Week Two: The Good, The Ugly, and the Path In Between

Friends, it's been such a full week that I haven't even been sure where to start sharing it with you. I've been praying about what God might have as the "Big Rock" to convey in this post (ask your child what that means!). I think He's nudging me with something, but honestly, it's not the answer I would have hoped for! Who wants to walk that far out on the vulnerability limb?

Deep breath. Here goes.

In his first Launchpad blog post, Gary ended thus:

"We’ve only just started.  Will it be messy?  Will it be risky?  I hope so.  I am starting to believe that those are actually the optimal conditions for deep transformative learning to happen."

We reminded each other many times over the summer that we were heading into a messy, risky venture. But it wasn't until this Tuesday that I smelled the burning scent of the rubber hitting the road -- in my own soul. I suppose I said those words -- you know, the ones about how my plans would probably fall apart but I had to make them anyway, or about how it would be imperfect but beautiful -- rather glibly, in retrospect. 

Because when you are crying big ugly snotty mascara-dissolving tears on the back porch of the schoolhouse ... and then at the lunch table ... and then at the staff meeting ... and then on the front porch ... and then at home on your bed ... IT DOES NOT FEEL BEAUTIFUL. Oh, and how's this for the kicker? Crying IN FRONT OF THE KIDS. 

Here's the honest truth: This past Tuesday I felt like the weakest link among the AI Staff, as awesome and encouraging as they are. No one else has bawled their way through an afternoon staff meeting for no apparent reason. (And by "no apparent reason," I mean this: my ES kids were not badly behaved that day. They are simply young and needy, and ask me to make many decisions, revise many plans, and answer many questions all day until they are able to make their own. Sensory overload, or what our class might call "the panic zone," snuck up and grabbed me from behind, and it looked like a scary plumbing situation on my face.)  Anissa, you probably need to re-stock an entire box of Kleenex at the schoolhouse on my account alone. 

But speaking of Anissa, she said to me in one of the sweet, supportive, encouraging texts I received (which of course made me cry harder) the following: "Tears are meant to be seen. That's why they come out of your eyes." Consider that for a minute.

Which is harder -- to fall apart, or to be SEEN falling apart? 

That night, another friend reminded me this: "No, you can't make it, do it, or be it. But if our God can hold together the entire universe, He can surely hold together your personal universe." In that moment, I realized that until that day, there was a subtle part of me believing that I could do this. That I had what it took to spend three full days a week with fourteen children guiding them into a new model of learning and self-governing. If you'd asked me, I would have said that oh no, I depended on God. But Tuesday pulled away a layer of pretense that I hadn't known was there. 

My husband also reminded me that our own children are watching me. They've seen me work hard all summer, funneling my energy into this endeavor. They've seen me take the risk of public failure in a way that being a homeschooling mom for the past decade has not demanded or provided. They saw me fall apart on Tuesday and accept their offer to make dinner so I could chill out. They saw me get back up on Wednesday and climb back into the saddle to try again. I hope your children saw a bit of the same. I hope their hearts are telling them what their brains may not have processed yet: Mom, a.k.a. Mrs. Diller, is not talking about learning from failure and building our perseverance muscles from a pulpit. She's talking about those things from right beside us in a muddy trench.

The other thing I hope they noticed (because I pointed it out to them) is that part of life in the trench involves asking for help and accepting it when it's offered. The rest of the week went dramatically better. I was able to budget my bandwidth with the children because Apryl, Tiffany and Gary stepped forward at various times to help out. Oh, and because several of you were praying for me, and your prayers availed! 

Now, enough about me! I told the staff I didn't want to write a super-long blog post, and yet here we are. For the two of you who have made it this far without your eyes crossing, here are a few lower-cost highlights of the week:

1. Thanks to our portable internet hotspots (which we took in turns with the Middle School), all fourteen children successfully logged on to Khan Academy, DreamBox and Spelling City and made progress! Their enthusiasm is heartening. Maybe a little scarcity of resources is a good thing from time to time.

2. Each child had a one-on-one meeting with me to discuss their badge journey for the year. It's exciting to see them accepting challenges! Two children who were convinced that a certain platform or achievement were "impossible" for them both agreed, albeit hesitantly, to give it a try. Music to my ears. 

3. Our project for the week was to craft a container, using limited materials, which would hold a raw egg and prevent it from breaking when dropped from the back porch ... and then the second floor balcony. They worked on this for three days, culminating in the final deliverable: a 30-second commercial for their egg container. Hilarity ensued. 

4. Several of the kids (boys especially) really enjoyed hearing from our guest speaker, Chris Hall, a former offensive lineman for the UT Longhorns who currently serves the Lord in campus ministry. He shared about growing up in a Christian home and then finally meeting Jesus personally his freshman year in college, where he realized that he had no chance of persevering through the rigors of UT football without a genuine walk with the Lord. He also shared how a friend led him to the truth that being a Christian didn't mean coasting through football and college with an "I have Jesus; life is great!" attitude. It meant being willing to work the hardest and the longest, because we express a God who doesn't do half-baked jobs. 

{They didn't do a half-baked job teaching Chris to play GaGa. Because apparently GaGa rules the world.}

5. It sure was cool on Friday afternoon to see and hear a bunch of them around the table in the Tinkering Lab, crafting, swapping stories about their great grandparents, and singing a chorus of "We Were Made to Thrive." 

May your weekend with your children be full of blessing, friends! We'll see you back on Tuesday, ready to learn again together. 

- Hannah