Finishing Strong

We have 6 more days left in this school year and as we're wrapping up, I, perhaps like you, have a big desire to finish strong. As I've thought over the past few days what that means for us, finishing strong is taking a different form than I originally thought that finishing strong would mean.

My initial thoughts landed along lines like these:

"Before the end of the year I really want to get to the end of our math curriculum."

"I really want to wrap up this unit. No loose strings!"

"I want to end the year somehow feeling like the kids learned a lot and, going into the summer, are all filled up with the various kinds of school-like stimulation I know they want and need."

Etc., etc.

But the more the idea of finishing strong has stirred inside my mind, the more I'm finding that, for me, finishing strong is less about the doing... and all about the being.

What I really want my kids to feel at the end of this school year is that they are known... and that they are loved. Can that happen while running around, trying to pack in the remaining pieces of our curriculum before the end-of-the-year school bell rings? Perhaps in some families. But not for me.

Maybe like you, I can only focus on so much. They say that women are natural multi-taskers. Not me! The less I have on my radar, the better chance there is of my doing something well. So for the next week, I'm actually paring down what the kids and I are doing, and instead of cramming the last pages of our various curriculum in to these next several days, I'm playing on the floor. I'm pulling out the legos, I'm grabbing our wooden blocks. I'm hanging out with my daughter at the piano and playing police and Rescue Bots and jumping on the trampoline. We are reading our Bibles together, and taking the time to talk about what stood out. We're pausing, we're thinking, we're living together inside of unplanned moments and experiencing our hours without a single academic expectation.

And all the while, I'm looking in their eyes. I'm studying their smiles. I'm exploring their expressions and delighting in their laughter. Which is different than letting our school year peter out. It's not about becoming lazy. Admittedly, amid my aspirations to finish the school year strong, there's a part of me with senioritis. "Ahhh... we're near the end. Let's just coast because who cares what else, at this point, we get done?"

The truth, you more than likely know, is that getting down among our kids, existing at their height, imagining at their age and playing along with their often well-worn jokes and hobbies and favorite games, is often a whole lot more exhausting than pushing forward in school.

But I want my kids to know, if nothing else over these next several days, that I see them. That I know them. That I want to know them more. And that, no matter what, they are right now, they are always, loved.

Of course this is my desire for them every day. But for now, and for me, this is what it means to finish strong.