Monotony

Our family has not been called to a foreign mission field, or to adopt orphans from a far away land, or start a home school ministry, or to “create” a large mega family, to write a curriculum, to start a college, to open a book store, to live organically off the land in our log home our family built, to sell everything buy an RV and take a US history tour, or any of the other excitements that many home schooling families are called to.

We have been called to live a simple, quiet, agrarian multi generational life, which I am sure conjures up in you imagines of Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, sleigh rides, dips in the pond, enormous meals (all from scratch), a wise Pa, a soft-spoken mother, and mischievous  kids getting into a pickle. But those lives of old, and ours are about a “slow steady obedience in the same direction” (AW Towser?).

Get up, pray, feed kids, feed livestock,  discipline kids, teach, discipline kids, do laundry, clean up, feed kids, pray, read, clean up, do laundry, hug waking child, pray, feed kids, discipline again, feed livestock, chop– sauté— bake, listen, advise, feed kids, clean up, read read read, wipe, brush, tuck, rest, sleep, re tuck, sleep, REPEAT. One day into the next, then week, then month, then one year folds over the next.

Some days this rhythm feels like drudgery, but on my best days I will tell you that it is so much more. Victor Hugo Penned: 

Have courage for the great sorrows of life, and patience for the small ones, and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace---God is awake.

 

Great sorrow and laborious tasks take place everywhere on my plain and simple prairie or your historical RV trip. All the small joys and sorrows are felt as acutely here as there. On this side of heaven we all live in a place where, work does not always feel like a blessing, Pa doesn’t always have the answer, Ma forgets that kind words are sweeter than honey and some times the pickle your child finds themselves in will have life long consequences. So whether you are called to a quiet life or some exciting home school adventure we all need to pray for courage, patience, the strength to do hard work, trust in a God who is ever watching, and selflessness to love as Christ loved us. Perhaps then the monotony and the drudgery will turn into beautiful gardens, flowers beds, children who rise up and call you blessed, clean and orderly homes that are safe havens, well-loved husbands, cared for elderly parents, and all that is good in abundant living, When the work is done and the golden end of the day comes, and the end of the calling pulls you to eternity, you can finish in peace and then rest.