Education's Journey

I recently watched the movie The Perfect Man with Hillary Duff. This is a movie about a teen-aged girl who moves around all the time because her mother runs from her trials. The girl blogs about her life; she shares her woes and her enlightenments. She ends up creating this perfect man for her mother, and weaves a tangled web of lies, just to cheer her mom up and hopefully end up staying in one place. Of course, this backfires on her, and she ends up having to tell her mom the truth. Her life gets a little too personal, so she talks her mom into moving again; only this time for her. Her mother ends up taking her place chatting online, and realizes what a horrible example she's set for her daughter. Mom then decides to stick it out for a change and help her daughter face her own demons.
This movie really hit home with me. If my mom and I got together to write a movie about our lives, we could have easily written this movie. The only difference is, these people figured it out before the daughter grew up, my mom and I are just now figuring it out.
I left home two days after my eighteenth birthday. Why? Because life got tough, I wanted to find the real me, I didn't want to face the "me" I was becoming, and I knew I was possibly pregnant and couldn't face my family and friends with the news. So, I ran away with a carnival. I came home 1 month before the baby was due, then left again 2 months after she was born. When my second child was born, I realized I couldn't keep running. So we moved to my sister's house in Minneapolis. It took a few months to get our own place, and get on our feet, but we did. When the bills got to hard to manage, we moved out of town, to a cheaper apartment.
This is where my gypsy instincts kicked in. We lived there for one year. In that years time we added another child to our dysfunctional family, my husband cheated on me, and we fell behind in bills again. We decided it would be best to move back to Michigan. So in the blink of an eye, I was traveling alone with my three, very young, children. My husband and I were trying to reconcile, but he thought it would be best to stay in Minnesota until he could get his job transferred. Well, three months later I realized that wasn't going to happen. He rarely called, and when he did we fought. He only sent money when I demanded it, and even then it wasn't even enough to pay the rent. And there was still no word on a transfer.
I told him I couldn't do it anymore. He should just stay in Minnesota, and let us start a new life with out him. He was hurt, but really didn't fight for me, so I moved on. Pretty quickly actually. Within two months I had a steady, live-in-boyfriend, and things seemed to be going well. When we got too far behind on our bills, my brother called from Pennsylvania. He had a job for KC and a house for us. Oh, did I mention, we were expecting another child? So within days we were packed and ready to go.
Pennsylvania was beautiful. The house was perched on the top of one of the highest mountains in the county. From our backyard, we could see the mountain lines of West Virginia. KC's job seemed to be going well, we had family, and started going back to church. Three months later, KC got hurt at work. Everything fell apart. He had to take a whole month off from work. Bills piled up. Stress mounted. Family tension rose. He went back to work, only to find out he was getting squeezed out of his position. We couldn't stay any longer, so over night, again, we moved back to Michigan. This time to his parents house.
It took us several months to get on our feet and find a place of our own.....Do you see the pattern? Over the next year KC and my relationship grew beyond my belief. I had never experienced a love so deep and true. Sure we had our problems, I wont lie and tell a fairytale story. We fought, and even thought about taking time off a couple times. But with each struggle, we grew closer; with each trial, we learned to communicate; with each hard time, we worked things out.
Two years ago this coming April, we bought a house together. I had finally planted roots!!! This gypsy found a place to call home. I thought my life of running was over, and I could finally settle and start looking into our future. At least, that was before I watched this movie. Towards the end, the mother was talking to her daughter, trying to help her see why they couldn't move again. She told her that each time you run from your problems, in essence you are running away from yourself.
I looked back over the last few years. Even when I wasn't physically running from my problems, I was still running from me at times. Each time we started to experience struggles in our home-schooling life, I thought of giving up and putting the kids into public school. Each time the bills started piling up, I thought of giving up being home with my kids, and returning to work. Each time KC and I had hard times, I thought of throwing in the towel. Sure I never acted on these, but sometimes it got pretty close.
Over the last few months, things have gotten really tough in a lot of areas. I started working, because I really didn't want to loose the house and it was our only option. I also went back to school. I'm taking all my classes online, so its not as big of a time investment as if I were going to a brick-and-mortar school. And, as I've already noted here, my family has been transitioning to the un-schooling way of life. I say things have gotten tough, but really they have been going rather smoothly. As with any transition, there are up times, as well as down times; I just tend to focus on the down times.
Last week, before I watched the movie, I was in the middle of a really down time. The kids had been bouncing off the walls for days, they had no focus and would not follow direction to save their lives. KC was out of the house working more than usual, and I was swamped with work and school. I was done! This un-schooling obviously wasn't working, my kids were drifting farther and farther away from me, and my sanity was going with them. I emailed my mom with my depression, and asked her if I was doing the right thing. If I should stick this all out and continue on the same path, or if I should re-evaluate and change directions again. Usually mom is supportive of the later. Remember our gypsy roots? But this time she responded with, "If you can find a place in the Bible where it says this life will be easy, show it to me, cuz I haven't found it yet." Well, of course, there is no such scripture. In all actuality you will find the exact opposite. A funny thing about this part of the story, is the day before this I had a bible study, in which we discussed the same concept. We talked about the story Jesus told his disciples about the wide road and the narrow road. We discussed the fact that the wide road is easy to find, and easy to travel, but it only leads to destruction. While the narrow road is cramped and often has many hills and rocks to climb, but it leads to salvation. The narrow road, while being the right road, is the harder one to follow.
I find it both funny and fascinating to see how God works. Little by little, this Gypsy's roots are growing deeper and deeper. Maybe one day I will look down at myself and see something besides a gypsy. What would that be?