A Night Away

Thursday, I told Kevin I was really struggling with anxiety and stress.  Kevin asked me if getting away for a night (away from home) would help. I said yes, thinking maybe we could manage it in a couple of weeks.

Bless his heart, he arranged it for Friday night!  Yes, on Friday  night I went away to a local hotel and spent the night alone.

It was AWESOME!

I read a couple of fun books (well, I read one, skimmed the other), watched a fun movie, and stayed up late.

I ate dark chocolate.

But I also did some serious praying and journaling.  I thought about what is stressing me out.

Yes, it was a glorious night away.

I came back with some new ideas about life, and with renewed joy over my family. They are so precious!

So what are a couple of things that I realized?

1.  There are some trouble spots in the house that continually stress me out. The last couple of days, I have spent time moving things around to decrease clutter and improve organization.  It already helps.

2.  I don't need to worry about high school.  Yes, I've been stressing about high school. It does seem like a big job to teach my children through high school.  Since I've never done it before, it looms large as a mountain. 

Of course, when Naomi was 4 and I was thinking about teaching her to read, THAT task seemed very hard. I've taught 5 kids to read well now and #6 is starting to read, so I'm confident now.

I haven't organized a high school curriculum before but I can do it with God's help.  And Naomi is the perfect guinea pig.  She's a lot like me...visual learner, good at writing, good at math.  She will struggle with some things becuase everyone does, but I think it would  much harder to start with Isaac or Joseph, who have handwriting glitches.  Put it this way, Naomi will probably be relatively easy to teach high school, and once I have a basic template I can make adjustments for the other children.

So I am thankful for a night away.  I feel refreshed and renewed.