Integrated Living | Connected Families

Many people want to own a second home where they can get away from it all. Me? I just want to live in one house. I want to sleep in my house, cook in my house, eat in my house, and work in my house (or in the land surrounding it). I want my husband working there too and my kids living close enough that my grandkids can come see Grama Sue anytime they want. That’s my dream. We were very close to living this dream at one time. It was challenging in every way, but if I could go back to it, I would in a heartbeat.

Many years ago, when I first started teaching kids other than my own, my husband thought I needed to build a little building to house my “school” so I could “go to work”. I steadfastly resisted. I liked being able to help a child with their math,  put in a load of laundry, read a book aloud and then work on lunch while the kids helped each other with their spelling drills. I love having an integrated life. Years later, when we decided it was time for Grampa Tom to come home and build an egg and veggie farm, he finally got it. Working where you live creates a sense of wholeness that we as a society have lost. Our society promotes fractured and compartmentalized lifestyles. We go to work, leave our kids at daycare or in schools where they are separated from their siblings and then try to create a sense of family in the little time left over. It’s no wonder we have so many fractured families.

One-hundred and fifty years ago in America, most people lived where they worked and worked where they lived. America was an agricultural/entrepreneurial society with strong families. Most lived and worked on farms, but those who didn’t generally had their living quarters behind or above the family business. Then came the industrial revolution. Successful self-employment takes a lot of managerial skill and is subject to income fluctuation. Factory work promised a steady income without the responsibility of management. The lure of a stable income without the risks inherent in self-employment seemed a no-brainer for most men, so off to the factory they went. But at what cost?

Working with other people creates relationships in a way that nothing else does. In order to work with other people, you have to communicate, you have to get to know them. When you work with someone else, you learn how they think. You learn about their strengths and their weaknesses. You learn to cooperate and to compensate. And you have to forgive! You just can’t develop this type of relationship over a family dinner and 2 hours of TV every night.

Before I started homeschooling, I was pretty sure that if I had to stay home with my kids all day long for too many more years, I would probably kill them. But intentionally working with my kids by teaching them every day opened up a depth of relationship that I never dreamed possible. It didn’t occur to me that the same thing could happen in our marriage. Grampa Tom and I figured that if we ever had to work together all day long 365 days a year, we’d probably end up divorced, but those few short years that we were able to, brought us closer than we ever thought possible. We honestly wish we had made the decision to go into business for ourselves when we were young. If we had, his relationships with our kids would probably be stronger and we would have been established enough that we could have weathered the storm that his triple-by-pass put us through a couple of years ago instead of being forced back into the workforce. The jobs we have now still give us a lot of time to be together, but it’s not the same.

If you homeschool, you already have a leg up over most families in our era, but if you or your spouse are still out there in the workforce, you aren’t experiencing all that God intended for families to experience. Start looking for ways to make income at home or at least ways to make income as a family.  If you can, downsize your home and your stuff so you don’t need as much to live on. Find ways to cut expenses such as cooking from scratch and gardening. Make it a goal for both you, your spouse and your children to work together. Strive for an integrated life!

God Bless You All!

~ Grama Sue