I was recently given a gift.
It sure didn’t seem like it at the start but all it took was one person to point out that I had been given the gift of time, and my perspective changed.
My husband had the infamous coronavirus. It quickly spread to me and then our kids. This happened right as I was in the midst of my teacher staff days; one week before school officially started. I kept thinking, ‘I had all summer to be sick, why now?’
Well, because. Now is when it needed to happen. Not any earlier, not any later.
This awful virus gifted me time. I felt ready to go back to work after just missing the first three days of school. I was feeling healthy, my kids had very mild versions earlier and were feeling better days before me. But there is that whole quarantine thing. So we went from missing just three days of school to eleven.
After I was able to sit with this news, I saw the gift. God was saying, “Meagan, you have been contemplating something different. I have laid it on your heart for almost a year now. Take this time to test the waters. Dip your toes in. I would not have given you this if I didn’t think you could carry it.”
I have been living with the fear and heaviness of contemplating my next life steps. I hear and feel things from God. They are generally hard things; things I don’t necessarily want. They require me to live with less: less money, less worldly security, just less. God asks me to take a path others haven’t (or probably have and I have not met these people yet.) A path I didn’t know existed and I am to create it. I know deeply that I must be the one to do it. Not someone else.
I love my current school. I am working to create something different. I will continue to push myself outside of a ‘school’ box.
I have been entrenched in school, education, and systems for my entire life. I have followed it all, believed it all without question. I helped create school systems for teachers to follow. School has served me well.
I am also the woman who would never homeschool because I’m not sure I even like my kids. They are difficult. It is easier to escape my mom-life and be rewarded, admired, and praised as an educator. I am good with other people’s children, not my own. I am calm and kind with others; I am impatient with my own.
So, here I am now: September 2021. Staying away from school but trying to see it as an opportunity. I have taken these last eight days and played pretend. I have no idea if this is actually learning. It is just us having fun and being together, going on adventures and trying to learn some new things. (New blog coming: Learning Adventures.)
My hope is that learning is just that: learning. It can happen anywhere at any time and it is not devalued if it isn’t in a traditional classroom. I am unsure if homeschool is what I am looking for; maybe I have found ‘different’ already. I have a feeling I am looking for something that does not exist. I know I will find it if I create it. And I can start creating it now.
In the past, I have judged other women for choosing to be a stay at home mom. I felt myself to be a superwoman: have a high paying job, a husband, a home, three children, a busy, busy life.
But when I started examining my life and my beliefs, I started realizing I gave my best self to my job, not my family. I chose to stick my head in the sand and let others raise or tell me how to raise my children. I have taken steps so this is no longer the case. I love my current situation of being with them every day at our small school.
While I do not know what the future holds, I know I get to create it. I have enjoyed my time at home with my children much more than I could have imagined; I no longer fear learning without school. It allowed me to realize the hustle and bustle is not what I want. I want to be present, without distractions, and know my own children. I want to ‘do life’ with them, not without them. I am going to continue to feel out what it is God is calling me to do. I know if I listen, I will find it. This gift of time has shown me many things but the most important is to listen to my inner self.
