I was a natural baby and little kid mom. The baby-wearing, and quiet days at home for naps and exploration, and even the heart conversations about toy sharing were all in my wheel house. I didn't always feel like I was doing a good job (because "good job" isn't the same thing as "perfect" and I didn't know enough yet to be satisfied with steady faithfulness), but now that I'm really out of my zone with all big kids and teenagers I look back with wistfulness to the days when it was completely within my power to turn a bad day into a good one. Perspective. Isn't that what all the older moms have been telling me I'd gain one day?

So, I've been sneaking my school planning for this coming year into all the cracks and corners of our full summer, and what I didn't know to expect back when they all rested for two solid hours every afternoon was that the day would come when I wasn't the one making all the plans. Or even most of the plans. I didn't know that our summer days would be filled to bursting with extra people and extra driving (and sharing my car) and extra trips to the pool and extra adventures to lakes and streams and icy-cold watering holes, or that it would ever be reasonable to imagine that we'll be able to have all the fun without anyone dying. And we have. We've had so much fun. I've always soaked up the hilarity that comes with having children, but these old children are funny in new and surprising ways now. And so are their friends.

But all of this wonderful extra has found me at the start of a new school year gasping for breath and wondering how we're going to fit it all back in again. It's likely that I'll always feel like this at the start of a new school year, but I'm gaining something as I go along that is helping me to fight the anxious feeling that threatens to weigh me down with all the not enough feelings. I'm gaining the wisdom of hindsight. I can look back on these last eleven years of official homeschooling and I can see growth; real, genuine maturity and change and learning and growing. I can see these half-dozen kids who are turning into people who care about the world around them. I can see that despite all of my fretting and researching and fears and worries, and despite all of my very best efforts (often gone wrong), they've always been people whom God has made for His own purposes. Mostly I can see eleven years worth of faithfulness from the God who set me on this task in the first place. Perspective. It doesn't keep my heart from wandering back into those dark fears of messing them all up, but it gives me some solid truth to fall back into when it does.