The Road Less Travelled is not always Smooth

I realize this was our choice.  We chose to homeschool the four children, that we chose to have.  We chose to leave behind all we knew to move to a foreign country.  We chose to leave a job, and strike out on our own, try and make it as artists.  These were all choices and they were our choices, nobody else's.  But that doesn't make it all easy.  And I realize that we are living a dream we have dreamed for many years and even that doesn't make it all easy. There are days when I wonder if taking this road, the road less travelled was a prudent way to go, it is not always straight and it is down right bumpy in some areas.

Some days homeschooling is so daunting.  Not only the amount of work to try and organize four children of different ages and stages, but also the fear of failure.  Am I meeting their needs, are there things they are missing out on, socially as well as educationally.  Will they reach all of their goals, as well as mine.

Then there is the dream, this was the dream for Mark and I, was it the dream of our children?  No, they were happy where they were, they had their friends, their activities, their community and the ability to converse freely in their mother tongue.  And regardless of the time spent on a dream, you can't imagine how that dream will look until you are there, it will meet some expectations, it will fail to meet some and it will greatly exceed others.  You just don't know until you are in the middle.  There are days when I wonder what we were thinking, pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zone, leaping, hoping the parachute would appear.

Then there are the days, when all four children sit quietly round the family table, listening about all the planets (or some other topic) and recording the information relevant to them, or when they work together to make a stop click animation, or come and experiment with cooking in the kitchen or come together in some other way.  There are days when it is like time slows down and everybody moves in unison, like a finely tuned machine.  When every bodies needs are being met.  And I remember, this is why we do what we do, why we took this road.  The unspoilt views are amazing.  The times when I think, this is time I can never recreate, time with my children I will never get back.  This experience good, bad, ugly or fantastic is an experience that you just can't put a value on.  And I have to believe we will all meet our goals.  That what they might miss by not going to school will be outweighed by some of the experiences they have being home schooled.  It is a balance, a careful balance and I have to trust in myself that this is the right decision for our family.

Time will tell how our journey will play out in terms of both mine and Mark's artwork, but right now I am enjoying this road, the bumpy, the crooked moments, but also where time is slowed, where the view is beautiful and we are all together as a family in this beautiful country.