When Mother is chronically ill…

I’m so sorry you’ve been dealing with fibromyalgia. I’ve spent some years dealing with chronic pain and illness, and I understand how hard it can be, at least to some degree. One thing that encouraged me during that time was the fact that I could see such compassion it was building in my children; I know the Lord uses these times in our lives and is using it in yours; take heart.

Some things that helped us:

– using something with a schedule and trying to stick with it.

– some fun things we can do together, like music study on Monday (read a tad of a biography and listen to a composer), poet-tea on Tuesday, SCM picture study on Wednesday. Each of these takes about 15 minutes but adds a lot of togetherness and fun to our week.

– games; my olders love the treat of getting to play a game during schooltime with a younger sibling. We’ve stocked up on lots of games over the years, so many are educational (shhhh, don’t tell them!).

– a read aloud for the family. For some time, I only had one chair I could comfortably sit in and I’d sit in that chair with the kids gathered around and read a bit of some book aloud every day – we still do this but thankfully I can sit on the couch with them now! It might be a historical fiction, a heroes of the faith sort of story, or a classic, and again, only for about 15-20 minutes a day. At night, dad reads another at bedtime. It’s been fun to see how the different ages all still enjoy a good story.

About involving the older with the youngers, I’ve noticed as time goes on that my 14-year-old seems to have an interest in teaching, so I’ve been asking him to do things like show the kids how to look at their nature findings under the microscope. He took it upon themselves to teach them how to make slides and they spent an hour making and looking at them. I was so blessed to see this, and realize I need to call upon this interest/gifting of his more often!

I don’t know if this is any help, but I wish you the best!