Be the Hero Your Homeschool Needs

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I am here to talk to you about being the hero your homeschool needs. Now, you might be thinking, “Julie, a hero? Seriously? Most days I feel like I'm some sort of wounded warrior, just limping across the finish line, collapsing, just being grateful to make it through the day.”

I want you to know that if that describes you, you are not alone. I spent years in my homeschooling journey feeling that way. Most days after school was over, I would collapse into my bed to take a nap because I felt so overwhelmed, exhausted, defeated, discouraged, and like I was a failure. I want you to know that you're not alone. I also want you to know that you don't have to stay stuck there, that change is possible. I'm going to be teaching you some things here, because I don't want you to experience those things that I did. I want to share with you some of the tools and the resources that I have used that have not only transformed my homeschool, but also have completely transformed my life. 

In our homeschool space, I put a picture of Wonder Woman up to remind me of how I want to show up in my homeschool every day. One of the words that I chose was confident. I didn't feel confident. I was always questioning myself, always doubting myself, always wondering if I was totally screwing up my children. I decided I didn't want to do that anymore, that I did want to show up. The Wonder Woman picture helps remind me of that. When I am really feeling defeated, when I am feeling discouraged, it reminds me that I have a choice and I can choose to show up differently. I'm going to share some of that with you today. 

I want us to think about what, in literature, is called the hero's journey. In literature, there's an archetype of a hero. So, think of one of your favorite kinds of hero stories. You have the Lord of the Rings, in which Frodo is taking the ring, and has to throw it in the fire of Mordor. You have Harry Potter, where Harry has to defeat Voldemort. You have Pilgrim's Progress and Christian is on the journey to the Celestial City. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the Pevensie children are on this mission to kill the White Witch. The hero's journey is found throughout lots of literature, so pick one as we go through this kind of example here. I want you to think about the sequence of events in those stories.

First, the hero is called in those stories. Usually the hero is just going about their normal, ordinary, everyday life. They have no idea that they're a hero, that they have all this potential inside them. They're just kind of going through the motions. Most of them have really hard lives. Which is kind of contrasting the journey of what they're going to become. At first, the hero gets called. At some point, you were given a call of “Hey, let's homeschool our kids and let's go on this grand adventure.” I want you to know that you are already on the hero's journey. You have already been called to this incredible adventure and journey called homeschooling. 

Next, after being called, there is almost always some resistance from the hero about the calling. It reminds me of in the Bible, when Moses is called in the burning bush. You know, he gives God all kinds of excuses of why he can't do it, right? He tells God, basically, “uh, I don't talk really well. Other people got to listen to me, yada, yada, yada.” Finally, at one point, Moses just says to God, ‘Can you just ask somebody else?’” Have you ever felt that? “Am I really called to this homeschool journey? There's gotta be somebody else who can come in and step in and do this job.” Just like Moses, every hero wrestles with doubt. Each hero struggles and wrestles with the weight of the burden that he has to carry throughout their entire story. It is normal to resist. It's normal to have doubts. It's normal to question if the calling was even the right calling. I want you to not beat yourself up when you have those doubts and those fears, but to realize that is part of the process.

Right when the hero was wrestling with all these doubts and all these questions and they wanted to give up, a mentor came in. They’re usually wiser, usually older, usually have walked this path, walked this journey before with other heroes. Okay, so in your homeschooling journey, if you're wrestling with these doubts and these fears and you're processing through on this journey, the hardship of it all, I want you to find a mentor. I encourage you to look for someone who's kind of further down the road than you are. It's great to have peers in your homeschooling journey. That is so key for your own sanity to have friends that you can share with and grow with. It's good to have someone who's maybe newer than you that you can encourage and help support and grow from helping them and teaching them. But, it is so, so, so, so key to have a mentor and someone who can encourage you and someone who can point you in the right direction when you get dissuaded and those fears kind of overwhelm you.

The hero has their calling, they doubt everything about it, they build a relationship with a mentor, and then they run into some sort of obstacle or hardship. That’s how it is in our life journey, as well. Moving, job loss, or sickness. It might be, in your homeschool, it could be that one of your children has some sort of special learning disability or something that you're going to have to learn to work through and overcome in order to help them reach their full potential. It might be something within you, within your own body, within your own mind. Don't get discouraged because of the obstacles. 

The obstacles and the challenges are here as part of the journey. These are what God is going to use to grow you, to grow your family, to grow your children. As parents, especially, we want to protect our kids from ever having to go through any obstacles because we love them so much and we don't want to see them suffer. But, if we try to over-protect them all the time and keep them from ever having to experience any challenges, they're not going to grow. It's these challenges that stretch us. Our kids will learn to be resilient by watching us work through our challenges. So I want you to learn to embrace the obstacles. That doesn't mean you're going to be rosy and happy about it. Our kids will learn to be resilient by watching us work through our challenges. 

So our hero, he has a lot of obstacles. He has a lot of tests to see if he really believes that this is what he's doing. He believes in the calling enough to keep going forward, even when there are hardships. When it looks like all hope is lost, we get to the climax of our story. In the hero's journey, there is a point where the hero is so injured or so discouraged, that it looks like they're going to quit when they're so hurt that you, as the viewer, have no idea if they’re going to survive. It's during that climax, either sent through some major injury or some major trauma that the hero resurrects. The enemy didn't destroy them, and it's at that moment that the hero realizes who they really are. 

It’s at this moment, they realize that they've been the hero this whole time, that it was inside of them this whole time. They are ready to go and fulfill their calling. They win the battle. They defeat the white witch. They put the ring in the fire. They defeat the dark wizard. Whatever it was, they took the victory. It's the same thing with us, when we finally get to the end of ourselves through either challenges or circumstances, and we realize we can't. That's when we can come back even stronger. If you feel like you have been kicked down and blown over and beaten up this year, I want to encourage you. You don't have to stay there because oftentimes we just forget who we are. 

If you have forgotten who you are, know that you, my love, are a daughter of the King. The God that has the power to resurrect from the dead, the God that created the whole universe, created you. If he called you to do this, he is certainly capable of giving you the strength and the courage and all the tools that you could possibly need. He loves your daughter more than you do. So when you look in the mirror, I want you to remember whose you are, that you are God's beloved daughter. That he just adores you.

I love the verse, Zephaniah 3:17, where it says “The Lord rejoices over us with singing, he's rejoicing over you.” You are a hero who has been called on this journey and it's time for you to remember who you are.

Practical tips for becoming the hero in your homeschool and your life: 

I have some practical tips that I recommend for reclaiming your identity as a hero because you are a child of the King.

• Stand like a superhero for two minutes every day. Research has shown that if you stand like a superhero for two minutes every day. Your feet are shoulder width apart, you're standing very strong, your chest is up, your head is up, your hands are on your hips, like Wonder Woman or Superman. Studies have shown that standing like a superhero for two minutes raises your testosterone, which is like strength, which is this kind of hormone that men have more of than women.  So it helps raise your testosterone. It also lowers your cortisol. So you're less stressed.

• Be prepared.  Being prepared will help you show up more confidently. I plan my week on Sunday nights.  I have a very simple process that I do. I don't need any bells and frou frous and special colored markers and washi tape and some fancy journal. I use a 10 cent notebook from Walmart, people. Sometimes we need to keep things simple. We make things way too complicated and then we wonder why we don't do that. Keep it simple and then you actually do it. 

• Get resourceful.  if you feel like everything's going south, If you're getting very frustrated, and your kids are getting very frustrated, and everybody's getting more frustrated. It is time to turn things around so you don’t end up throwing in the towel and collapsing into your bed. Maybe you all need to go for a walk around the block. Maybe everybody just needs a snack. Maybe we're all just hungry here, people. Maybe you're gonna do your morning time under the table or out on the trampoline. Be creative. Don’t let the pressure of expectations of perfection ruin your ability to be creative. 

• Learn to play again. When they see you having a good time, being happy, being excited about what you're doing, feeling confident and energized, then they start to show up that way too.

Listen, it is good for our children to encounter some struggles. If we protect them from anything that might be challenging or uncomfortable, we do not teach them to be resilient, persistent, or creative. Sometimes you have to do hard things, like telling them they can’t play outside because they didn’t do their work, and sometimes they have to experience those hard things because they're on their own journey too. 

You are the wizard on your kid’s homeschool journey. You're the mentor. You're the guide. You're the person who gets the privilege of coming alongside them, and when they're doubting themselves, you're the one who gets to be their cheerleader. When they're afraid, you're the one who gets to show them how to show up confidently. Because you've realized that you're the hero of your life in your journey, you have the amazing privilege to guide them on theirs. It's not your job to fix everything for them. It's not to make sure there's no potholes that they're going to stumble and trip and fall into. Your job is to be there to talk them through it, to guide them through it, to keep them going on their journey.