After Epiphany

Two days ago was Epiphany, and yesterday we took Liam to the train station to go back to college. Aidan keeps saying, again and again: "When am I going to go on the train with Liam?" I hope not too soon, dear one. But these leavetakings come sooner than you would think.

John the Baptist talked about how "He must increase, I must decrease," --and while this is a distillation of the personal Christian journey, I notice that this applies to the seasons of the year, too. Saturday, we celebrated the coming of the Three Kings to bring gifts for the Infant, but it marked an ending of the Christmas season. And it applies to seasons of my life as a mother, too. It hurts as Liam moves out into the world, but it is a necessary hurt and a good one. . The gifts the Three Kings brought -- one of them was myrrh. And how they must have been blessed themselves by giving those gifts to their Infant King!

This is the anniversary of the day we lost our twins at mid-gestation. There is hurt there; we lost something, but it wouldn't have been loss if it hadn't been preciously gained in the first place. We gave something to God that He first gave us. But He DID give it to us; we will have our precious little souls, our two little sons, for all eternity. They would be 8 now; how I miss them, especially this time of year. Yet how precious the gift that God first gave us; nothing can take that away.

Liam's report card this term shows all A's. An A+ in Math, in fact. I am ambivalent about grades. Of course, this measures an accomplishment. He worked hard all term and he is an intellectual young man, and it shows. It shows something more: how as a homeschooler, he is succeeding academically. How as a "real learning" homeschooler, with not a whole lot of imposed rigorous structure, you can succeed by extrinsic academic markers. But OF COURSE, it is only a marker, not the accomplishment itself. If we had concentrated throughout homeschooling on these exterior markers, we would have lost something important. We put other things first as best we could in our very imperfect human way, and then the rest was added.

(I hope it is clear that I'm not saying this to brag about how wonderfully we did things. We didn't do it wonderfully at all, believe me. I'm talking about what priorities we tried to set. That is a completely different thing, but I wanted to mention it because all too often homeschoolers make concessions to worldly thinking because of fear. I've felt that fear myself and wanted to write this down to remind me to focus on giving and abundance, not fear and restrictions).

Clare beamed with generous delight about seeing the report card and then joked: "But you have to forget it before I go there." My daughter, it does not matter (and she knows that, I know). You are a different person from your brother. If you get all A's, they are YOUR A's. They are completely individual to your life, not an echo of your brother. The A's are a marker, and not the only kind of marker. We will be (and already are) looking out for YOUR markers, the gifts you bring to the Infant. There are all kinds. Each of my children brings his own gifts to the King, and He turns them to His own account; by His provision, our very giving and our decreasing works towards our eternal increase. His blessings abound that way, and truly enrich us even in our sorrows and diminishments. He is very good.