Raising Red Letter Kids

I’m finally doing it.  My youngest child is in his third quarter of his freshman year in college 3,000 miles away. My hubby and I have officially been empty nesters for 29 weeks and 6 days, and I still have not tackled it… until today.  What dreaded monster have I finally confronted you ask?  The truth is, there is no monster, but the cave he lives in and all of its stuff have become bigger and scarier than any dragon my imagination could ever conjure up. 

I’m talking about…my basement, better known as “the dungeon”.  My excuses for not dealing with it have changed through the years.  My husband and I homeschooled our kids from pre-school through high school; I worked part time while doing this. We were youth leaders at our church. We were coach and team mom of our kids’ soccer and mountain biking teams. And when it came to my kids and music, well I have to admit, I was a bit of a tiger mom, an albino tiger as my husband likes to say.  But I currently have no children living at home, so I can no longer say I’m avoiding my basement to spend quality time with the kids. 

As a new empty nester, and former homeschool mom you would think I would have loads of time to fill, but somehow work, home and life have invaded every single nook and cranny of a schedule that used to be stuffed to the brim with unit studies, read alouds, nature journaling, science projects, speech and debate tournaments, bike races and music competitions. Besides, I no longer have my free labor, I mean kiddos, to work along side me, while solving the world’s problems during fascinating conversations about life and people and dreams for the future.  

But lack of time, help or company are not the only reasons I have avoided this dungeon.  In the past my family has certainly offered, even tried to help me conquer this beast of a basement, but somehow it never worked.  No, this is a beast that I alone need to conquer; no one else can do it for me.  You see, my basement is where, through the last 20 or so years, I have stashed important pictures, trophies, projects, favorite books, artwork, anything and everything that represented and reminded me of the cherished moments spent with my two “little goslins”, as I affectionately call them still. All of their accomplishments, all of my failures, everything good and bad, completed or still in the packaging has made its way into this dark, dingy and now very crowded dungeon. 

As I descend the steep stairs and enter the pitch blackness of my basement, I grope for the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and pull its chain. As the light blinks on, I begin to look around and notice the many wonderful memories that surround me, albeit in a highly haphazard arrangement.  All this stuff jumped down here before that neat little author wrote a book about “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, so please have mercy on me and my messy ways. 

At first it is like discovering hidden treasure.  I pick up some giant butterfly wings and a pioneer dress to put them away in the dress up chest, but in doing so I uncover my son’s homemade underwater robot that he made out of PVC pipe and a soapbox when he was 13. I look up and see the timeline stretching around the room that my daughter made about ancient China when she was in kindergarten and fascinated with everything Chinese. I open up the kids’ prayer journals and read sweet and innocent prayers that give me new insight into their walk with God.  Feelings of nostalgia, thankfulness, even pride swell up in me as I dust off nature journals, science notebooks and speeches written and delivered, reading bits and pieces from each. So many good memories to cherish, how can I choose which ones to keep? How did those precious years go by so quickly. 

But lest you think that I smugly look back over those formative years of raising and educating my kids with no regrets, let me share with you some other things I found in my basement.  I also found notebooks half filled in, booklists not checked off, brand new curriculum never even used.  Alas, I’m quite certain that my tombstone will surely say, “Here lies Stacey Belliard, she never taught her children Latin!”. 

Yes, its true, I and I alone must confront these demons in my basement.  Reminders of the good times and bad, evidence of our hard work as well as my shortcomings and indecision, all of these things must be dusted off, sorted through, and dealt with one way or another practically speaking, but especially in my mind.  Did I do enough?  Did I do the right things?  Did I forget anything important? Why didn’t I stick with that classical education model? Will my kids survive in the real world?

As I toss broken egg incubators and never really started butterfly collections into the trash bag, I get a long text from my daughter who is in between undergrad and grad school and currently studying abroad in Europe.  She is texting me about her day spent teaching English and Spanish to Syrian children in a refugee camp near her college.  She is so moved by the experience that she can’t wait to go back.  The day before she was texting about her day spent in town, where she met some Moroccan immigrant women who eventually invited her and her friend to join them sometime for Moroccan food and henna tattoos. She is excited because she loves to learn about people and other cultures and because the women could tell that unlike many locals, she and her friend were not prejudiced against them for being Moroccan or wearing hijabs. She goes on to discuss prejudice and how complicated it is, and how even victims of racism can be racist themselves.

Then I remember my son who had asked me to deposit the small scholarship check he received from his old high school mountain biking league. He wanted donate it to an organization funding school for refugee kids in Rwanda.  He was thrilled to find out that his $500 scholarship check could fund a whole year of school for a Rwandan highschooler. He told me, “I don’t need that money, it won’t even make a difference in my life, but a year of school could change someone else’s life forever.” 

I reflect on who my “little goslins” are growing up to be, how they truly reflect the love of Christ to others. I am thankful for those unfinished handwriting books, I’m proud of the math books that have such obvious wear and tear, not only from daily use, but from occasional fits of frustration which sent them launching across the room. I am grateful for these flaws and gaps in my children’s upbringing and education, because it means we are real people with real struggles.  It means that my now grown children can relate to others who are struggling with something difficult and can empathize with the hurting people of the world. 

My children may not know how to conjugate Latin verbs, but we spent many an afternoon snuggled up on the couch, reading real, living books about God’s children all over the world and now they are actively engaging with people from those very places.  We may never have finished, ok started, that AP economics course, but my kids respect and relate to God’s children from all socioeconomic levels, right here at home and on both sides of the track.  I love that my 23 year old daughter is such an advocate for those who have no voice.  I love that my 19 year old son has such a tender heart for the kids on campus that may need a friend.

Just now, as I throw away a practically unused curriculum for the national bible bee contest, I feel pangs of guilt that my children did not memorize the hundreds of verses listed there or go on to compete at the state or national level in scripture memorization, but then I remember Jesus’ short “to-do” list.  It wasn’t long or filled with complex projects or competitions, only two simple requests…love God and love others. Period. And by the way, He didn’t say love others who are like yourself, He said love others as yourself. I guess if those priorities are good enough for Jesus, then they better be good enough for me.  And I think that by the grace of God, those priorities are playing out in the lives of my children as well. 

Thank you God for dark and dusty basements.