This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Homeschool Life as Story Collection, Not a Novel.

Homeschool Life as Story Collection, Not a Novel

In this episode Sabrina and Vicki talk about some cool metaphors that they hope you are going to think are cool, too.

We love a good metaphor. It just makes our whole day! Sometimes, if you have a good metaphor, it can help you calm down and frame your life in a healthier or happier way.

Sabrina stumbled across a metaphor recently in a collection of essays that I was listening to. The essay made little impact on her. But this one line, this metaphor, changed her life!

The metaphor is this:

What if the story of your life turns out to be not a novel, but a collection of short stories on a theme?

Sabrina said, “It just knocked my socks off because I was used to the idea of one long life story, a fairy-tale novel! Not a series of short stories with beginnings, endings, and things not making narrative sense necessarily like one long, clear storyline.”

Then she asked herself:

What would somebody’s life be if their metaphor, their life was a novel, just one novel, what would that be like?

What’s the difference if your life is a collection of stories?

Older generations tended to have one novel per person

When we look back to times before World War II, we think in terms of a single life narrative. Sabrina’s Grandmother experienced different major events that happened that shifted her circumstances. However, she remained a stay-at-home mom of a whole bunch of kids who facilitated a multi-generational family. They all shared one house. She never had a career or more than an eighth grade education. She was loving, gentle, quiet, and stabilizing for all the people around her.  Her life centered around a single residence.

Her story arc stayed on that line. She had the blessing of ONE life story.

Life tends to be about short stories, now

Today, we are understanding that the world we live in is more episodic. We have a few years where we are doing this and a few years where we are living here. Then we go and do something entirely different, which ends up preparing us for things that are very important to us.

When Vicki was a young mom and newly in the faith she was told her story arc:

You’re gonna be a stay at home mom and your life is gonna be like this…

But somewhere along the line it became necessary for survival to have an extra income. That disrupted the story arc!

We think we have a novel, but it is really short stories!

When Vicki realized that she was going to have to get a job, she wondered if she had doing something wrong. After all, wasn’t her life story the story of being a stay-at-home homeschool mom?

But by faith, she has come to see that this was what God was doing. He has given her an almost thirty-year career as a counselor WHILE homeschooling. She has loved it. There was a short story about only homeschooling. Then there was another story about being a homeschool working mom.

Sabrina’s short stories

Sabrina’s life certainly took a change from being a married homeschool mom to being a divorced and remarried homeschool mom. There were several short stories (phases) of that time in life. God gave her strength to believe He was still at work- even when her life did not seem like the fairy-tale novel we like to dream about!

Other short stories that might be in your homeschool life collection?

Sabrina and Vicki know so many homeschooling families. Rarely does it seem like any real family’s life is a fairy-tale novel. Rather, homeschool life is about adapting to changes and writing a new story.

This happens when there’s a major illness in a family

This is especially if mom’s the one who becomes ill and has chronic illness. A chronic illness changes everything and requires writing lots of new stories. These stories are about being flexible and gracious toward oneself and the whole homeschooling family. (BTW- Journaling can help with this. Our friend, Lisa, created a journal for moms with chronic illness that she asked for us to share with other homeschooling moms.)

To write this phase of life’s short stories

Start with an understanding of purposes. (Of course, 7Sisters is all about discovering purposes and exploring them!)

Personal mission statement

This may sound cheesy, but it really helps clarify your purpose for this phase of life! Sabrina created a guide for writing your personal mission statement (teens can do this, too) and another one for writing your homeschool mission statement.

However, you will want to hold those mission statements loosely because God’s got more going on in the universe than you are necessarily fully aware of in any moment…and you are part of it!

God has more going on in the universe than the particular pieces of it that you are able to perceive and understand and you’re placed in it.

That’s the lovely thing about it is our lives are often a collection of short stories. We are all part of the stories that God is writing in the world!

But they are short stories on a theme

The primary theme that runs through all of the stories is Jesus, of course.

Then, hopefully the secondary theme that runs through is you! You are the same person all along, even though what you are doing, what you are saying, how you are dressed and what the circumstances are, look different in each short story.

Another theme is our children, especially our teens. Teens need to know about phases of life, but that God has purposes for them!

Sometimes, societal pressures give teens the sense that they have to find a SINGULAR purpose and know know exactly what steps are in fleshing it out. and that they better get moving. That’s a lot of pressure!

Instead, lean into the idea that your teen’s life is going to be probably a collection of short stories on a theme- not one single story. That way teens can concentrate on getting to know Jesus and getting to know themselves. Then they can have faith that they will recognize those threads running through the different episodes in their life stories.

Our teen’s stories might morph next semester. They might morph four years from now. There is no need to think that changing one’s mind about a career or lifestyle is a waste of time. It is simply another story in the collection.

Short stories end and new ones begin

The truth is, homeschooling is gonna come to an end at some point, no matter how many children you have at one point. Then you become a homeschool omega mom.

That short story will finish. Then the next one is gonna begin. However, it’s still Jesus, it’s still us and it’s all good. SO, enjoy this year’s stories!

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