I got a chuckle the other day as I read some social media posts from a first-year homeschool mom. She really is doing well, it seems. She’s been able to process wisdom from more experienced homeschool parents, and she’s implementing that wisdom well. But, there were a few spots where I still wanted to say, “Bless your heart,” or “Oh, honey!” You know…those lovely Southern phrases we pull out when we just don’t know what else to say.
At the same time, though, I applaud her for openly sharing her learning journey. So often, we hear from the veterans only. Those who have such a wealth of experience to share. And their wisdom is so incredibly valuable! But it can also be like drinking from a fire hydrant, especially if it’s decades of experience being handed down to someone just getting started — someone who actually does need the time to develop before they can truly handle that full slate of resources.
I know I’ve been guilty of sharing advice with other people this way, whether in homeschooling or ministry or parenting or any other area where I have a smackerel of experience. It can be…a lot.
But there’s a space that rarely gets shared from. That space right in the middle. The place where we have passed the idealism of the original thought, idea, or inspiration, but we haven’t yet seen how it turns out. We don’t yet know if our attempts will actually work. We have no idea if the advice is sound. And, to be truly honest, we can often find ourselves pretty disillusioned and discouraged. Who wants to share any of that?
Honestly, I think we’re the wisest in that middle space. We’ve been hit with reality a few times, and it illuminates the flaws in our initial idealistic inspiration. We’re encountering the holes that need to be filled; we’re being stopped in our tracks by problems that need to be solved; we’re seeing ideas that need to be revisited and revised. We still have no idea what the outcome will be and what additional errors or useless actions we’ll process along the way. But we’re gaining the tools we need to evaluate each step of the journey. And we’re getting better at it as we go.
That’s a hard space to share, to be honest. It doesn’t sell books. It doesn’t “preach” or enable one to gain any sort of platform. It has no confirmation of validity.
Even so, it’s where the vast majority of us exist. Honestly, I was in “the middle” of homeschooling until the moment my youngest finished his last high school requirement. And even then, I didn’t really know if I’d succeeded in equipping all three of them well. Well into my “retirement,” I’m still processing what did and did not work — what I’d do differently if I began again armed with the knowledge I have now. (And I have no idea if the “different” would actually work better.)
Currently, I’m in the middle of figuring out what life looks like as a “retired” homeschool teacher who is floundering through multiple ill-fitting jobs and just trying to figure out what’s next. What does it mean to be the mom of adults? Am I building the relational skills I’ll need to possibly become a mother-in-law someday? How are we as a family handling the challenge of staying connected in a new and different way, building on the foundation we laid when we all lived under the same roof? How is my approach to employment now paving the way for what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life?
The middle is squishy. It’s gray. It’s confusing. It’s uncertain.
Yet it is a place that needs to be shared. It is more important to talk about the middle than it is to rave about cool new ideas or share advice from places of success and completion. We need to see each other in the middle. We need to know how someone else is solving problems. Or filling holes, or revising ideas. Or restarting completely when it all falls apart.
It’s hard to share from the middle, but maybe that’s one of the things I need to be learning. Maybe that’s a space of vulnerability I need to be willing to express.
How about you? Are you in the middle on anything right now? How about we meet each other there and walk through the journey together? It might make the completion even more victorious!
