While I am certainly no stranger to the blogging world, this is my first official post of a completely fresh, flawless (for about 2 seconds), and brand-new blog. Why the new blog? Why the blog name “To Do One Thing Well”? Well, dear reader. I shall tell you without further deliberation.

Nearly one year ago, my very tall husband and I along with our five wild children moved 2,000 miles from our home in southeastern Wisconsin to Yakima, Washington for my husband’s new job. The first six months felt like a long, tiring, yet fun and different vacation. And then, I hit the wall of “Oh, nuts. I live here now.” It has easily been the most difficult and painful year of my entire life with many, many watershed moments and wake-up calls. So many reasons why we thought we were moving out here- better hours for my husband, better life/work balance- well, nothing has quite turned out the way we were told it would be. We house-hunted like mad. And…nothing. Just nothing. After months of wrestling with God, I have come to a place of (mostly) peace. I don’t know what the future holds, but I no longer struggle with why God brought us here. I now know that if we had not come to the literal deserts of central Washington, we never would have left our comfort zone, our happy distractions, our tidy lives. God stripped all of these things away and said,”I love you guys. Let’s get to work.” He has pressed hard into my soul this year, and I have finally hit the wall and am now making the turn. After this past year, I just could not
write in my old blog. I tried many times, but it no longer felt like it was mine, and let’s be honest- I am not the same person I was one year ago. None of us are.  Hence this new blog. Not only to document the start of something new, but to document with greater intentionality our homeschooling journey. Homeschooling has been one of my greatest struggles this year. It has mostly been one child (we all have that one child; yes?) but still. It has been a most intense time of soul-searching and “why exactly am I doing this??”, but I have come to the conclusion that in my heart, I really, really, love and desire to homeschool. I don’t want to quit. I know God has called me to do this, and He has brought me through this time of intense soul-searching and re-evaluating everything in my life. As a mother of five young children- ages 8, 6, 4, 2, and 17 months- it is rare and extremely challenging to accomplish a tremendous amount in any given day. Having a large family has been, um, extremely REFINING for my type-A personality. Before I had kids (and even in the early days of having only 2), I was a total neat freak, and I still struggle with the delicate balance of learning to care for a home together as a family versus “Clean this up. You are not doing anything else until this gets cleaned up!” But God gently reminded me of 1 Corinthians 13, and I slowly began to realize that I can do all of these great things and clean like a crazy woman, but if I’m being a big meanie and the kids are bearing the brunt of my frustration, well, that doesn’t count for much, does it? If all I manage to accomplish in any given day is to love my children well and show them how to love others well, I think that counts for a great deal more than a Pinterest-perfect house. To do one thing well- Love. That’s what it really comes down to. It has become my new life manifesto, and may God grant me the grace to carry it out.

I don’t know what the future holds for us. We were extremely fortunate to find a wonderful rental home, and that is where we are right now, and it’s looking as though that is where we will be for a while. I am perfectly okay with this. I will continue to share our journey and adventures here, and I hope that I can encourage those who read. Let us begin anew.