462 | See the End From the Beginning (Sean Allen)

462 | See the End From the Beginning (Sean Allen)

Show Notes:

Anyone else experiencing the winter doldrums? As the saying goes, the days are long but the years are short. Well, winter homeschooling days get reeeeally long. But the end is coming - both the end of your year and the end of this initial leg of your parenting journey (that is, when you send your children off into the world). Will you feel as if you deserve to cross the finish line when it arrives? Or will you cross slowly, laden with regrets? It's all a matter of whether or not you've discovered the secret of seeing the end from the beginning.

About Sean

Sean Allen is the founder of The Well Ordered Homeschool, husband to his beautiful bride Caroline and a proud father of eight. He has a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design and is passionate about creating materials to assist parents in the incredibly challenging, yet surpassingly beautiful, work of schooling and training their children at home.

Resources

Find a Great Homeschool Convention near you!

Connect

Sean Allen | Instagram | Facebook | Website

Homeschooling.mom | Instagram | Website

Subscribe to our YouTube channel | YouTube

Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? We hope to see you there!

For more encouragement on your homeschooling journey, visit the Homeschooling.mom site, and tune in to our sister podcast The Charlotte Mason Show.

Show Transcript:

Sean Allen Hello. Welcome to the Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Sean Allen and I am one of the many hosts here on the podcast. Since you're listening to this, I'm guessing you already know that homeschooling is both incredibly challenging and incredibly beautiful. Every week we're here doing a little guidance, some helpful counsel, and a whole lot of encouragement your way as you navigate this busy, yet blessed journey of educating your children at home. Now, even though the show is called Homeschool Solutions, it should come as no surprise to you that we do not have the answer to every homeschool related question. But if you come away with nothing else, our hope is that today's episode will point you to Jesus Christ and that you will seek His counsel as you train your children in the way they should go.

Hello everyone. How is everybody doing out there today? It's cold here in Missouri. It's cold and I'm looking out the window and it's just nothing but snow everywhere. When I was young I thought, oh, that's the prettiest sight you could see in January and right now I don't feel like that anymore. I just wish it would go away. But I think there's been quite a bit of winter weather all across the country and so I don't know what it looks like in your neck of the woods, but this snow looks to be here for a little while because we can't get anything up above, seems like, 28 degrees. So the children have been having a grand time with it. We've been sledding a few times and that's been fun, you know. It's not as easy to get down on the sled anymore, but we do what we can and they just have a blast and that's fine. But I'm already ready for spring. I'm already getting older and complaining about it and just ready for it to be over.

But how about you all? How are you doing? Are you weathering the winter months all right? This is the time of year when my wife struggles the most. She's cooped up, she likes to get out every now and then and you can't get out. And everything's slower as it should be in the winter but she likes activity and she likes to have something to do and some place to go every now and then. And in the winter, it's just usually, you know, you stay at home for too long, or at least this is the way that she is. And she gets a little stir crazy. And the children do, too. And so that makes it difficult on the homeschooling front. You know, warmer days are a little ways off yet and just sending them outside doesn't always work, so it gets a little long in the tooth.

But that has inspired what I want to say to you today because I've been thinking about this here a little bit lately. Had something that happened, actually the other day when we were going sledding. Yeah, we were out sledding and it was touching to me... You know, the more time that I spend with my children — I try to spend as much time as I can and it's still not enough. It's never enough. It's never going to be enough — but the more that I spend time with them, the more precious that time becomes. Because as I get older, there is more of the realization (and I don't think you know this too much when you're younger) that you're not going to get those times again. Never. You won't get them again. Not in the same way. Regardless of what age your child is, you know, they're four years old.

And this is what hit me. I don't think I'll necessarily go into the experience, but this is what hit me is, is that with your children at this particular age on this particular day in this particular event — let's just take sledding, for instance, even though I just complained about it because I just don't like the cold anymore — those memories are few and far between, because let's think about it: what is the likelihood that we're going to have this... let's just take sledding... It was a memory. It was fun. It was fun. I enjoyed it, begrudgingly, but I did enjoy it. And I'm thinking about my children and I'm thinking, how many times are we going to get to go sledding in their lifetimes? With where we live, you know, not terribly often. We used to get more snow than what we do now. We've had a little bit more snow lately, but that usually in Missouri, it comes and, you know, it'll stay for a couple of weeks and then we'll have a warm day or two. It's gone. And then the likelihood of another snow coming is relatively low.

And so I was just thinking about this scene that I was watching there and realizing that I might have... Oh, my goodness. You know, really, when you think about it, you might not ever have that again, ever. And you're like, "What are you talking about, Sean? Like, you're never going to go sledding?" No, I'm talking about I think there were four or five of them out with us at that time? With the four or five of them that we had in that moment outside in the snow on this particular day, doing what we were doing — the likelihood that that will ever happen again? There's a possibility it will never happen again. With that age at that time. You see?

Now let's say, I mean, Jackson was out there. He's four right now. You know, when he's six, you know, we might go sledding again, but he's not four anymore. And so that makes for a unique experience. Please don't think I'm reading too much into this. I'm not. I mean, there's the very real possibility that I may never get to go outside in the snow with Jackson at four years old ever again. Now we might get another snow later in the season that might prove me wrong, but that's just like one more time. And so even at that — one, two times, maybe whatever — you see how rare and precious these instances are. These experiences that we have with our children. It just dawned on me. It hit me so hard.

And with us, we're so bogged down with the necessities of life and it's constant requirements. It's just constantly just shouting in our ear and tugging at our shirt sleeve and just pulling us this way and that. So we're constantly moving on to the next thing and we forget that we may never pass this way again. It's a terribly sad thing. It's only sad in the sense that we allow these things to pass by and we don't even mark them in our minds. We may forget about them altogether. But that just hit me so strong, like I may never pass this way again. And it was beautiful. It was a beautiful thing, but also tinged with sadness.

And I think what it said to me is that there is value in seeing the end from the beginning as far as you're able to do that. And it's a difficult thing to do, obviously, unless by some miracle, God allows us to see into the future. We do that with much difficulty. But what I'm recommending is that you, as far as you're able, acknowledge that there is an end, that there will be an end, that every day we experience little deaths. Circumstances that make certain memories possible will never arrange themselves in that peculiar way again, most likely. And if they do, it will only be maybe one or two or a handful more times, and then that's it, it's over. And so is sledding with Jackson at four different than sledding with him at five? Yes, it is. Absolutely. So when the winter passes and the snow is completely gone, there's no chance of snow again, the chapter in that book has closed and we wait for the chapter to open again when it's winter and he's five. And hopefully we'll make some beautiful memories there, too. Or maybe it won't snow.

You see what I'm driving at here. These opportunities to spend time with our children and to invest in them are so fragile. They're so fragile. I'm trying to think what I could liken them to. They're just endued with this. It's just inescapable fragility. It's something that you have to mark and that is part of the process of seeing the end from the beginning. Seeing the end from the beginning is important because you are less likely to allow these things to slip by unnoticed or to even take the opportunity (or to refuse to take the opportunity, I suppose I should say) to endue these moments with meaning and purpose and value and beauty. So I think about that now more in these winter months because we get tricked into thinking (and it's not really a trick, but it's really a matter of perspective) that raising children is so hard and it just takes everything out of you. And that's true. There's no getting around that. And yet, for those who see the value in it, you cannot escape the beauty of it.

And so allowing yourself to get bogged down or dragged down, it's easier to do that in the winter months for all the various reasons that I just outlined for you earlier and many others. We can lose sight of that and all we could see before us is this drudgery, the difficulty of the task and beginning to feel as if we're not up to it. We may not even want to continue on in that way. And as the saying goes, "The days are long, the years are short." That's such a very true statement. I can't remember who made that quote, but that's so very true. The days are long, the years are short.

It's like every day is such a slog and you're just doing all that you can to get through and get to bed at a decent hour, which is in our case very difficult right now because Lillian is like, she's just controlling our lives. And it's so worth it. It's so very worth it. Lillian is the most beautiful thing that I think I have ever seen. She is just stunningly beautiful in so many ways. She's the light of our life and we couldn't love her anymore and yet you can't force her to sleep. And so she's up all the time and we're having a hard time. We were just talking about this this morning: it's like our world has just turned upside down with this baby.

But that's the way it goes, isn't it? That's just the way that it is. Easy things aren't worth much. The things that are worth the most are the most difficult to attain, they're difficult to achieve and they require sacrifice and so how could raising children be any different than that? It will repay you a hundred times over but in the process, you're going to have moments where you feel like you're not going to survive this. Yeah, that's just the way that it is. But the days are long and the years are short and what does that mean? The days are very difficult and then you once you get to the end—particularly if you were unwilling to see the end from the beginning—once you get to the end, you realize just how short they were and you will wish, oh, how you will wish, for the opportunity to go back and to be able to instill in those moments (or to extract from them) more value than what you did.

It reminds me of the song... I think there's a hymn that goes "give every waking minute, something to keep in store." What is that song? Work, for the Night is Coming. That's the song. Oh wow, I didn't even think of that. That's a perfect song. Work, for the Night is Coming, and in that song it says, "Give every waking minute, something to keep in store," and that's much easier to say than it is to actually carry out. But that's the goal. That's the ideal. That's what we're talking about here is not to allow the difficult work of raising children to distract you from the beauty of it.

And that is a principle that rings true not only in with regards to recognizing the value in the process but it also applies to the manner in which you raise your children. And I've talked about this before too. It's like when you are correcting your child you do not want to lose sight of all of the good that exists in them because it is very easy for us to allow that moment to overwhelm our senses and our better judgment and to even cause us for that period of time to forget that our children are good, that there is so much good in them, and they bear the imprint of their maker. How could it be otherwise? Is there a mix of other things in there that make your relationship with them sometimes dicey? Yes, there is. And we have to manage that but do not lose sight of the fact that they are beautiful and that there is so much goodness in them and that they have gifts, such rare and unique gifts and talents and callings. Don't lose sight of that.

And these long winter months... Don't lose sight of all of the beauty that is in this process and drink those moments in. Drink deeply from those cups because you will need it when your soul becomes discouraged and you have moments of weakness and you feel like, I don't know how much longer I can go on like this. You need to be able to draw from that reservoir in those moments where you recognize the beauty. And so my dear wife. When she is up every two hours at night, and I know some of you have had it way worse than that, but this has been going on for a while and it wears on you. You know, every hour, every two hours and little Lillian, she just will not sleep consistently and then you get up and you start the day already depleted and you feel as if you're failing your children because the homeschooling is not going exactly according to your plan because the baby has thrown a wrench in it and you go to bed late and you don't get the sleep that you need and you just continue this process over and over and over again.

How difficult is it? I don't want to take anything away from that. How difficult is it to keep a hold on the beauty of the process? It's very difficult and we're human. The cultivated ability to be able to see the end from the beginning, it's not something that you just snap your fingers and that you're able to do. It's something that you have to practice. Like gratitude. You have to practice. And effectively, what we're talking about is gratitude. It is gratitude. You're grateful despite the difficulties, despite the hardships (and there are days in which there are many), you're practicing gratitude. You're grateful and you're not faking it. And you have to yield yourself and allow the Lord to instill these gifts within your heart. And when the going gets tough, you can look there and you'll discover something that maybe perhaps wasn't there before.

And the ability to see the end from the beginning. What do I mean by the end? I mean the end in which your children step outside your door never to return again. Or when they do return, they don't return in the same way. They return with their own family or they return with a spouse or they return, whatever... They've got a career and they've moved on. They've entered into that phase of life that you're in. That's the end of a leg of this parenting journey, probably the most significant leg. Not to say that you won't continue to counsel and guide and pray for and worry and all those sorts of things. But that leg is over, you'll come to the end and that's time for reflection isn't it? you're going to look back: Did I do enough? Did I spend enough time? Did I listen? Was I sensitive to their needs? Was I too restrictive? Was I too lenient? All these questions are going to arise. Can you see that now?

I already see this. I haven't had a child leave just yet but I've thought about this for a very long time. I see at the end that regret is waiting to collect a debt. So when you arrive at that day, that point in time, in which your child leaves and they enter into their own phase of life, their adult life, there's regret waiting to collect a debt. And wouldn't it be wonderful to discover that you don't owe much? What would that be like? Regret standing there and saying, "So let's review shall we? Let's take a look at how this whole thing went down. So you started here and you did this and you did that and you got bent out of shape here and you did a lot of yelling here and you were too harsh," and of course he's going to want to bring up all of the worst instances of the past 18 -20 years, whatever it is. And hopefully you're going to be able to say to him, "Well yeah, that's right. That's right, I did make those mistakes and shame on me. I wish it were different but I rectified that. I repented of those things. I adjusted myself and then went back to work."

And he's going to say, "Well yeah, that's true but then as they got older you did this and you made this," "Yeah that's true, that's also true, but I took measures to rectify that as well." It's like, "Well you didn't ever say anything to your child," "Yes I did, actually. I apologized, said I was sorry." "What about the time. Let's look at the time here, sir. How much time did you spend with your child? I really see how you could..." "Well, that's true I could have spent more but I really could honestly say that I did the best that I could and I'm not perfect and I know I made mistakes but I don't really feel as if I owe much." That would be a wonderful thing wouldn't it?

And you notice how as I'm describing this in that ideal scenario, I'm acknowledging the fact that you will have regrets. Every one of us will. I don't know how you couldn't have regrets but the goal is to have as few as possible and so hopefully you'll be able to answer regret with that kind of an answer and say, "I did... You're right." And maybe you missed a few things. Maybe that'll come later in life when it dawns on you and you still have opportunity to go and talk to your child and to say, "Look, I realize now that I could have done this better and I'm very sorry." What is wrong with that by the way? What is so wrong about that? I think that there are some parents who get pretty squeamish when you think about reviewing the past and admitting the faults that are found therein. The mistakes that you made. They get pretty squeamish about that. They don't like to admit that they've made mistakes.

Maybe it's too painful? And maybe also that's not permissible because to admit that you made mistakes would (in their mind) tend to give your children an upper hand and you just can't have that and that's such a mistake. It's so sad to me. So sad. And so regret is going to collect those debts some way or another but if you can rebuff him with a show of penitence or the receipts, so to speak, of the ways in which you tried to rectify mistakes that you made, I think he'll turn tail and run. Wouldn't that be nice? That's seeing the end from the beginning, folks, as much as possible.

So right now you may well be tired. If so, you're not alone. Every year, like I said, around this time of year, my wife gets very tired. She's got a huge responsibility on her shoulders. It's hard for anybody. People say that she's superwoman and she just knows that she's just a woman who loves her children and that's enough. If you think that's supernatural then I don't know what to say to you. But she's working as hard as she can and she gets burdened down, she gets weighed down, and it's hard but then you got to pick yourself back up again, don't you? Because there's a finish line coming. You know, the finish line in our case is going to be sometime in mid-spring or so, early summer, and she's going to say, "All right, the year has ended. It's time to take a summer break," and we'll get ready for the next year and that's the finish line.

And here's the question that I think it's a good time to ask yourself now: when that time arrives, will you feel as if you deserve across the finish line? Like, "What? What does that mean?" Well if you have let the flag trail so to speak, you're downcast, your vision couldn't be characterized as soaring in any degree of the imagination, and you've taken too many days off, and you've spent too much time online, and you've been a little bit too short and too impatient with your children, and you've gone on and you've just kind of (for lack of a better term) given up, and then when it's time to cross the finish line, the year was supposed to end, do you feel as if you can cross that finish line? I think there's been instances in our life when we feel like, you know what, we could have done better. And so we're gonna do school for another two or three weeks, we're gonna do school for another month, we're gonna do whatever because we don't feel as if we're justified in crossing that line at that point in time.

So you don't want that either. How far does this vision stretch? We can look ahead to the end of the school year, say in May, or whenever it is that you end your school year. That's an end of sorts. You should look at that now. Take a good hard look at that. Based upon the current progress of your school and the way that your days are going, how are you going to feel then? Are you going to feel like, yeah it's the end but I've spent every day leading up to that time wanting and hoping for the end to come and now I don't feel that way because I don't feel like it's justified. I don't even want to cross that line. Seeing the end from the beginning—look at that now. Look at that finish line. How will you feel? And now you want to arrange your days and go about your schooling, your rearing of your children (as I like to call it, your home-rearing of your children) in such a way that you can meet that day with confidence and with a smile on your face and you could feel satisfied at crossing that line. Like this is well deserved and it is time to end. It's time to take a breather and to rest for a while and then get down to the business of preparing for the next year.

And when regret comes calling at that end, and he will, "How did your year go?" he's going to ask. "Let's sit down and talk about the year, shall we?" And so he's going to want to point out all the struggles that you've had. And the answer that you would like to be able to give him at that time is to first of all be honest and to acknowledge, "Yeah, you're right. We did have struggles but here's the thing: I got back up again and I kept trying. I kept pushing. We had bad days and then we would rally. We would redouble our efforts. I admitted then where I made mistakes. I wasn't going to wait until this little meeting with you, Regret. I admitted then that we made mistakes and like I said, we doubled our efforts. And I don't really feel as if I have anything to be ashamed of because I think it's good for my children to see me struggle and to see me pick myself back up and try again. I think that's good for them because I know my children will struggle too and I want them to think back on this time and to at least know that their mother thought enough of them that she was never going to give up. She was going to keep climbing. There were moments of slipping, tumbling perhaps even down the mountain, but she always got back up and she always climbed and we always ended the year a little higher than it began."

And so that's a good question for you now. We all want this, of course. We all want a better life for our children. That's the goal. We would like to see them succeed and soar and achieve so many good things in their lifetime. Well, if you want a better life for your children, the best way to think of that is not via monetary means or affluence. I mean sure, it would be nice. I could already see that my sons... When I was their age I was poor and didn't have any prospects and didn't even know how to go about seeking for better prospects. I was naive and didn't even have the drive to make a lot of money. Knew I had to make money, so as you can imagine, all of those things put together will generally amount to lack of funds.

But my sons, they've started out and to me, it's almost like they walked into these amazing jobs and they're making a good amount of money and that's wonderful. We don't want our children to suffer or struggle to get by, but if you really want your children to succeed, do you know what we ought to give them? Perseverance. Give them perseverance. And for heaven's sake, give them character. And of course, that should be the main motivating force of your homeschool is that endeavor—to acquaint them with the character of God and to inspire them with that character so that they can do something good in the world. But give them perseverance, and you give them perseverance by the fact that you're struggling and they see that every day. They can see that.

Now we don't want to make a big fuss about this. We don't want to go on and complaining and whining all the time. That's very disagreeable and distressing. You don't want that, but your children will, especially as they get older, they're going to pick up on it. But they'll also pick up on the fact that you won't quit. They see you struggle and they see you overcome and then that engenders in them to belief that they can do likewise. Now it's going to be a while before they meet the struggles to the same degree that you're meeting them now, but when they come, when they show up at their door, they'll recognize that. They'll be able to say, "This seems familiar." And it's also going to cause them to look at their experience in your home in a different light, with such a great degree of appreciation, and like I said earlier, gratitude. Gratitude. For goodness sakes, set before them one good example of an individual who struggles and overcomes and struggles and overcomes and does so because they are endued with a vision. A higher vision for the welfare of their children. For a higher calling.

They don't understand the sacrifices now. They will in the by and by when they have to make similar sacrifices and then they'll think back and say, "How did mom do it? How did mom do it?" And they will love you so much more and what is more important than that is that they will be able to attempt to model their life after yours. In that supreme act of sacrifice but also perseverance. And so we're getting higher and higher up here on the ladder of idyllic notions I guess you'd say. We're getting higher and higher up. That's all right, that's what this is all about—seeing the end from the beginning. That's why you do that. And you're not just investing in today. Today leads to tomorrow, tomorrow leads to the end, the end leads to the meeting with regret in the hopes that you can owe as little as possible. And beyond that, it leads to the opportunity for your children to look back with wonder, with appreciation upon their time in your home. And all because you were willing to see the end from the beginning and to remember why you started this in the first place.

And all of that is difficult to lay hold on when the house is a wreck and you're trying to think about what to make for lunch and the homeschool day seems as if it's shipwrecked and somebody's screaming and it just all piles on in one moment. And all this, this episode, these words that I'm speaking to you are going to seem like distant folly, but when it quiets down again and when you have your times of meditation and it's just you and your thoughts and your prayers to your heavenly father, hopefully this notion, and not my words but the ideal itself, will come stealing back into your heart and you can reconnect with the reason why you did this in the first place and you can go at it again tomorrow.

And as you do that day by day, I promise you, you will come to the point in which you have as few regrets as possible. You can look back over the time that you spent with your children with relish and with joy and you won't have to sorrow over the missed opportunities. There will be some but hopefully not many. And also more than that, in the moment, you can be living in the memory that you will one day look back upon... You could be living in that moment and look at it as if you were 20 years older, in the moment. I've done this before or I've had this done for me before, I guess you'd say. And the joy and the beauty are all there. You're experiencing it for the first time, you're experiencing it as if it were 50 years later, and that is when you have a moment in time that is pregnant with value. Like the whole of the value that could be wrapped up in any given moment is to be found in that level of gratitude, I guess you would say.

That's a gift, folks. It's a gift that God is willing to give to us. All of those moments put together add up to a life well lived on behalf of our children and may it be so for each one of us. Let us not get distracted by the debilitating notions of the world that are swirling about us on all fronts, at all times, constantly bombarding us with these lies, really, about what we're doing. And they want us to be weighed down. They want us to feel as if it's all for not, it's a waste of time, it's so low, it's so beneath the other endeavors that are ongoing in the world—people working Wall Street, people climbing the corporate ladder, people in politics, people in movies, people in whatever. That what you're doing was like the default activity that you had to move to because you couldn't do anything else. I'm not going to use the words that I want to use for those kinds of philosophies and those poisonous thoughts but needless to say, they need to be rejected out of hand.

And the truth is the opposite of that—that you're doing the most important work in the country. In the world. The people who give themselves over to this kind of life are doing the most important work in the world, and will prove in the future to continue in producing the most productive results in the world, in and through their children, who have been indued with these values and will continue on in this same tradition. You see, I believe that's where the salvation of mankind comes from—is in and through individuals who are making sacrifices akin to the sacrifice (or related to in some way the sacrifice) that God made through Jesus Christ and through whom the sacrifice that Jesus Christ himself made on our behalf. You see, he laid his life down for those who were lesser and so we lay our lives down on behalf of our children, day by day, is something akin to that sacrifice. How could your life be endowed with any more meaning and virtue and value than that?

So don't listen to the inner voices, the outer voices, whatever voices from whatever quarter of the world that they're coming to, do not listen to that. Listen to the voice of your heavenly father. He will give you strength and courage to continue on the ability to fully appreciate every minute that you have with your children as much as possible. You'll have minutes where you want to take off, but as much as possible, to give every waking minute something to keep in store. And you will be so appreciative of that. Your children will be so appreciative of that. And you will both lead lives that are lives of gratitude, lives of great and unspeakable joy, lives of beauty that will also inspire others to do the same.

So that's all I have to say about that. It's a little pick-me-up, I guess, pep talk here in the dead of winter. So thank you so much for what you're doing. Just keep going. Keep going. And goodness, it's so important. There's so many other things to say but I'm going to leave it at that. So thank you for joining me today. God bless you and may he give you strength to keep on this goodly path, I pray. So I'll talk to you soon. Thank you very much, bye-bye.

Thank you for joining us this week on the Homeschool Solutions Show. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at Homeschooling.mom. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. And while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @homeschooling.mom to let us know what you thought of today's episode. Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the Homeschooling events of the year offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topic, and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit halls in the US. Find out more at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. I'll be there. I hope to see you there too.

Previous Post461 | Homeschool Intimidation (Jennifer Cabrera)
Next Post463 | Vision: Beginning with the Ends in Mind (Shiela Catanzarite) | REPLAY