Tag Archives: family

Holidays, Families and Breaking the Chains

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Just got back from a four-day road trip that included an Easter visit with relatives in Chicago. One highlight for me was Friday night, when our immediate family got together for dinner: my husband and me, plus all four kids, our daughter-in-law and our daughter’s boyfriend. It’s so nice to have everyone together! I’m sure grateful that we had all those years of homeschooling. My memories are a comfort to me now that my adult kids live in other states and it takes planning to put us all around one table again, if only for a few hours.

If you’ve read The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling, you’re aware that I came from a pretty messed-up family. Lots of dysfunction there. In fact, when my husband and I were raising our own kids, I chose to maintain a certain distance from the chaos of my family, in an effort to keep the latest generation on an even keel.

My relatives can take the most innocent holiday plans and turn them into a fiasco, even before the holiday arrives. That happened again this year. While most of the fuss occurred before I arrived in town, and all of it happened without my participation, it did change some plans I had made.

When I tried to explain the dust-up to my kids, they didn’t get it. That’s a relief! That tells me that they’re still not used to the dysfunction, that it doesn’t make sense to them. We may not be a perfect family, but at least we don’t operate the way my birth family does.

Many years ago, I heard someone say that a person who’s been abused as a child has to “break the chains” of abuse by making sure they don’t abuse their own children. It really struck a chord with me, and it was only due to the grace of God that I was able to break those chains. I’m not a perfect parent by any means, but I do believe that God enabled me to keep from doing what my parents did. He did so by bringing people and books into my life that gave me a vision for what to do.

He’ll do that for you, too. Just ask Him! That’s what I tell the homeschooling parents I meet at conventions or who write me and ask how to break those patterns of the past, the ones you don’t want to repeat but somehow find yourself doing just the same. Ask for help. You can’t do it alone.

Random Thoughts While Going Through Our Storage Unit

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I spent a good chunk of last week (Spring Break) going through boxes from our storage unit as we try to pare down our possessions, part of the downsizing exercise we began nearly two years ago when we moved from the five-bedroom house where we raised our kids to a smaller home in another state.

I thought I’d gotten rid of my two big kids’ schoolwork before we moved, but I found more boxes last week, including one full of Peter’s workbooks and notebooks from age 5 on. (Boy, I sure spent a lot on A Beka in the early years of homeschooling!) And I think it’s ok to get rid of all his schoolwork, LOL, seeing how he graduated from college two years ago. I think he proved he knows a few things. But it’s hard letting go of the past. I’m forcing myself to only keep a few notebooks and other papers with his writing.

Even with some of the stuff pitched already, it stunned me to look at all of the books and papers and realize that this was the evidence of what I’ve been doing for the past twenty-some years. We moms are accustomed to having what we produce disappear: folded stacks of laundry and racks of homemade cookies evaporate soon after we produce them. So to see even just a portion of the work we produced over all those years of homeschooling kind of takes my breath away….and makes it that much harder to pitch things. But I was strict with myself, and we overloaded the garbage man last week.

Of course, old schoolwork isn’t all I’m finding in these boxes. I’ve been addicted to newspapers for almost my entire life, and as a result I’m the queen of clippings. Seems like there’s always something interesting in the paper that I need to tear out and save because I might want to read it again sometime. This explains all the clippings stuffed in boxes (along with old magazines I kept meaning to read). Not a good thing years later when you need to go through it all.

I can’t possibly read all of that stuff now, but as I sorted, I kept the articles I just couldn’t resist, and reread them all at night, when I was tired of going through boxes. And I learned something interesting: the articles found in the newspapers and magazines of the 1980s and 1990s are a lot more useful than what you see these days. There were plenty of solid, informational articles, as opposed to the tidal wave of celebrity worship and high-priced decorating ideas seen in recent years. No wonder newspapers are dropping like flies these days.

Why We’ve Been Celebrating

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This past weekend we celebrated our son’s 16th birthday. While all of our children’s birthdays are special, his are a yearly reminder of God’s goodness in caring for him when he was a critically ill newborn. Back when he lay in his isolette with tubes taped to him and monitor leads stuck on him, we didn’t know that he would become the healthy, strong and happy young man he is today. So we celebrate!

I wish we could have known back then that he would be ok. I also wish we could have known that having a baby with disabilities is not the trauma it looks like at first.

It was 16 years ago yesterday that a doctor we’d never seen before interrupted our celebratory hospital dinner (champagne, steak, éclairs) to bluntly tell us that our son had suddenly begun having trouble breathing, his heart wasn’t working right, he would have to be transferred to a larger hospital, and oh, by the way, we think he might have Down syndrome.

Great bedside manner, that guy. It was like being hit by a ton of bricks. At first, we chose to deal with the health issues rather than the spare chromosome and what it meant, because the health issues were more pressing. But once our son began to stabilize, we had to face the fact that he was quite different from his siblings in some important and unchangeable ways.

Like most parents with a special needs child, we discovered that there’s a grief process you go through when you have a child with disabilities. You have to accept that he won’t be president, won’t be a scholar, and in the case of Down syndrome, won’t get to raise a child of his own someday.

But once you learn to stop focusing on the things he won’t do, you can begin to celebrate the things he does. You learn about them as they happen. He brings joy to your family, he works hard to master every little step of development, he teaches his siblings about love and sacrifice, and he’s used by God to strengthen your faith. I hope I don’t come across as a goody-two-shoes when I say that he is actually a great blessing. I wish we could have known that when we got his diagnosis, but at least we know it now.

He’s a lot of fun as well as an occasional source of frustration. That makes him just like his siblings. Yes, I worry about his future, especially when I read terrible things like this. But I also worry about our older children: our daughter living alone in a large city, our son traveling all over the country on business (and out of the country on mission trips), and our younger daughter, who is just reaching the age where she must make some important decisions about her future. Parenting has exponentially increased my prayer life!

And that’s a good thing. God uses parenting to grow us and to make us into the people he wants us to become. The tools he uses for this are our children, who happen to be a blessing in their own right.

That’s just one reason why their birthdays are so special. In the case of our youngest, we also celebrate the fact that he’s made it through so many challenges and is still here with us. For that, we are grateful!

I’m Baaaaack……

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Hope you enjoyed the Christmas holiday! I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since I last posted. But I’m glad I took a break from blogging because I needed to spend that time with my family.

Our son and his wife came to stay with us for a few days before Christmas. It was nice to have them here, and our younger kids enjoyed some much-needed big brother time. While they were here, we made Christmas cookies together, went to the movies, and relaxed.

On Christmas Eve, we drove in two cars through snow and slush to the Chicago area. That evening our daughter and her boyfriend met up with us, and we had a lovely family gathering….in our hotel room.

Why a hotel room? Well, we lived in Chicagoland for nearly all of our lives, and our family Christmas would have been held in our home there, if we still had a home there. But we don’t, so I borrowed an idea from my cousin. She has five children and tons of grandchildren, all scattered over a couple of states. So she rents a centrally located hotel room or vacation home for their family gatherings. I really admire her for this. She sees that it’s more important that everyone be able to get together, than where they actually go to be together.

So we all gathered in the large living area of our hotel suite ($62 a night—they were having a special!) and ate (we brought trays from Sam’s Club and home-baked Christmas goodies) and talked and opened gifts. It was so nice. The next day some of us were able to attend our old church for a Christmas morning service. We spent the rest of the day visiting Chicago-area family members.

Our son and his wife headed back home Christmas evening. The next day, my wonderful husband took dd17 out shopping, using the trolley that stops near the hotel, so I could take the car and dsds15 to see his best buddy, who also has Down syndrome, is the youngest of five and is homeschooled. They had a great time hanging out, and I enjoyed my time with his mom, who is one of my dearest friends. It was hard to say good-bye, that’s for sure.

That night we went into the city to see our daughter. She has her apartment fixed up just the way she likes it, and she really did a great job. It was good to spend some more time with her.

The next morning, we left for home. It took twice as long as usual because there was thick fog all the way back. I’ve never seen anything like it….300 miles’ worth of fog! We were very glad to get home safely. Since then, it’s been laundry and end-of-the-year bookkeeping and exciting things like that.

And tomorrow will be 2009. What will the year bring? For us, the odd-numbered years have always been the most exciting. We were married in one (1979), had our kids in odd-numbered years (1983, 1985, 1991, 1993), and started our businesses in odd-numbered years (1995, 2003, 2007). Our big upheaval (a move after nearly twenty years in one house) also happened in an odd-numbered year (2007).

Today’s news reports are full of predictions of economic difficulties, violence here and abroad, and other sad things in 2009. But we must never forget that God is in control. I have great hopes for this year. For you, I hope 2009 is the best year ever!