Back to Normal....What's normal again?

A new school year has dawned and I'm facing it without support.  That is to say, I'm facing it with not as much support as I had previously. Then again, that is to say, I'm facing it with the exact same support team I had before but I have to utilize them differently!  I talked to Amy Ward the other night (my A#1 best friend/soul sister/soul mender/home school rally-er/cheerleader/advice guru....you get the idea). After our first week of school I was feeling pretty good about the choices I made concerning curriculum and direction of learning.  I picked it all out myself with only the old voices in my head to guide me and of course from the best guidance...the Spirit.  I feel pretty good about myself as Emma has already begun to adapt but as I talked with Amy I realized I haven't left my support team back in San Diego; they've always been with me! 

We left a pretty awesome home school program when we left San Diego.  We were apart of a charter school that was accredited and could give Emma a diploma at graduation as well as supply her with funds to support almost any curriculum and supplied us with an awesome Educational Specialist who we could lean on for assistance for our homeschooling needs.  We had also joined a commonwealth that focus' on leadership education and teaching our children how to be active, educated, contributing members of our society.  A large part of our friendships came from home school families or from our ward which included some of those home school families.  We had support everywhere we turned in Cali.  When we came to Louisville, Kentucky supplied us with an opportunity to legally home school our child...yep that's all!  The difference at first was overwhelming but we moved in the middle of the school year and we kept the curriculum all the same for the second semester so it felt "almost" normal.  In reality our world was turned upside down and the school side of life barely squeaked through.

Well back to normal.  What is normal anyway?  It changes so often that I don't know where normal went.  I've come to a realization however, normal is a state of feeling a moments contentment.  I look around my house tonight and there is a dirty knife and spoon at the computer table, a table full of things that need to be put away, a floor to sweep, dishes to be done, and sleep to acquire but in this moment it's normal.  Yes things have changed dramatically and yes we have begun to feel at home in this strange land of endless mosquitoes and gnats but something feels normal more often than not!

As for home schooling feeling normal, Amy helped me see that it's more normal than I thought.  I was going back and forth over curriculum for grammar/vocabulary versus classic literature and whose philosophy I should choose to teach.  I kept questioning over and over, "Well this person believes this but this is what's happening and what about this over here or should I do this".  Eventually I went with the feeling that made me the least anxious.  As I was explaining all of this over the phone she validated my feelings and in that "moment" I felt normal!  See my support has never left and something in that moment was normal.

Will tomorrow be normal?  Perhaps parts will and perhaps parts won't.  Will it feel normal when my alarm goes off at 7a.m.? No because it's currently 3:40a.m.  Will Emma's eminent frustration with Math feel normal...unfortunately YES!  Right now and for as long as I need it to be, normal is a state of feeling a moments contentment!