When Gone is Gone

This morning I read the blog of a friend who has lost both her mother and her younger brother to cancer.  I grew up with their family and the brother who passed away was a month younger than our son, Mark.  The double loss and suffering this family has endured and the way they have faced it with courage, grace and honesty is a real-life testimony, to me and others, of the peace and strength that only God can give.

As I read the following words, I really felt like they were for me as much as they were for her:

I think it's so important to be able to let go of things when it's time to say goodbye.  What's gone is gone.  You cannot hold onto something and make it a part of your life if it's not there.  Saying goodbye recognizes that something, someone was there, it really did happen, but now they have moved on which means you must move on too.   

There will always be goodbyes in life, and some much, much harder than others.  But there are also many, many hellos.  And if you look at it that way, at least for me, there are so many more hellos than goodbyes. And so many of those hellos are so much greater in their level of joy than goodbyes are in their level of sorrow.

Some goodbyes we say because we have chosen to do so.  We intentionally let something go and move on.  Some goodbyes, though, are because someone or something was leaving and there was nothing we could do but say goodbye and let them go. The same goes for hellos.  Sometimes very wonderful things come to say hello as an unexpected and happy surprise.  Then there are the hellos that we choose to say, and there is endless opportunity to say those kinds of hellos.  

Here's to knowing when to say goodbye and having the courage to do so...

and to choosing to say hello as often as we can.

Leaving our life in Kohala has felt like a death to me and I have spent the past year grieving that loss.  There was so much that led to us going there to begin with...dreams, hopes, plans...that our 2 years there just felt way too short.  We were courted, married and divorced before I even saw it coming.  And I think the most difficult part about it, for me, is that I didn't choose it.  I didn't choose to have our plans set aside, I didn't choose to leave.  It chose me and I had to go with it.  And I was okay going along with that, at the time, because I believed that our leaving was temporary.  Now here we are in Redding, a year and 2 months later, and we own a home.  We have new friends, a new flow to our life.  It's all good, but I think I've hesitated to fully embrace it because I've been holding out for returning to our life in Kohala.  I didn't want to, again, get too attached to a way of life or a circle of friends that would rip my heart out when I left.

In 12 days I will return to Kohala, but just for a short visit.  We left so suddenly last time that I didn't have a chance to say good-bye to many people.  I missed the births of 5 babies within my circle of friends there in the last year, so I am really excited to meet them all.  I know that I will have a full 9 days, a chance to re-live a past life for a little while, to enjoy being with some my favorite people, to soak up all of the aloha that I possibly can.  And it will be a time for me to say good-bye, gone is gone.  Chapter closed.  I am really not looking forward to that.  I'm thankful for the chance to visit and for the fact that I will have the friends I made there for eternity.  I just wasn't done there.  In fact, it felt like we had just begun.

It's time for a new season for our family.  This is the first time we've ever owned a home, a sure sign of beginning to put some roots down.  That is really foreign to me.  I have loved the 16+ years of adventure I've enjoyed since I left Redding for southern Cal in '95.  I've lived in every climate zone there is...from sunny SoCal to the heat of the desert, then to the snow-covered mountains and the tropics of Hawaii.  Now here we are in the valley.  Back in my hometown.  While it has felt a little like I did something wrong and got sent home, I know it has been God's saving grace for us in this season.  And I choose to trust Him.

So here's to knowing when to say goodbye and having the courage to do so...

School Changes

I've been asked several times why I stopped homeschooling, so here it is.

November was a difficult month for us this year. Lots of things came to a head, we were in the middle of remodeling and moving, I was beyond spent. Unfortunately that made it impossible for me to keep up with homeschooling. I began thinking about our options. We couldn't afford private school. Alex is on the list for a couple of charter schools, but that wasn't yet an option. I didn't feel a peace about putting him in one of the larger public schools. I kept wishing for some kind of a small school we could put him in that was free, but I didn't know of one. We kept plugging away at our schoolwork at home, little by little, at least trying to complete one subject a day. But the expectations of our supervising teacher were always haunting me. And I knew that Alex was not thriving in the midst of our family's stress.

Then I saw that my brother and his wife had chosen to pull my nephew out of his private school and put him at a small country school just a few miles from us. I had never thought of that before we moved because it felt too far away! One of my best friends growing up went to that school and I remember my 6th grade class competing against them back in the day. I didn't even research it much for myself, I just went on my brother's word and signed Alex up. He started right after the Thanksgiving break. The school has a great reputation and about 2/3 of the students are transfers from other districts. There are only 270 students K-8, which feels much less overwhelming to me than some of the other options we had.

Alex is a very adaptable, easy-going kid, so that has helped him succeed through our many transitions. He changed schools in the middle of kindergarten when we moved to Hawaii, then switched to homeschooling after one day of 2nd grade in Kohala. We homeschooled through 2nd grade and almost half of 3rd grade when we moved into our new home. Buying a house settled the question in my mind as to where we would be living next. Would we be moving again? Continuing to homeschool meant that at least Alex's schooling would be consistent if we did move. Since it now looks like we'll be planting in this area for a season of our lives at least, I felt better about putting Alex in school. And I just plain needed the break.

So that's the background on why we made such a sudden change. I was too busy back in November to have time to be sad about it. Now that I'm unpacking boxes and finding our homeschool books, I do miss homeschooling. And I miss the little network of friends that comes naturally with being a homeschooler. Granted, I do not miss the battle that we were beginning to have daily when Alex wanted to play with his brother or with Legos rather than hit the books. We traded that battle for the homework battle, which I am still trying to figure out. Besides the homework, Alex is enjoying his new school and quickly made friends as he always seems to do. I think I did what was necessary at the time and we'll re-assess at the end of the 3rd grade. We'll then have the option to put him at a charter school (as he'll have moved to the top of the waiting list) and may even have the chance to attend another charter school if his name is drawn in the lottery. Aaron's name is also in the pot to attend that school for kindergarten. We'll see what happens! Maybe he'll just stay put for a while.

The one time I have had a chance to get into Alex's classroom (to see a play and attend a class party), I was trying to decide how I felt about the school. I still don't know. It's okay. His teacher doesn't seem to be the warm sort of elementary school teacher I'm accustomed to, but she's nice enough. I'm sure that adding a student in the middle of the year isn't her favorite thing. I am not a fan of the instituionalized, mass-produced education system. But we're giving it a try. Aaron really misses having Alex at home, but is learning to play more with his sister who is much closer in age. So we're all adjusting and figuring out how we feel about this change in our home. I have to say that my least favorite aspect of him being in school is that I have to go pick him up at 2:30. That's a big interruption in the middle of naptime, which used to be my most productive time of the day. No more. It is nice to know that Alex is doing regular boy things like playing kickball at recess. He's happy, I'm getting a break from the responsibility of being his teacher, and we'll see how the rest sorts itself out over the course of this next semester.