Sarah Mackenzie (00:01):
Hello, hello, Sarah Mackenzie here. I’ve got a little bonus episode for you today. I’m kind of sliding unexpectedly into your earbuds. Most of the read aloud revival team is offline right now enjoying holidays with their families. And I just wanted to pop in here for two reasons. One, because we did Jolabokaflod as a family, it did not go as expected. And if you ever find yourself imagining that other families are doing things better than you are or you see a picture on Instagram or something and you go, man, I just don’t have my act together, I just want you to know how my Jolabokaflod went down , I think it might make you feel better. Um, and then also I have a special invitation for you in 2023. One of my main commitments, and I’ll get get into this some more in a minute, but is to really fall in love with my life as it is my homeschooling life as it is my very ordinary homeschooling life.
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And I wanna invite you to do that as well. We have given my coaching program The Circle with Sarah, which is the r e r Premium Homeschool Coaching Program for mamas, uh, an a major upgrade in the coming year. And I’m gonna tell you all about it. So those are the two things we’re going to tackle. The how Jolabokaflod really went down and a little invitation and a preview, in fact, um, of what Circle of Sarah’s gonna look like in this episode. This is just a little fun surprise in your earbuds this week. Okay, I’m gonna cue up the music. Here we go.
(01:37):
I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas. Maybe you were even able to pull off a Jolabokaflod or maybe you’re about to a read aloud Revival listener Elizabeth Viggiano wrote in after the latest episode all about Jolabokaflod. Her family was posted to Iceland for a few years and she wrote Every house really does receive a big catalog in early November to order gifts directly from the publishers. And on Christmas Eve you have a big family dinner at Grandma’s Exchange gifts, mostly books and read into the wee hours of the night. In years past, a particularly special gift was also a candle, so you could be in charge of your own reading time , if I gave my twins a candle, we would be in charge of a visit from the fire station. I’m pretty sure . She also said they pronounced it Jolabokaflod.
(02:29):
So there we go. I’m pretty sure I announced it incorrectly through the entire episode because I was calling it Yala Boca Flood. So anyway, , either way, I’ll tell you our own Jolabokaflod did not go down exactly as I’d hoped at my house. Um, first of all, it took some serious calendar gymnastics to get all eight of us to be home on an evening at the same time. This happens when your kids become young adults, by the way. So if you have all younger kids, be warned this is in your future . It is really hard to get everybody at the same time. Um, this is a common lament among me and my friends who have young adult children. Um, and one of my kids, one of my older kids didn’t even wanna be there. He in the end had been invited to play video games with a friend, which I was so irritated by if I’m being honest, because I’d let everybody know when it was happening and I was very excited and they ordered a book for everybody.
(03:21):
Anyway, I insisted he stayed for at least an hour. Um, two of my little kids spilled their hot cocoa all over the carpet. Let’s see what else. Oh, one of the older girls wasn’t really feeling well. So she was a good sport. She came up and, and participated, but I felt like I was kind of torturing her. In the end, she ended up just falling asleep by the fire, which sounds pretty good, but I think she would’ve rather been in her bed. And then, um, one of my nine year old twins crammed so many hot chocolate toppings into his multiple cups of cocoa that before long he wandered off, came back with the I’m sick bowl if you have one of those at your house. Uh, and was clutching his tummy. So , that’s how it went at my house. Of course, I mean I was thinking you’d never know any of this if I just posted a picture.
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I took a, I did take a couple pictures. I’m gonna post them in our show notes so you can see, read a aloud revival.com/bonus 2023. So you can see, because you have to look at the picture and then remember all these things I told you cuz that will remind you that the pictures you see on social media, , pretty much everything you see on Instagram is only telling the pretty part , they all look like they’re enjoying themselves cozy by the fire absorbed in their books. And that did happen a little bit here and there. But you could also figure out which kid did not wanna be there cause he wanted to be playing video games. And um, you might even spot a throw up bowl that was not used by the way, but was feared. It would be used in the pictures , oh well this is the work, right? This is why we’re here to show up and to love one another and to not let imperfection keep us from experiencing the gift of each day and the gift of each other.
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I love this week between Christmas and New Year’s, I get all end of year reflecti during this time. I don’t know if you do, I’m always grabbing my journal and my pen on these days. Um, one of my own primary commitments in 2023 is to fall in love with the life I already have. Not the life I think I should have right after scrolling through social media. I don’t know about you, but I can scroll social for all. I I’m not on social media anymore because of this in fact. But what I would do is I would scroll social for, you know, 60 seconds and see homeschools that look gorgeous like towering stacks of books that other people’s kids have read. And then in another family’s road schooling or travel schooling, somebody else has this thriving backyard homestead or maybe an all natural table scape with beautiful watercolors and nature notebooks and cups of tea.
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Or they’re going on nature hikes or they’re teaching their kids how to knit. Or kids are just learning all manner of things that my kids aren’t learning, right? And this has been 60 seconds. I’ve, I’ve taken all of this in, in 60 seconds and then I put down my phone and I look up at my ordinary life and my ordinary kids, my ordinary house with its very ordinary furniture, crumbs in the corners, the bathroom that’s out of toilet paper, , I think, oh my gosh, I’m doing something wrong. But I want to tell myself the truth about this life I’m living and probably about the very ordinary life you are living too. Um, I’ve been at this homeschooling thing for too long to let myself get lost in idealistic visuals you know of, of some idealistic homeschool. Uh, if you’re new here, you might not know my husband Andrew and I have six kids.
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They’ve all been homeschooled all the way through. Two of them are graduated. They’re both at college, one at Franciscan, university of Steubenville and Ohio, one at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Both of them a long way from home cuz we live in Washington state. our third is graduating this coming spring and he’ll be off to college next year. And then we’ve got three more at home who are 10, nine and nines. Were very much still in the thick of homeschooling. But one of the best things about having graduated a few kids is I know what we failed at, right? Like I know the things we never got to the times I lost my patience. Like just how ordinary most of our days really were. I can remember very well that we pretty much have never fully finished a math book or there were entire things I forgot to teach or that I just didn’t have time to teach.
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Cause there were all these kids and babies for few years. There were so many babies, we had three babies age one and under for a time. Um, and most of our days just didn’t look like what you might think of as a quote unquote good homeschooling day, right? But now I’ve got this perspective of being able to look at those young adults and I go, oh my gosh, it really is all about relationships. , would you look at that? I was pretty sure that was true, but now I know it. You know, like it feels different. So you might know in r e r Premium, I coach homeschooled mamas in what we call circle with Sarah. And until now those have been once a month sessions on Zoom and they’ve been fun. I’ve loved them so much. Those once a month. Uh, zoom sessions are continuing by the way, but we’re giving the whole circle with Sarah program a huge upgrade for the new year.
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Um, I’m adding a weekly podcast and essay every Monday morning beginning mid-January because it just occurs to me that we all need to start our week with a reminder of what’s true and good and right about our homeschools. You know, so we can create more of what we love about our homeschools and less of what we don’t. You are the very best expert on your own homeschool and I am 100% convinced that the Holy Spirit is already giving you everything you need to teach from rest to homeschool with peace and to homeschool these kids in a way that you are proud of that pleases God, right? And that is in a way that you can love that. So you actually love your homeschooling life, even if it doesn’t look like any of those Instagram worthy pictures. , even if it looks very ordinary, even if you are, uh, normal homeschooling day looks a lot like my Yolo Boca Float .
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So this year I wanna fall in love with our ordinary bookish homeschooling lives with these people that we live with just as they are not fixed up, not removed with from all of their weaknesses and character flaws, of which we know them all right? Just as they are these struggles that we have our own weaknesses with all of our flaws. We’ve given this coaching program a big upgrade. And here’s what’s gonna look like every Monday are a r premium members are gonna receive a short reflection in their email inbox that can be read in about five minutes or so. That same reflection is going to be available in a private podcast that you can actually just play right through your own favorite podcast player. So that’s super fabulous. You can kind of think of this as a a drip drip drip of encouragement, uh, every Monday morning, right?
(10:14):
So like you’re gonna tackle new homeschooling week. It’s like a little fresh dose of teaching from rest for your homeschool week, delivered every Monday morning to help you really love that homeschooling life that you’re living. But for now, I just wanted to take a minute and help you end your 2022 with uh, telling yourself the truth with a little call to tell yourself the truth about the homeschooling life you are living. I wanted you to be able to wrap up your 2022 and launch into 2023 knowing that you have everything you need to teach from rest and homeschool with unshakable peace. So without further ado, I’ll play the entire first episode for you. Welcome to circle with Sarah, r a r Premium homeschool coaching where we become the peace filled joyful mamas we’re called to be. I’m your coach, Sarah Mackenzie.
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When I first published Teaching from Rest a Homeschoolers Guide to Unshakable Peace, I harbored this blow key persistent doubt that anyone would want to read it. After all, there was absolutely nothing new in that book. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing earth shattering. In fact, odds are pretty good that if you homeschool your kids and you also love Jesus, you’ve probably heard everything I wrote in that that book before. But it’s interesting because teaching from rest has been out in the world for about eight years. And one of the things I hear most often is some variation of, I read this book every year. Now the book itself is short, it’s a quick read, right? That’s probably part of it. But still for a book that contains no earth shattering genius, what gives, why reread it so regularly? Now I have some theories, of course I do for starters.
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If you are a homeschooling mom, you likely feel that there is more required of you than you have to give. You’re probably pulled in a lot of directions and there is a very good chance that you often find yourself worrying about whether you’re doing the right things or doing enough of the right things. You might even describe your day-to-day life as a kind of survival mode. And that’s why a book like Teaching from Rest impacts us the way it does I think because in the midst of all that slog and bother, it tells us the truth. It clarifies, it helps us see things as they really are. I want to tell you the truth about who you are and the work you are doing in your homeschool. Now over the past few years, circle with Sarah has served as a coaching program for homeschooling moms.
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It’s really an extension and an expansion of the ideas that I first introduced in teaching from rest. None of it is rocket science. None of it is anything you don’t already know deep in your gut. But we all know that knowing is one thing and living the day-to-day life in our homeschool, that’s something else entirely. This work we do in our homes and in our children’s lives, it’s both unique and weighty. The reason it feels consequential is because it is consequential. The potential for the work we do to reverberate through time, through our children’s lives and out into the world, toward everyone they encounter. Every trial they face, every hurdle they cross, every life they touch, it’s breathtaking. It’s a lot of responsibility, which is why we want so desperately to do it well. We feel anxious and restless about whether we’re doing a good enough job in our homeschools cuz we know without a shadow of a doubt it matters.
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It matters a lot. So in the spirit of all of this, the read aloud revival team and I have been talking about how maybe just maybe it might be wise to do this truth telling to ourselves a little more frequently. It might be clarifying to ask ourselves questions that help us remember who we are and what we’re doing a little more often, more often than say once a year when we reread teaching from Rest or once a month even when we meet for a circle with Sarah, live on Zoom. And so that’s what we’re doing here in this new set of weekly reflections. I’m going to tell you the truth. I’ll unpack bits of insight that will help us live the lives we are being called to. Because God truly has called us to this work, to this life, these children, they’re specific needs and strengths and struggles in order to answer his call.
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We need to remind ourselves of what’s true cuz the world is not doing that. Now, my hope is that these short weekly reflections will help you get clear on what you’re doing and why it matters so that you can do like the disciples did on the hillside when Jesus asked them to feed the 5,000, they knew they did not have enough, right? But they brought what they had, a meager basket of loaves and fish and he made it enough. That’s what we’re being asked to do as well, to bring our basket, to let him make our meager. Offering enough circle with Sarah is an invitation to simply remember the truth and to let the Holy Spirit guide you in your daily work as a homeschooling mom. And then only then can we teach from rest. Only then can we experience the peace he promises, the peace that transcends all understanding right here in this very life in which we find ourselves.
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Here’s how Circle with Sarah will work over the coming year. You’ll receive an email first thing every Monday morning in your inbox. You can either read the reflection right there or you can listen to it. That’s what you’re doing right now in this podcast. You’ll have access to the emails and to this exclusive podcast as long as you are a member of R A R Premium. We’ll continue to meet on Zoom on one Friday evening each month for a circle with Sarah live. The team and I will all be together on that zoom and you can bring your questions, your comments about what’s standing out to you in the circle with Sarah Podcast, what you’re struggling with, how it’s showing up in your life. We’ll troubleshoot tricky spots and we’ll coach you through applying principles to find more peace and joy in your homeschool. We’ll do some journaling together because honestly, you don’t need a quote unquote homeschooling expert to tell you what to do.
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The Holy Spirit already lives inside of you. He’s tucked wisdom for how to homeschool your kids inside of you. And by journaling we’ll just be intentional about accessing the wisdom he’s already given us, asking questions, getting quiet for a few minutes to climb into the lap of the Lord and tap into that genius the Holy Spirit gives us. This is a coaching program for you. If you want weekly reminders of the truth that you have indeed been called to a life filled with peace that transcends all understanding. And if you also want help and accountability in applying that truth to your life in a practical, tangible way, we want peace that transcends all understanding. And we want it on a Tuesday morning at 11 o’clock when the whole day is unraveling before our very eyes . Yes, that is what we want. I’m your coach here, but I want you to hear me clearly on this.
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I don’t know the particular hardships you’re working through. I don’t know the specific crosses you bear, but I do know you’re bearing some and some of those crosses feel so heavy you’re not sure you can carry them. I know that God isn’t giving me the grace to be the mother of your children or the leader of your homeschool. He’s only given that grace to you. And along with that grace he gives you absolutely everything you need to follow his call and live out his will. Look, when I’m in the thick and throes of life and everything feels hard, what I need, most of all, it’s a good friend, a good friend to point at what’s good and right and who and true someone I trust to remind me who I am and who’s I am and why I’m doing any of this hard stuff in the first place. So that’s what we’re going to be doing here. I want to be that friend for you. I wanna be that coach for you. You were made for such a time as this, this spouse, these children, this time in history, long before he fashioned you. He chose you and he chose this time and place for you. He knew what you’d struggle with. He knew the obstacles you’d face. He knew your weaknesses, your failings, your fears. Nothing is a surprise to him and still he chose you.
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I’ll be back here in your inbox next week for now. Remember, you’ve got everything you need to teach with unshakeable peace. Peace that transcends all understanding. You were made for such a time as this. I’m praying for you.
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I am really looking forward to delivering reflections just like this one every week in the new year. And we’re gonna be talking about them in our, our r premium community as well. Uh, and get really practical. So there’s gonna be a lot of practical pieces here to help you fall in love with your homeschooling life. You, you probably have heard me say this, I believe the best gift you can give your homeschool is a peaceful content homeschooling mama. And I also believe you can be that peaceful content homeschooling mama right now with your current reality. Your kids, your spouse, your home, no matter what state it’s in your curriculum, you’ve already got, you know, you don’t need to overhaul everything or get the just right curriculum or the just right method. There’s no such thing. God has called you to this work and he equips us for every good work.
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Showering us with the grace we need right when we need it. Not a moment before and not a moment late. So in circle with Sarah, we’re going to listen carefully for his voice. I hope that this episode helps you wrap up your 2022 with Joy, with a little bit of lightness and step tiptoe into 2023 and whatever he has planned for us. And if you’d like more of this, then come join us in re e r premium, um, re e r premium members. I’ll be sending you details for how to get access to the private podcast. Feed this circle with Sarah Private podcast feed so it shows up in your normal podcast player. Those directions will come after the new year. So just keep an eye on your inbox for those. And if you’d like to, uh, join us and this is the kind of encouragement you need every Monday morning in your homeschool for the new year, head to r e r premium.com to join us.
(21:51):
And even if not, we have some fabulous episodes just around the corner for you right here on Read aloud Revival. I’m so excited about our, our next several episodes. So I’ll be back very soon. Our next episode goes up on January 5th, I think. Hang on, I’m looking, I’m opening my calendar as we speak. Yes. And it’s so fabulous. I’m just really excited about this one. Um, we had a lot of fun making this one. It’s about one of the books that I think is the, one of the very best novels ever written for children. Haha, I’m gonna leave you with that. You’ll have to wait till the 50 to hear what it is. that’s it for me today. I’m gonna go find a book and head back to my family. We’ve got very low key plans in place for the new year. I am all here for a quiet kind of new year. I kind of highly doubt that I’ll stay up long enough to see the new year in because I kind of tend to be early to bed these days. But I will be finding my journal and making notes about my coming year. And I hope you have a little bit of time to maybe journal a little bit, read a little bit, sip a little something special, and have a happy new year. I’ll be back soon.
