As we reflect upon the year behind us and prepare for the year ahead, I think it is very common to feel a certain amount of discouragement. We are tired. We are not where we thought we would be when our plans were shiny and new. I’ve seen more and more comments online through our conference and in discussion groups, as well as from the local moms I see on a weekly basis–we all have come up against the limits of our finitude. No matter what encouragement others try to give us, we know their promises that “we are enough” are 100% false. We are most certainly not enough. There is no possible way that we can be all things to all the people who make demands on us. If we feel successful in one area of life, we know we are failing in at least five others. 

I’ve been feeling this weight, not only in my own life, but as a burden for all the mothers out there giving their all to provide a living education for their children, who are making deliberate sacrifices because we believe the cost is worth it. But there is an underlying falsehood that seems to be wreaking havoc on our hearts. The assumption is that CM has made unreasonable demands on us. That there is no way we can live up to this calling, so why even bother? I know that I’ve often quoted her words that “Mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them. (1/44)” But what wonders are these that she has asked us to work? 

As I’ve read through her volumes, time and again, I think we can distill her view of our duty towards our children into a single thought: “The duty of parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food.” (2/39) This is the core of her definition of education that undergirds this entire method–education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. This is a solemn duty that should sober us, but should it bury us under a weight we cannot bear? Or are we doing that to ourselves when we take on MORE than this duty? Listen to her statement again, but this time in the context in which she wrote it: 

“Education is a life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin; and, 

‘God has made us so’

that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty of parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food. The child is an eclectic; he may choose this or that; therefore, in the morning sow they seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” (2/39, emphasis added)

Neither God, nor Charlotte Mason who was quoting his Word, is asking us to control the results. He is simply asking us to faithfully sow in the fertile ground of our children, that which He has prepared, and what He has given. Throughout her volumes Miss Mason uses this picture of the sowing of seeds to describe the spiritual action of ideas upon a person. It should bring to mind Jesus’ parable of the sower, and I think it is helpful to remember that the one sowing the seed is God himself. This is how we cooperate in the Divine work He is doing in the lives of our children. “For his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him…” is quoted in this same chapter, which is entitled “Parents as Inspirers.” The word inspiration itself should remind us that this is a natural function of a person, as natural as breathing, but also of the one who makes it all possible in the first place–the Spirit of God. The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma, translated spiritus in Latin, from which we get our word inspire, which literally means either divine guidance or to breathe in air. I would assert that we need both of those things when we are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged!

But when we focus on the results, when we think we can bring forth abundance out of the seeds we sow, without cooperation with the Spirit, we lose our way. Our timetable is not God’s. Nor is our idea of success. The image that keeps returning to my mind is the picture Jesus paints in John 12:24 “Truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.” We serve the God of paradox, “The Great I And” as Jen Pollock Michel calls him. And here, in the seemingly impossible paradox of life from death, we have the only hope we can trust. Jesus was referring to his own life, the Idea of ideas, that he would lay it down to the very door of death to make the only way for us to live, forever, with him. He goes on to say, “If anyone serves me, he must follow me. Where I am, there my servant also will be.” (John 12:26a) We, like him, find life when we lay ours down. The seeds of ideas that we scatter fall in the soil of our children’s souls, and appear to lay there dormant. But we must hope that they will bear fruit in the fullness of time. Our perspective is just too finite. And we can’t do this work in our own strength. 

Our labor is an offering. We must keep in mind that we GIVE it, as an offering, to the only one who can take our weak and feeble efforts and bring forth abundance. The God of paradox is made strong in our weakness. We shouldn’t expect to have it all together; please let us stop striving to impress the influencers or the in-laws. I pray that we can lay our lives down and focus on the plot of ground we’ve been given to work, to faithfully sow seeds, trusting with the faith that is assured even without visible proof, that growth will come. 

You know, in the Old Testament, grains of wheat were crushed and given as an offering, not as an atonement for sin, but as a free will offering of worship that acknowledged utter dependence on God’s provision. The Grain Offering was “the holiest part of the food offerings to the Lord.” (Lev. 2:10) For a nomadic people wandering in the wilderness, a grain offering was costly. So is our duty to our children, and why it is a worthy act of worship to lay it down before God. The grain offering also had the most flexibility in how it was offered, which I think is fitting. None of us has been given the same lot in life. The garden we tend has been given to us and no other. Therefore, our homeschools and families are all unique. And The True Sower of all the seeds, the giver of all knowledge, of life itself, has asked us to cooperate with him in our task. Jesus tells us that we are to come to him, take up his yoke and learn from him, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” If our burden is too heavy to bear, we are likely trying to carry it alone, in our weakness. 

I pray, as we close out this school year, that we will find true rest, that we can learn from Christ how to lay our lives down, that he would renew our souls for the incessant labor of sowing seeds, and that we will be able to take joy in the work he has given us to do, joyfully pouring it out as true worship at his feet. 

~Emily