A silver lining

What's white and cold, comes in fluffy mounds, kids love it, and you can have too much of it?

No, it's not ice cream.

I'm staring out at our third 'occurrence' of it this week, piled coldly on top of every tree and bush, looking lovely and seasonal and, well, sort of defiant.  "There's more where I came from!  You just think spring will be here in a few weeks...Punxatawney Phil is only a rodent.  What does he know?  I am the Snow, I cover all."

Ahem.  No, I'm not really morbid, just feeling a bit confined.  The white stuff has defined our life this week--church cancelled, quick-get-to-the-grocery-store before the next round, too cold to walk, not too cold to shovel, and shovel, and shovel.  Daydreams of warm beaches with silky white sand, the smell of green things, and hot sun on my head interfere with school and pots of hot soup.  Flip-flops, sunscreen, iced tea, and crickets...sigh.

But back to reality.  The confinement has actually been really good for me--I've steeped myself in high school planning and praying, a much needed exercise.  I sense the Lord leading us to a more out-of-the-box approach for SweetPea's last three years, so with little distraction I've been able to read or reread some good homeschooling books to lift my vision a bit.  I'm loving Senior High: A Home-Designed Form+U+La.  Barbara Shelton brings you back to the spiritual reasons we homeschool and encourages you to truly follow His lead--bravely--and not settle for the safety of a pre-scribed plan.  After a semester of frustrations on many fronts, I've concluded that both of us are chafing at the constraints of someone else defining what our studies should look like.  It worked wonderfully in the elementary years, but now that she's beginning to discover some of her God-given interests and abilities, I think it's time to customize the system a bit!

I'm rereading A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille (wow, if you were public-schooled, you ought to read this!), and The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer.  This last one is specifically for the classical homeschool model, but I have found some wonderful stuff in it, not the least of which is a great reading list for high school.

Anyway, I feel a bubbling of excitement in me of new things, of adventure with the Lord, of seeing in actuality the promise of homeschooling at its best for SweetPea's best.  God is able, is He not?  I don't have to pull this off myself, I think I just need to get out of the way and let Him lead.

Yay!  Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.