right kind of new

     I had to salvage my homeschool, which was about to dissolve.  I was about the throw in the towel and enroll my kids in the local school.  There is no real community for home schoolers here, despite all the wonderful home schooling families!  So. . .
     I have been making efforts every day to actually create community--family bonds--out of thin air.  So many families feel they are on the periphery--only to find out, there is no center to be on the periphery of!
     This week, I began a new homeschool association.  I discussed it with many parents.  After creating it on paper, I made this offer to the existing homeschool association: I could begin the group within the framework of their organization.  This alternative is the harder path.  But it is the way of unity and integration, and I felt God's leading that way.  I feel carried along as though on a cloud, through the shoals and maelstroms, and have been amazed at the ease with which it has all happened.  They accepted my offer, which means that I will be on the executive committee of the existing association and execute my plans, effective this summer.  This could not have happened, at least not in such a peaceful and stress-free way, except through prayer.  New mothers' efforts integrating with the established ways of older, veteran mothers can be such a challenge.  Miracles abound.
     So now I am about to launch the initiative.  The kickoff event is a May Crowning, sometime in May.  Oh my goodness!  I am amazed this is all happening!
 
     A lot that is new.  And yet it is new within the old.  It is not breaking and starting over.  It is taking what feels like it has died, and breathing all your fresh new life (that you did not think you had until you just starting breathing with your fingers crossed and a prayer) into it.  Only to find out it had not really died, it just needed rejuvenation.  It needed a fresh new spirit.  The final product is thus more mature, benefitting from the rich history that you have retained.  The final product is also free of the pride that creeps in when you start over--the tacit presumption that you can do better.  In the end, you have an entity which is richer and wiser and stronger than if you had started over apart from the old, seemingly dead structure.  For me, this is the right kind of new.