers?

Like being drug through a knot hole backwards. 

Like having your gums scraped.

(those are both quotes from my dad)

Like being a Chinese acrobat, trying to keep all the plates spinning.

Like that kid in the fairy tale, trying to plug the holes in the dike.

It's hard.

Shazaam!

We haven't really started yet, not full force.  We added one subject each day this week, except on Friday, we just did Thursday again.  So after a week of barely half days, I can confidently say, we are in deep doo-doo.  My older boys are going through puberty in equal and opposite ways.  One is an early developer physically.  Means he is, for the moment only, bigger and stronger than everybody else.  He is also, incidentally, angrier and more frustrated.  Goes with the testosterone.  The other is extremely verbal.  He thinks and talks a lot.  And he's cocky.  Actually, they're both pretty cocky.  I have them doing Apologia Biology together.  And the younger is going to drive the older to the brink of insanity.  And then the older will pull a Cain and Abel, most likely.  Because the younger is getting back at the older for being bigger and stronger by being quicker and more perceptive in academics.  It's working.

Oldest son is also taking Algebra 2.  Teaching Textbooks has a different order of things than most maths, doing Algebra 1 then 2, then Geometry.  The reason most maths put Geometry in the middle is in case the student absolutely despises Algebra, he gets to take a little Geometry break, or vice versa.  Oldest son is experiencing no such reprieve.  Much growling and gnashing of teeth.

And then we have some outside-the-home classes beginning next week.  Very challenging, lots of reading, lots of writing.  First born daughter will do fine, she is more than ready.  Second son, the chatty thinky one, will do grand.  But #1 son is pretty sure he's going to die.  And he might.  Or I might.  He has had some good years lately, but we're ratcheting up the pressure, asking him to really learn, not just get done.  It's not going to be pretty.

And that's just one child. 

Every year every thing is harder, bigger, more challenging.  Add a child, add a subject, add an expectation.  I have never had 5 preschoolers before.  And I've never had 8 in school before.  It's kind of a lot.  I am not really smarter, stronger, wiser, or more efficient than I was last year.  I am not a better teacher.  There are not more hours in the day than there used to be.  I'm still just me.  And just me is feeling a little overwhelmed, a little underqualified.

And that is just looking at the day to day.  That is not looking ahead at things like college/jobs/marriage/stuff like that.  I'm just trying to get to bedtime without a nervous breakdown. 

But more than that nervousness, I have another kind of nervousness eating at me.  I am nervous about what my kids see in me.  Do they see a mom who is abiding in the Lord?  Delighting in the Law, meditating day and night?  Do they see me seeking the Kingdom first?  Are we showing them a marriage they will want to emulate someday?  Do they see Jesus in us? 

Or do they see a compromising, time-wasting, food-aholic?  Do they see the very image of overweight self centered mediocrity? 

I know the end of the story:  I come up from the wilderness leaning on my Beloved. 

I am hungry for the Word.  I want to know it deeply and well.  I want to hide it in my heart.  I want to understand the descriptions of Jesus in the Song of Solomon.  I want to read Revelation and not be afraid for the future.  I want to know the gospels so well that I can say I know the One they are about.  I want to get past Paul's annoying grammar enough to grasp the grace of Romans. 

I want to be His.  Belonging to the Lord - that's my banner.  If my children could look at me and see something of that journey, the one that ends with me "leaning on my Beloved".  Even if it takes me longer than a lifetime to reach it, if they see me drawing nearer, not for their sake, but for His, for mine, then I will have lived well.

What's it like to try to homeschool 8 children and simultaneously love and nurture 5 preschoolers?  Like butter scraped over too much bread.  Like trying to make 5 loaves and 2 fishes feed 5,000 plus women and children.  Like coming up from the wilderness leaning on my Beloved.