3 Things to Remind Yourself as the School Year Begins
Are you up and running? Books all over the kitchen table? Dinner in the slow cooker? Me too.
It's easy to feel like I've got back-to-school whiplash this time of year, and I often have to slow down and remind myself of a few things, just to make sure my priorities are in the right place.
Let's do this together!
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3 Things to Remind Yourself as the School Year Begins
1. Your Identity Isn't in Your Kids
I know I pound this one a lot here and over on Homeschooling in Real Life, but that's because I so easily find myself drifting off into shifting my hope onto my homeschooling, my homeschooling plans, my kids' behavior, my kids' academic performance, my good behavior, and really, pretty much everything but Jesus.
Professional hope shifter here! And so when the temptation to compare myself to others or the pressure to prove myself through my homeschooling or any other thing drives me to take my eyes off of Christ, I have to stop and remind myself of Whose I am and what He did for me.
A few resources to explore if you think you're a professional hope shifter, too:
Hope Shifting - Homeschooling in Real Life podcast episode about what it means to create idols in our hearts and shift our hope to everything but Jesus
Jim's small book Hope Shifting: Finding Our Acceptance, Security, Purpose, Value, and Significance will explain how often we try to find our acceptance and worth apart from the cross, but the cross has the power to change lives!
2. Just Keep Teaching, Just Keep Teaching
It's astounding what can be accomplished if you just keep teaching. I get all panicky in January and think we're way behind, but the reality is that if we keep plugging away at it every day, we're magically done with everything by, at the latest, the beginning of June.
Just keep teaching.
A few resources to explore if you think you're not going to make it to the end of the year with everything accomplished, too:
If you have simple planning issues, start with this post about Schedules and Flow Charts for Homeschoolers
Need some motivation and step-by-step help for the days when you don't feel like doing school?
3. Someone Needs to Take Care of the Mom (Guess Who?)
Let's just say that in my younger homeschooling and parenting years, I was idealistic. Homeschool 8 kids? Why, yes! Make all our gluten-free food from scratch and use coupons to acquire it? Of course! Duh. Be my husband's best date on a Friday night after a week of staying up too late and getting up with the baby? No problem. Write for publications and run blogs in my spare time? Psh. Easy.
Except while I was spinning those plates (and enjoying it - I love productivity), our family experienced crisis after crisis after crisis. Over the past 8 years, we've seen more trauma than should be allowed outside a triage command center. Believe me, I've had it out with God and at the same time my spiritual life has taken a hit, my physical body has been falling apart. There's a mixture of hormone craziness, weight gain, exhaustion, and PTSD. There. I said it out loud.
I'll be writing more about this in the days ahead, either here or on my personal blog. My heart would be to give a heads-up to other women who might be approaching the danger zone and equip you with some practical measures to take beyond a doctor's prescription of Xanax.
A few resources to explore if you think you aren't doing a great job of taking care of your needs, too:
Spiritual care is vastly important in a season of depletion and stress: How Are You Planning to Feed Your Soul This Year?
We chatted with Dr. Melanie Wilson about this very subject in an episode called, Is Me Time Necessary?
Here's a basic checklist for taking care of you: Mom, Are You Taking Care of Yourself?
