Want to know the secret to doing it all, teaching it all, and how I’m instilling all the necessary knowledge and crucial laundry tips into each of my homeschoolers before graduation-do-us part?

Have I got a bucket of worms to share!

Ahem… my bag of inspirational homeschool metaphors lacks that certain charm and beauty you might find elsewhere. In short, they are slightly repulsive. Which is precisely why they are memorable.

These revelations are plucked from the real-world experience of raising and homeschooling only boys. A world where specimens of possible wisdom must be spotted in the rough, poked at with a stick, lit on fire, and/or collected for dissection. The memories preserved for mom’s retrospection when the excitement and nausea have worn off.

One year we had an outbreak of bagworms in our cypress trees. These little parasitic caterpillars multiply like fire ants in Texas. Next, each creates a cocoon around itself by shredding the needles off evergreen trees. Within days our trees were covered. Thousands and thousands of evergreen-laced, teardrop-shaped bagworms hung like macabre fruit dripping from our struggling trees.

As we were picking them off and filling coffee cans full, and letting our sons light them on fire or drown them in soapy water I thought…

I looked up at our seven 25-foot tall cypress trees and realized we would never be able to pick off every single bagworm. They were all different sizes, some hanging still, others wriggling disgustingly. Some were so well camouflaged or tiny you’d miss them if not looking closely in the right direction.

And they were multiplying faster than we could keep up.

Likewise, I realized we would never reach the end of the list of things we want to impart to our kids academically, spiritually, morally. Things just keep coming to mind that I want to teach them and discuss with them and pound into their hard heads for personal safety, financial security, faith, career aspirations, future family, health, and integrity.

Every time we reached for another bagworm, 100 more came into view. It seemed an impossible task. Like slapping one mosquito in the fight against malaria. (See? My analogies are infectious. Or maybe just infected from the exhaustion of raising boys.) But to give up was to admit defeat and leave things to chance.

Never! Plus, I was having a little fun. It was cathartic to rip the nasty little parasites from the branches in defense of my trees. Just like when I remember to tell my boys an urgent wisdom or life hack I yanked from my experiences (or from the worries that infested at night lying awake anxious and overthinking).

Okay, we all know this happens many nights. Many nights I toss and turn while mentally listing all the things I still need to tell them, teach them, show them. And new ones keep popping up! They’re wriggling on the branches of my mind and replicating endlessly. I’ll never find the end of the list! AHHH… startles awake in a cold sweat.

FYI, at 3:00 a.m. some things seem more urgent than they truly are in the grand scheme of things. Turns out, my kids haven’t shown any adverse effects from never learning to open a combination lock in under thirty seconds.

The point is not to quit plucking and tossing those worms… err… lessons to our kids as they arise. Keep going. You won’t be able to teach them everything because we parents haven’t learned it all yet either. The lesson is to keep going and learn to learn.

We can rely on God to show us the big juicy worms lessons our kids need from us. And more importantly, if we pay attention, He will guide us to the character and strength we need to model. And as we keep going, despite the seeming impossibility of it all, we will demonstrate how to succeed and to fall short, get back up, dust off, and try again. Relentlessly.