The Struggle and the Blessing of Time
Ray and I were both at my desk working on a project one day when my phone dinged to alert me to a text message. One of the joys of family is having so much shared history that you can make a joke without having to explain a thing. When I heard the ding, I said to Ray, “These are the dings of our lives.” Both of our minds went back to the introduction to the soap opera, “The Days of Our Lives.” We didn’t watch the soap opera, but we used to hear its introduction when we were in high school and college. That introduction was something “everybody” recognized — just like we recognized the whistled song at the beginning of the Andy Griffith Show.
It’s fun for family members to have shared knowledge. That way they can say something silly like, “These are the dings of our lives,” and someone gets the joke.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I encourage you to rejoice in your daily opportunity to HOMEschool. I encourage you to take advantage of that opportunity. Please don’t let anyone tempt you to exchange your role of homeschooling mama for the roles of activity director and shuttle driver. Give yourself permission to spend so much time together doing real, hands-on, physical stuff that you understand each other’s jokes and share a wealth of warm and fuzzy memories.
- Worship our Father with your family and with His people.
- Spend time in His word together.
- Mess up the kitchen and make a theme dinner. Start with Mexico. Cook up some tacos, make a Mexican flag out of construction paper, play some Latin music, take some pictures, and make a memory.
- Play Scrabble® or Upwords® or Bananagrams® and let it count as a little portion of your English.
- Learn cause and effect and coordination — and laugh together — while you play Jenga®.
- Volunteer together.
- Watch good old movies.
- Read good old books together.
- Camp out together — if you aren’t an outdoorsy type, then camp out in the family room. It’s a blast.
- Learn together — so what if I didn’t understand geometry! I got to learn it with our girls.
- Play charades.
One of the greatest struggles of a homeschooling mama is time. Time is also one of her greatest blessings because she has the privilege of spending it with her children.
You shall therefore impress these words of mine
on your heart and on your soul;
and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand,
and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
You shall teach them to your sons,
talking of them when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road
and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19
Yes. Yes. Yes to all of the above. Plus LEGO time. And pretend library time. And listen to Grandpa talk about his stamp collection time. And take care of Grandma recover from foot surgery time. And make homemade birthday cards time. All at home and all real life learning!!
I hear so many Moms say that they could never home school their children because they can’t stand to be with them that long. Makes my heart so sad. I raised 2 in public school and I realized how much I missed. I can’t now even imagine my girl being gone from home all day 5 days a week with someone else getting all of the joy that she brings.
Thank you for this powerful and needed encouragement to my heart today. Our family also has those shared jokes that no one else understands. We also have those days in which we learn new skills together. Most important, I can share and read the Word with my son each day, which in the big picture of life, will be the best thing I can teach him. To spend time each day with the Lord. Feeling better already just thinking about those times when our day was not what the world would consider “school” but knowing that Jesus would be pleased because we put Him first and not the world. Thank you for your ministry to families like ours through your commitment to quality curriculum.