[Trying to get this kid to come start school this morning/afternoon for the umpteenth time]:
N: “…but Mom, I just really can’t. I’m working on something SO important right now. I’M RE-DOING MODERN ART.”
It was a really tough day with this one in particular, who was fighting against Monday with all her might after a busy holiday week of traveling. But as I lay here now and think back on the day, I realized she was at her best when she was making.
…Mounds of construction paper snowflakes before I was even out of bed. Intricate train track towns slowly filling the room as I worked with the other kids. Pages of Mondrian-style artistic creations because a right-angled ruler and a tin of colored pencils caught her eye on her way to start math. Slowly and attentively tackling “Good King Wenceslas,” for the first time with her violin teacher, because even though she grumbled all the way to practice, she simply couldn’t stifle her desire to make music.
“I am, I can, I ought, I will,” is the Charlotte Mason student motto so often before me, and I’m struck by how even on days where our children get nowhere close to the end of that motto, the “I am” part of it never changes. It’s always there. And I’m convinced the only way they will ever truly make it to the whole “I will” part — at least in the way they ought — is by knowing who they are, whose they are, who they were created to be, and what they were created to do.
Even at her worst, my dear tired little girl, just couldn’t keep herself from making and creating.
Yes, we must do math. Yes, we must figure out how to teach her dyslexic little mind to decipher all the words she so loves to hear and speak. Yes, we must (all) learn to actually do what we ought because it’s how we do right by others and ourselves. …BUT every so often, if we have to spend an entire Monday just camping out on that tiny little, but eternally significant “I am,” and go to bed praying that grace will get us closer to the “I will” tomorrow, well gosh darn it, that’s just what we’re gonna do😂
#iwillbecauseiam
