A Hard Day

My post on Facebook today:

I try not to post too often about how hard things can be, but could you please pray for us? I don't know if it's the weather or what, but the last week or so has been terribly hard here at Four Maples. I actually cried during our first lesson today from sheer exhaustion and frustration. It feels almost impossible to complete simple lessons without a meltdown happening, or total inattentiveness, or forgetting a task right after it's been explained. Anything without pictures is totally unlearnable. My words have little/no meaning, because the ability to comprehend them isn't there.

It feels like I'm writing instructions on a chalk board, and when I turn to the student to explain it the words magically erase. So I write it again, turn to the student, and it's gone again. Over and over and over. And there isn't even the small comfort of a child's ability to communicate what is making things so hard to understand, or even eye contact or body language to give a little hope that anyone is even mentally present with me. Nothing.

I love my job. I love my kids. I love homeschooling. I love that we can work at the pace and in the environment that my daughter needs to learn best. But today I am weary. And I just wanted to share that in honesty, because everyone has hard days at their work and no one always handles those days perfectly. And today of all days I'm grateful for the promise and reality of a God who is a closer friend and Father than even the best of friends here on earth, who walks alongside us in this broken world, and comforts us in rock solid love.

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:14-19