Exchange Survival For Surrender with Clarissa Rosado-Jones

Burnout can look like competence, especially when you’re a mum carrying the mental load, the calendar, the emotions, and everyone’s needs. But what happens when the systems that once kept you afloat start replacing your peace? Clarissa Rosato-Jones joins me to unpack the shift from surviving to living surrendered, and why being “beyond organised” starts with the heart long before it shows up in the home.

Clarissa is a wife, mum of seven, homeschool educator, and faith driven leader who’s lived the pressure of constant doing. We talk about the difference between achievement and alignment, why many women tie their worth to what they can get done, and how that mindset quietly glorifies burnout. We also get practical: five minutes with God before you touch your phone, learning to sit in silence, and setting simple boundaries that calm an overstimulated household so you can respond instead of react.

We then dive into the story behind her move into homeschooling, sparked by a major school redistricting change and guided by prayer, community, and unexpected confirmation. Even if homeschooling isn’t on your radar, the takeaway is bigger: trust God with the parts you’re gripping the tightest, release what you were never meant to carry, and focus on what you’re called to do right now in this season.

Follow Clarissa on Instagram @clarissa.rosadojones

If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend who feels maxed out, and leave a review so more mums can find support and breathe again.

Transcript

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Welcome And Guest Introduction

Mel 0:39

Welcome to Beyond Organised, the podcast that helps you simplify your life and amplify your purpose. I'm Mel Schenker, life coach, speaker, founder of She's Organised, but, more importantly, a wife and mum of four little kids. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, like you're constantly juggling everything but never quite catching up, this is the place for you. Here we go beyond just the tidying up and creating systems. We're talking about real life strategies that bring order to your life, but also we talk about the things beyond the organising, the things that really matter, like your parenting relationships and so much more. So grab your coffee and let's dive in. Welcome back to another episode of Beyond Organised. I'm excited to welcome a new guest today, Clarissa Rosato- Jones.

Clarissa 1:10

Yeah.

Mel 1:11

I will say that correctly. So just to introduce this lady, I've got Clarista here. She is a wife, a mum of seven, homeschool educator, ministry leader, and passionate advocate for families navigating the special needs journey. With a background in accounting, banking, finance, and business leadership, she spent years helping individuals and private foundations steward their finances and plan intentionally for the future. Looking back, Clarissa now sees how God used every season of her professional life to prepare her for the ministry, leadership, and responsibility she carries today. Alongside homeschooling her children, which is amazing, she serves as a women's small group leader and supports families through children's ministry and special needs advocacy. At the heart of everything Clarissa does is her faith in Jesus and her desire to help women trust God in every season of life. Through her story, she encourages mums to embrace intentional living, surrender the chaos to God. Oh, I know all too much about that. And create homes grounded in grace, purpose, and faith. You definitely sound like my kind of woman, Clarissa. Welcome to the show.

Clarissa 2:19

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's uh and it's an honor and privilege to be here. So I'm looking forward to our chat.

Mel 2:26

Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes because I feel like there's so many different things that I want to like seven kids. Oh my goodness, homeschooling them and you're doing all of this. Wow. So let's just start from the start.

From Survival Mode To Surrender

Mel 2:39

What inspired you to do the work that you currently do?

Clarissa 2:43

Yeah, so I think what inspired me most is coming to the realization now in my 30s that like I spent most of my like my life surviving and not actually living surrendered. I had, yeah, I started my life really young. I had my first child at 18, and then I was a single mom. And then I met my husband at 21, and then we got married. By 23, we were married, and then we just started our life. We we are. My husband actually, his birthday was this past weekend. He just turned 37. I'm 33. Yeah, we are very young. Most people, most of our friends are not our age because, well, um, you don't really know a lot of people who are in their 30s, married a decade with 10 with seven kids.

Mel 3:33

It's amazing. It's I think that's really respectable because it's not often you come across young people that know what they want in life as well. Even if they don't know exactly, they just know that they want to settle down, have a big family, all of that. And I mean, at 33, good on you. And I'm 37, so I'm your husband's age. But yeah, that's that's incredible. So I I have a lot of respect. And at such a young age, and to be doing all of these things as well. I'm just, my mind is blowing. Sorry, continue your story.

Clarissa 4:06

No, no, it's okay. Thank you so much. That's those are beautiful compliments. My, I think you said something important that to be living and doing it intentionally, to be able to say that like this, we want a big family and to be married this long, or this year'll be 10 years for us. And so it wasn't 10 years walking in the park. It's been 10 years of intentionally getting up and saying yes every single day. Even when we don't like each other very much, even when we are the kids, are there was a lot of um I I had never experienced postpartum until the pandemic when I had Liliana, who's now six, I had her April 2020. And so, yeah, prior to that, we had already had children. She was our fifth one. And and postpartum hit me so hard. And I remember saying to my husband, like, even in this, like, even in this situation right now, like God is still good and our marriage is still intentional and our lives have purpose. Like, we're not gonna just abandon it because our situation has changed, because we're feeling our feelings are more heightened than they normally would be. And so we're, you know, we're not gonna get into this habit of making just unhealthy decisions and choices to respond to the situations we're in and then lose sight of where we're trying to go in life.

Mel 5:26

Yeah, God is above all of it. And I can relate a bit more to you feeling that way because I had my third towards the end of the pandemic. So she was born at the start of 2022. And for me to be able to even go to hospital, because I needed a cesarean because I'd had two prior, so I needed a cesarean for her. For me to be able to go to the hospital, have the doctor, all of that, I had to be vaccinated. And I am not against vaccinations full stop. I think they can be great, particularly the ones that have been tried and tested for decades. But I was very nervous with a new one that hadn't been tested yet. And here in Australia, they hadn't even had babies born yet from mothers that had been vaccinated. So we didn't know, we didn't know what was gonna happen. And there was fear to begin with, because I just didn't know what I was putting in me and how it was gonna affect her or me. But I wasn't so much worried about me, but more always her, because they hadn't had babies born yet with it in the system. But the Lord very quickly arrested me on that and put that fear aside. And he said, I've got a plan for you, I've got a plan for her. And no vaccination or anything like that is gonna stop the plans I have for you and the plans I have for her. So, you know, you're protected, it's okay. And so I took the vaccination, did all that because I needed to. I needed to go to the hospital anyway. I didn't have much choice, but then it's almost like God gave me back the choice to not feel like I'm cornered and out of here and actually being intentional again. So, this whole intentional journey that you're even talking about, this has been like a really long road for me to get to this point of like intentionally living every day in every decision, what I'm doing, being purposeful, because it's so much bigger than the immediate situation in front of me. And so I I actually want to hear more about you and your story in that because I know you help people, particularly through your ministry and your leadership and all of that, in living more intentionally and purposeful. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Alignment Beats Achievement For Mums

Mel 7:53

Yeah, no, of course. So I think that so I'm getting ready to start another round of like small groups. And so I think that the best way to just kind of summarize how I'm helping other moms and how I'm helping just other women in general is that recognizing that alignment and achievement are two completely different things. And oftentimes we lose, especially moms, we lose ourselves in this laundry list of things that we need to do. And we start to, you know, create our worth and create our value around how much we can get accomplished in a day. And it took me a long time. I'm my oldest is gonna be 15 this year. And so up until 2024, I had been operating just in this space of not even recognizing that it was just unhealthy because it took me having to, I remember saying a prayer in 2024. I was like maxed. I was completely overwhelmed. Completely just my I had seven kids. My kids were still in the in the public school system at that point. We actually withdrew them last year to start homeschooling. We had seven kids in five different schools, and my husband was working two jobs, and then I was working a full-time job, and I was getting up at 4:30 in the morning every day to get all of the kids out the house by 7:30. And then we were doing all the pickup rounds started at 2:30, and then we had dance, we had volleyball, we had Girl Scouts, we had all these events that we were just we had we were serving in church. And I remember just coming to this place in my life where I just I couldn't do it anymore. I don't blame you. So tired. I was exhausted, and I remember having a breakdown and saying to my husband, like, I've put all of my identity into all of these things that I've put in place. And now that I no longer want to do them because I'm physically exhausted, I have no idea who I am. And so in 2024, I really said, God, I need you to change me. Like, I need you to change the way that I view my identity. I need you to change the way that I am operating. I need to be able to slow down and release the things that are not meant for me to be carrying because my peace doesn't come from the things I can control. My peace comes from trusting you in the middle of everything that you already have sight of. Yeah. And so that's how I'm helping other women now. I'm really just whenever they come into my small group, normally we'll do like we'll pick a book or something, like the first one that we did, we actually used the chosen series. I'm not sure if you've seen. Yes. Love the chosen series. Yes, we actually did the first season and we dissected it together. It was, they actually, the creators of The Chosen had a workbook online that you could like print off and go through it. And so we did it together as a small group and it brought so much healing to our lives to be able to. A lot of people are visual. And so to see almost like scripture come alive for them, it just helped them to better identify with patterns and things in their life that they have not yet released. So that was the first series that we did. And then the second one, we actually studied The Awe of God by John Bevere. And it was really he's great. He's came to my stitch. He's great when he was traveling with St. Also, yeah. Great God. Yeah. So I've actually sat in a conference with Lisa, Lisa Bever. And so I've been beautiful. We it was just so beautiful to do that series. That um, it was it was a book, it was six to eight weeks that we did together as a small group, and it really was just about not being able to live a life without Christ. Yeah.

Clarissa 11:38

And not being able to make decisions without talking to God first. And I think for me that I often lead these small groups, and I don't think anyone ever realizes that when they're gonna do something, likely God is gonna shift them in some way, shape, or form. And so I've been leading these women's groups just because I've, you know, God has called me to leadership. And every single time he shifts something in me. And so I'm I'm very much looking forward to doing another group with another set of ladies that are likely gonna be brand new that I haven't met before. Um, and seeing where God takes that. Because at the end of the day, I think living a surrendered life, and I know this to be true, living a surrendered life is a matter of it, a matter of a heart posture. It's a matter of saying, like, all right, God, who am I? Not not what can I do? Who do you say that I am outside of what I can do? And once you finally get to that place of saying, like, okay, I know who I am, it's so much easier, easier to prioritize the things in life that need to be prioritized. Because not everything needs to have access to us. And once you're confident in who you are, it's easier to release those things that don't need to have access to you. And then I feel like that's genuinely when your capacity grows because you stop trying to steer the ship and you allow God to steer it and you're able to move.

Mel 13:05

Yeah. It you go to a whole other level. Because I I'm loving everything you're saying with this, and it's amazing the grasp you have on it, even just at your age, is incredible. But because I resisted the surrendered life for a long time. Control or the illusion of control had me really gripped. And when I got to the heart of it, understanding the fear driving that, it's like I couldn't completely trust God with my finances because if I leave it to him, we'll be homeless. Like, you know, it's just what do I have to do to bring the money in and my husband? But it's, you know, it's like, oh, I I trust God to heal and to help that person and to do this and that. But when it came to like the finances and that, it's like, nope, nope, I've got this. And so it was just this real tug of war for a long time and getting to the place where it's like my God has had to bring me through of like, yeah, you're doing it on your own, and you're just like scraping by and you're having to borrow money or whatever, just to cover the mortgage each month. Like, you know, are you going to let me handle this? And it's like, but it wasn't it wasn't this being backed into the corner of just like, okay, I've I'll let you handle it because I've got no other choice. It's like, no, I'm I'm fixing my heart here. Like I am completely laying it out, and I don't want to live like this anymore. I don't want to be a slave to money, to men, to, you know, to all of the things that I didn't even realize I was doing. So that surrendered living is absolutely key and critical, and having your identity grounded in who he says you are, not the title you've earned or anything else. It's like these things, it's almost simple enough to say it out loud. And I know there's gonna be people listening going, yeah, yeah, I get it. But until you really, like really completely hand it over to him and let him dictate almost those parts of you until it becomes you, right? Then it's really hard. It is, but there's parts of it that's so easy and so fulfilling and so satisfying too, because you the pressure is no longer on you to have to figure it all out and to be that way because God's got it. So what do you find from your experiences the main thing that holds women back just in living this surrendered life?

Breaking The Habit Of Burnout

Mel 16:13

So if I'm gonna be super transparent, um I think that this just moms women even more now in this generation than before. I think we almost glorify burnout. I think I think that like we I am guilty of it. I remember there was a season in my life where my husband would say, like, honey, sit down. Why don't you just relax? Like, come watch a movie with me. Put your feet up for five minutes. And I would sit down and instantly this thought of like, oh, I hate this feeling of doing nothing. And then he he would just look at me and say, like, you're not doing nothing. You're resting. That's doing something. But I could not do me. I could not for the life of me grasp the concept of rest. And I think it was because I was just in this perpetual cycle of just glorifying burnout. And a lot of that goes back to the fact that my entire identity was built on the things that I could do. And so had really taking a step back, giving myself permission to actually slow down and actually sit down and rest for a few minutes. And one practical thing I started doing every morning before I even touched my phone, before I grabbed my slippers, before I did anything, even took a sip of water, like the first thing I would do was just talk to God, even just for five minutes. Because I started realizing that typically the first thing I hear in the morning will shape my entire day. So if I'm getting off the bed and the first thing I hear I'm hearing is the baby crying, asking for a baba, or my husband telling me what he has planned for the day, I instantly like go into like, okay, I gotta do this, this, this, this, this, this action mode. So giving myself permission to just slow down and take five minutes to lay in the bed and just talk to God. And just I think too, like most women don't know how to sit in silence. We're constantly being bombarded by just noise, whether it's husband noise or kid noise or work noise or social media noise, like there is noise coming at us all day long. And so one practical thing I've done is even like at nighttime, my kids know now, we've set this standard in the house that like when mommy closes her room door, I need quiet. When my door is open, you have access to me. You can come and talk to me. You can ask me whatever it is you need to ask me. If you need me to wrap your hair up at night, because my my kids are mixed. I'm Puerto Rican, my husband's black, so their hair looks somewhere between this. And then my daughter, if she just goes to bed like this, she'll wake up with her hair like completely flat to earn it. A bit more maintenance. I get that. So I even like even if it's it's putting on your hair wrap, you have full access to me until my room door closes. Once my room door closes, they're learning now to respect my quiet time. Yeah. Because going to bed overstimulated and waking up over-stimulated just leaves you in this constant space of survival. And you're not able to tap into surrender because you're just truthfully exhausted. Yeah. And so I think, I think definitely, and that's another thing. I fully, fully recognize and believe this to be true about myself and women. And I think we really have to do better about this. Is that if you are, and I, and this is like me, if I'm overstimulated, it's likely because I'm already carrying the weight of tomorrow before God's grace for today has even settled in. Wow.

Clarissa 19:52

And so I really have decided when I get up in the morning, I'm taking my five minutes. And then when I'm done and I decide to go do my devotional, I'm going to ask myself, what is it that God needs me to do in this season? Not in three months, not in six months, not a year from now. What is it that I'm doing right now? What is it he needs me to do right now? Lord, show me like what it is that my focus needs to be on right now, and then help me release the things that are for later on to deal with.

Mel 20:24

Yeah, that is so good. And when we're doing the things that are for right now, he knows the things that need to be set up for the future anyway. So he will get us to do those things if we're intentional about doing what it is we need to do today. He's got the future covered anyway. And I think that's something that can be hard to grasp at times when you're constantly a planner and a forward thinker and always thinking, you know, got the next 20 years planned out of your life. It's very hard to live today in the moment. And that's been a huge, huge learning point and turning point for me over the years. And once you truly experience the rest, like the biblical level of rest that he's asking us to do, not just uh having a sleep, but actually slowing down, being intentional, being in the moment, enjoying our kids and not just being frustrated by them. It's all these things you never want to go back. You just think, oh my goodness. Like, and the day can happen where it's things are out of control. Just completely unplanned stuff comes up. And you can easily slip back into that. But you have to actually be conscious at times and going, oh, hang on a second. Nope. I'm gonna make a decision here and I'm going to choose to listen to the Lord and what he wants me to focus on today and make the priorities and not just react to everything, but be proactive. In what I'm doing. And so sometimes it is a conscious effort, but it becomes less of an effort when you're practicing it day in, day out, and you're living it. And look, it doesn't mean that, you know, all of a sudden your kids are gonna never fight or just be completely angelic and you're never gonna have a stressful day and your bank account's gonna be overflowing with money and everything's just gonna go well all the time. It doesn't necessarily mean that, but there is a capacity that grows in you that you can handle so much more as well, and you're just not stressed out by all those things because you've seen God move and we see it again and again and again that it builds your face to know that He's got me in this season too.

Clarissa 22:49

I think what you said something important about reacting. And I think that's important to highlight for a minute because I'm actually teaching my children this. You know, when things happen and they're arguing and they're fighting, and all of a sudden somebody is upset because somebody did something, I often will ask my children, like, are you reacting to something or are you responding to it? Because those are two very different things. When you're coming and screaming in mommy's face and you want me to fix the problem, let's take a minute, let's pause. What are you reacting to right now? What part of you? I'm and and I think this is so important for moms because we oftentimes will suppress everything about who we are just so that we can get through our laundry list of things. And we end up building this just sense of like resentment or this sense of just feeling completely lost because we never take a second to actually like, did I react to that or did I respond to that? And what part of me, most of the time when people are reacting to something, and I even see this with my kids, most of the time when they're reacting to something and it's this really big expression, it's because there's a part of them that they suppress that doesn't feel heard. And so it was something so

Reacting Versus Responding With Kids

Clarissa 24:03

simple. Like even today, my daughter had one of her um her Girl Scout like flags, and my son wanted to play with the flag as well. So when she put it down, he picked it up and he went running off. It was like the end of the world. Yeah. The level of drama that was coming out of her room. I, you would have thought she fell off the bed, she broke a bone, like something serious had happened. I go into the room in in like high alert because I'm just like, what's going on? And she's like, Carter took my my whatever. And I was like, okay. I initially I was gonna say, Liliana, it's okay, you know, just calm down. But one thing I completely don't like is when my husband tells me to calm down. Yeah, yeah. And I'm in the middle of feeling very unvalidated. Yeah. So I just validated her feelings and I said, okay, help me understand you're reacting really, really big right now. What is it that you really need Carter to hear? And she said, Mommy, well, I don't have a problem with Carter playing with my stuff, but he didn't ask me. I said, Okay. So there's a part of you that has no problem sharing, but you just want to know that the things that are yours are being respected. I can relate to that. I a hundred percent understand that because I myself do not like when I buy myself yogurts for the fridge and then I go open them and they're all gone. Oh my gosh. Insane. If I can feel that as an adult, you as a six-year-old absolutely desire boundaries. You desire respect. And it's a matter of teaching them like, if I react to this and I just scream and cry and almost like can't, she gets to the point where she just has no words because she's so upset. So I have to catch her at the right moment so that she can come down from reacting and be able to express herself and then respond to whatever it is that happened. So I had her walk over to my son and say, you know, Carter, I don't mind if if you you play with my things and I like sharing with you, but can you please ask? And Carter looked at her and he said, I'm sorry, Liliana. And it was so good. It was so simple. But how many times as adults, like, do we just forget to address what's really happening inside? And we just operate from the space of reacting to a situation because we're moms. We're meant to carry. We have this like unrealistic expectation that it's our job to carry the weight of the world, to carry the weight of our family, to carry the weight of our finances, yeah, full mental load. And it and it took me getting to a place where I said, okay, you know what? Actually, God did not tell me to carry all this weight, He only asked me to obey him. So why am I doing this to myself?

Mel 26:54

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have come to a similar conclusion. Um I was probably about your age with the whole mental load thing. And in actually having the discussion with my husband as well, because I was taking on everything, and it's not that he couldn't, he also just didn't want to overstep anything that I had said. So in having that conversation and not like, why are you not doing anything? Blah, blah, blah, because it wasn't like that. But it was more just going, I'm like carrying all these things, and it's just too much. And this is before I even had my force. And so it was just like, I need a bit of help. I need a bit of help here. But I also realized that by me taking on all of these things, I haven't allowed you to be the head of the home, you know, the way that God has actually, you know, instructed it. The way that I believe, anyway, for him to be the head and to be that person in the family. I just had somehow worked my way up there. And he was just kind of responding to whatever I was doing. And so now it's like put that structure back into place where he does carry a lot of the load too different, differently to me. Like I'll still handle, you know, the kids' appointments and if they're sick and all of that kind of stuff. But he will carry a lot more of the the bigger weight of things and actually even just praying and interceding for the family and all that kind of stuff as well, you know, and taking that on together, but him on his own in in some areas too. So it's just yeah, when when you can balance some of these things in a more healthier way, then yeah, as a woman, we're not reacting just from a heightened nervous system. We are actually responding to the way that we want to be responding as mothers and wives and leaders and everything else. You know, we we come from a place of being more grounded and rested rather than, yeah, reacting.

Clarissa 29:05

I 100% agree. I can 100% like relate to what you just shared because when my husband and I met, so we have seven all together, but in our marriage, we had five. And so we both came to our marriage with one, and they're both the same age. They're two weeks apart, so they'll both be 15 at the end of the year. It was like having twins, but we had mine, we had his, and then we had five together that were ours. And so coming into my marriage, I was a single mom. My son at five months old was diagnosed with epilepsy. And by the time he was four years old, he had major brain surgery. I almost lost, yeah, I almost lost him to epilepsy in 2016. And by 2017, he was having emergency brain surgery. So I had been in survival mode since I had him. And I didn't realize like I was hardworking, I had a job, I went to college, I got a degree, I did it all online because I, you know, I had to be a full-time caretaker. And then we started our family. And I hadn't even realized that I was robbing my husband of his leadership role. And I had already, I had already come in independent. And so I think a part of me had to allow myself to release this like narrative that I was feeding myself that I had to keep being independent because that's how I was when he met me.

Mel 30:31

Yeah.

Clarissa 30:31

And finally, and again in 2024, when God just took hold of me and I really just kind of broke down and I just said, Lord, I need you to show me like who I am, not what I can do, but just who do you say that I am? It opened the door for my husband to step into a place of leadership because I unintentionally built my entire identity on accomplishing a laundry list of things every single day. And when I could no longer perform in that way, well, it allowed my husband to finally become the man that God needed him to be because I was accidentally in the way.

Mel 31:11

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness. It sounds like your story and my story are pretty much the same on that.

Clarissa 31:16

Yeah.

Mel 31:17

But isn't it great that we've learned it now and we can help other women as well. But we're in our 30s. We've still got our 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, which no doubt we're gonna continue to learn even more. Yeah. But I think to understand this and have the foundation of this now is great. And look, even if people listening, if you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, and you're finally grasping it now, it's still better now than another five years from now or 10 years from now, or however long. Like today is a good day to learn these things.

When Structure Replaces Real Peace

Mel 31:54

Yeah. I, you know, it's funny. My um, my mother-in-law, she is now in her 60s and she just retired. And she and I have had so many beautiful conversations since her retirement of just rediscovering who she is. And I think that, you know, getting out of that mindset that, like, this is who I am, take it or leave it, like that's such an unhealthy mindset. You're never too old to do the work. Like, we've never, we've never arrived at who it is that God has called us to be. And until God calls us home, there's so much work to be done. Does that mean lose yourself in doing in doing? Absolutely not, because I am a very system-oriented person. I love structure. I love Excel sheets, I love planners. Like if anyone follows my homeschool TikTok page, you're gonna see how absolutely structured I am. And I love it. I love it because it just when you have so many kids that you're homeschooling, it keeps flow and it allows me to meet everybody's needs. But that structure is supposed to serve my peace. It's not supposed to replace it. And so if I am allowing structure to replace my piece, that means that I'm not operating from who I am. I'm operating from what I can do. And it has taken me a long time to get to that place of recognizing that, you know what? My peace is the priority. And it started off with simple things like not loading the dishwasher at night, like intentionally leaving it there. Because I was like, okay, I gotta do the dishes, I gotta mop the floor, I gotta sweep, I gotta fold this person's laundry, I have to prepare lunches for tomorrow's. It started with, and now don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you to just to give up on cleaning your house and just give up on like you're absolutely not. You should do the things that make you feel good. I also believe that if you're looking at too much, you're thinking too much and you can't focus. What I'm saying is those little tiny things that you have told yourself that you absolutely have to do, what will it do to you if you can't do those things? Because if you completely have a mental breakdown or lose sight of yourself because the dishwasher didn't get loaded, then you're operating from what you can do and not from who you are. And it really took me having to take a step back and say, okay, if I don't do that right now, what is it gonna do to me? If it shakes my peace, it's because this is not real peace. This is a false sense of security. My goodness, that is that's some nuggets right there. Now, before we wrap up, I just want to really quickly hear the moment when you decided to pull the kids out of the five different schools, because that blew my mind when you said that, and decided to homeschool them. I want to hear what happened in that transition.

The Prayer Led Homeschooling Pivot

Mel 34:53

So it was actually a series of things that happened leading up to that. So when I asked God to, when I had that breakdown in 2024, it was actually June of 20. So we're coming on two years now. So it was June of 2024, and I just was falling apart. And I said to uh my husband, I just, I, I need to just go be alone with God. Like I I think my husband also didn't know how to respond to what was happening within me because he had gotten so used to me suppressing everything. And so for him, he was like, he was like, I don't know what, I don't know how to handle this. And all I could really say to him was, just please pray for me. Just pray for me, cover me because I truthfully, truthfully believe in my heart that being organized and being beyond organized starts with a spiritual shift before it ever starts with a physical shift. Amen. Yeah. I think that how that happened for me was I had a breakdown. I asked God to change me. And then slowly everything around me started shifting. So we live in, we live in a fairly decent area, but we had always had our children redistricted to a school on the other side of town. Because while we live in a decent area, like two streets away from us is a very not decent area. And so we knew that if we kept our kids in their like community school, they were gonna be exposed to just mindsets and behaviors that like we just were, they didn't align with how we were raising our family. And so we chose to sign the waivers and have our kids placed on the other side of town. And even if they didn't provide transportation, I was willing to bust them every morning or take them to the YMCA, do just what we needed to do to make sure that our kids were in an environment that made more sense with who we were. And they sent me a letter in the mail and let me know that they were pulling my kids out of their district, that they were pulling the kids out of their school and putting them in their district school because our town had done this entire redistricting and there was literally nothing I could do about it. I had gone to the, I went to the mayor, I went to the board of education. My husband works in education. I went to his boss. I went to so he works in the board of ed for our town. And there was nothing, not even for employees. They were not willing to. Like I didn't think about the kids and the friendships that they've made or anything.

Clarissa 37:20

Like my daughter was already in fifth grade. And so she was a year from graduating from her school and then going to middle school. And so the kids were having a hard time. And obviously, we would talk about it in private because we never want to sow seeds of just fear into them. But my husband and I were genuinely just like fearful about what was gonna happen with our children in this school. This school had statistically been known for a lot of behavioral issues, and we just were not in agreement. So we I went heavy into prayer and homeschooling wasn't even on my like radar. I started looking at all like kinds of MAC schools in our area. I started looking to have them. I even thought, like, my mom moves the town over. I called my mom and I was like, Mom, I need to borrow your address. And she was like, Are you okay? I said, My kids are going to school in your town. And she's like, please help me understand how you're gonna do that. And I was like, I am absolutely. Yes, it is. Yeah, it is.

Mel 38:21

It was probably a bit different in Australia versus in the US, but from what I've seen on TV in the US, I think it's illegal.

Clarissa 38:29

It's absolutely illegal. But I and and that's another thing. You don't realize when you're operating in survival mode that you will go to such extremes that you will put yourself in in actual harm's way. And when you think about that from a spiritual lens, it's like you're putting when you when you switch from surrender to survival, you're now exposing yourself. You're trying to rules the enemy. It's the enemy. You're willing to open doors that should not be opened because you're trying to take back control. Yeah. And so my mom's advice to me was sweetheart, did you even pray on it? And you know, sometimes the most basic things that we should know to do, we lose sight of them when we get hijacked by our emotions. Yeah. And that's exactly what was happening. I was, I had already lost sight of who I was, and I was operating from a space of just hijacked feelings. And I, it was then this started happening. And I, my husband, my mom's conversation with me was, honey, go pray about it. And I was like, You're right. You know what? I'm absolutely going crazy right now because the reason I fell apart is because I'm not actually operating in who God called me to be. And so I ended up going to my son's godmother's house and she she invited me over for coffee randomly. And she's like, hey, come over for coffee and biscottis. Like, come and have something sweet. Yes. And I was like, sure. And so my husband stayed with the kids. We went over and she said to me, She's like, I have a friend on my social media who homeschools. You should have coffee with her. And I just looked at her and I was like, I have to work. How am I gonna do that? Like, how am I gonna homeschool my kids? I have, I have to provide financially. And she's like, Well, don't you work from home? And I was like, Well, yeah. And I started thinking about it. I was like, all right, you know what? What is coffee? Let's just go get some coffee. So she scheduled a date for me and her to go have lunch with her friend. And that was that was the changer for me. Hearing her say to me, like, homeschooling is not just bringing your kids home and teaching them at home. She's like, homeschooling is being able to customize your life and be able to customize what your children are exposed to, how you're navigating emotions. And she started speaking to the parts of me that weren't healed.

Mel 40:44

Wow.

Clarissa 40:45

And so from that moment on, I said, okay, I started praying on homeschooling. And I said, All right, God, if this is the path that you have for me and my children, I need you to make it evidently clear to me. I need to silence all these noises in my head. I don't want to make a decision or call the board of ed or do anything until I know it's from you. And shortly thereafter, I started running into homeschool families in Target, everywhere, homeschool everywhere. In Starbucks, in Target, at Walmart, all of a sudden, this entire community of people that could have very well been around me the entire time just started having conversations with me. And I was noticing more kids out during the day. And it's so funny that when you're blinded by your dysfunction, you're unable to see something that might very well be there the entire time. Yeah. And so I just said, oh, okay. I started having conversations with other moms. And then I joined some Facebook groups. And then finally, what really, what really kind of locked it in for us, our daughter. So the girls had did four months in this new school. And our daughter, and let me tell you, dropping them off in the morning was hard. Like when I tell you there were kids outside, like 10-year-olds with lash extensions on. And yeah, and like wearing crop top shirts. And school was just a babysitting ground, like in this school. And I'm not judging anybody's children or anybody's lifestyle. It just didn't make sense with mine. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I fully believe that when God gives you children, He, there's an assignment there to steward them well. And so when I when I started talking to all these other homeschool parents, and they were talking about being able to customize their life and customizing the things that their children were or were not exposed to, that spoke hard for me because I was currently in this situation of having my kids in a place where I it wasn't an agreement. My daughter came home one day and just broke down crying. And I said to her, she's seven. And I said, you know, what's going on, sweetheart? Why are you so sad? And she said, today on the playground, somebody had milk spilled over their head. I said, What? And she said, Yeah. She's like, and I wanted to help them. The teacher said that it didn't have anything to do with me. So I sat in the corner and I just prayed for them. But my friend was really sad. And my seven-year-old, yeah, my seven-year-old is one that I just know it's I've recognized this in her personality. She's very empathetic and she feels what people feel. She would have felt that too. She felt that. And I said to my husband, I'm like, I want to be able to teach my children how to be empathetic for people and meet them where they are because it's a choice that they make, not because it was forced on them. Yeah. And so that was the tipping point for me. And I just said, All right, honey, they're coming out. And he said, Do you know what you're doing? And I said, No, but this is my season. God does, literally, God does. And so I said, This is my season of letting God steer the ship and I'm not taking it back. Like he Put this on my lap. I've got the confirmation in Starbucks, Target, Walmart, here, there, and everywhere.

Mel 44:06

Yeah.

Clarissa 44:06

I said, I'm not going to keep waiting for it to feel right because feelings are very fleeting and they come and they go. And if I'm going to constantly be operating in a space of does it feel right or am I ready? Am I truly surrendering to Christ? Am I truly believing that he is the author and the perfecter and the leader of my life and that his will is greater than mine? Do I because being a disciple of Christ is dying to yourself. So if I keep waiting until I'm ready, until it feels right, am I truthfully dying to myself? Am I truthfully picking up my cross and following Christ? Or am I making my very beautifully color-coordinated spreadsheets look good by throwing Christ on them? Yeah. Oh my goodness. So that was really it for us. And um, my husband's been super supportive. You know, this homeschooling for me, I feel like God didn't just want to organize my schedule. He really needed to heal my soul. And he's often speaking to me through my kids, like through random conversations with my kids that'll turn into like a healing moment for me. And my children have absolutely no idea because they are kids and they think everything is just marvelous and rainbows and unicorns and everything is as bright as the sun, but they don't realize that. And a part of me, I grew up really fast. So being home with my kids, it's restored joy and laughter and almost like healing the little girl in me that just grew up too fast.

Mel 45:45

Yeah. You get to sort of have a second childhood almost by living with your children growing up in their childhood. It's that's really precious. Oh yeah. I feel like this conversation could go on for hours.

Clarissa 46:00

I tried, I tried so hard.

Discerning God’s Voice And Next Steps

Mel 46:03

No, it's it's just so full of gold. There was so much in what you were saying that I completely agree with, but I'm also mesmerized by, and I'm sure people that have listened to this a lot, I've had quite a number of homeschooling mums on here, unintentionally, but it's just happened to be that way, and I I can't help but feel like God's kind of like highlighting that as a possibility for me, and I'm just I'm not ready. I'm not ready because my kids go to a good Christian school, but it is costing a lot. Not that I'm driven completely by the finances and everything, but I just I wonder at times if maybe it's meant to be different. So, you know, that's that's something I'm praying on, but we'll see. Because my daughter, she's about to start school next year, and I want her to uh anyway, anyway, that's all right.

Clarissa 46:56

Listen, I I went so it's so funny you're saying that because I went to a Christian school and my husband went to public school. We came from two very different backgrounds, but we're still in the same page. And it wasn't one way was better than the other. I think that having faith is a lifestyle, not a culture. And you have to actively choose to surrender your life to Christ. You have to actively seek his guidance. And I think that whether he went to public school and I went to private school, that those are choices that we had to make. And, you know, I had an excellent, I graduated 4.0. Um, I was like number two in my class. I had a full scholarship to go to like Florida Atlantic University. And then my God had other plans for my life. And I looked at my kids now and I said, Yeah, God had other plans for my life. And I look at my my life now, and I'm just like, you know, I could send my kids to a private school, and I'm not against private schooling. Or the thing is too, I've had to tell people like, I'm not against teachers, I'm not against like learning. I just it's the system that doesn't.

Mel 48:15

And then this season too. Yeah, I know, and I get it. It's like, I mean, I love the school that the kids are at. I don't have a problem with it or anything like that. It's more like, what is God asking me to do? And I'm still just not completely clear on that. Because I just thought, oh yeah, they're gonna go to that school and they can go all the way through till they graduate, like to the end. I just don't know if that I just don't know if that's how it's going to go now. But that's a yeah, it's okay. I don't feel like I need to make a decision right now. But uh I I guess maybe he's uh priming my heart for possible change down the track.

Clarissa 48:57

So with that being said, I will absolutely be covering you in prayer. And one and it kind of just is, I guess the final thing I have to say is that living a surrendered life is just that. It's not having everything figured out, it is staying soft enough to God's voice to allow him to work it out for you.

Mel 49:18

Yeah.

Clarissa 49:18

Yep. Amen. It'll come together.

Mel 49:24

Well, so if anyone listening wants to get in touch with you, wants to find you online, where's the best place to find you?

Clarissa 49:34

So the best place to find me is on my Instagram page, which is super easy. Just my full name, Clarissa Rosado- Jones. I do really well. Like you you and I chatted on on Instagram. My email is up there, but my email's also super congested with just a lot of like stuff that I don't really want to look at. So I often tell people just send me a message on Instagram and I will happily respond. And if it's meant for us to be in connection, I will often give out my phone number. But for now, just Instagram is the best place to find me. And then on Instagram, you can find all my social media pages, like my Facebook, my TikTok, all that. But like Instagram is my main hub. Central. Yep. Easy.

Mel 50:14

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and just sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Clarissa 50:21

Oh, thank you so much for having me. And I, like I said, I will be praying for you for anybody watching this. I hope that you can take these nuggets and really just apply them to life. I think we often make it harder than it actually is. And so just give yourself permission to just slow down and hear God and release the things that are just not meant for you to carry. Um, and that that'll get you going in the right path. So thank you for having me, Mel. It was so great to be here. And um hopefully we get to do this again. Definitely.

Mel 50:53

If you like this episode, don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want to continue the conversation, you can connect with me on Instagram @shes.organised or for some free resources, head over to beyondorganised.com/toolkit. Remember, organising is a tool to live the purposeful life beyond it. See you next time.