As a home educator, I have one of those closets in my house.
You know the one I mean. It’s the closet that won’t shut and is the black hole of everything homeschooling.
Puzzle pieces, math manipulatives, parts of speech sorting activities, and dice all go to the closet to die. (Pun intended.)
When I recently could not find the protractor I needed, I determined to enter the black hole and sort it out. (Insert dramatic scary music here.)
As I sorted, I was astounded at how many things I had put away for “just the right time.” There was an art book I had planned to do with my daughter when she got old enough. (She’s seventeen now.) There was a puzzle I thought we’d do when it got cold enough outside. (We live in North Dakota. It’s rarely not cold enough outside). There was a history activity with all the instructions, parts, and pieces pre-cut I thought we’d use when we reached that era of history. (Was it my fault that our study of the Civil War happened around Thanksgiving when I had too much to do?)
I came face to face with the fact that if I save things for just the right time, I won’t use them at all. They were all good resources, but they got lost in The Black Hole Closet because the right time never came.
I think many of us homeschooling mamas major on planning. We have epic planning pages and grand schemes. We calendar “just the right time” for everything, and it is an essential skill.
Sometimes, though, we zoom out too far, and while we’re jotting goals for fifth grade language arts, what we really need to focus on is the student, only just now in Kindergarten, who is living for today.
Maybe we should take a page from the child’s playbook. They never plan too far ahead. They live for the moment. And now is always just the right time for everything.
Jesus gave several commands along those lines: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.” “Pray, then, like this: Give us this day our daily bread.” “Today is the day of salvation.” “Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”
Less really is more, both in the closet and on the to-do list. So, how should I choose what to do with the time that I have?
- Today comes before tomorrow, and none of us is guaranteed tomorrow. Focus on today.
- People come before tasks because people are eternal and tasks are temporary. Focus on your people.
- Instead of saving something for “just the right time,” ask yourself, “What is this just the right time for?”
My parents recently came to visit. It is a two-thousand mile trip, so I treasure each moment my children and I get to spend with them. While they were here, I made a rough outline of activities, meals, and events, but I planned a lot of flexibility so that we could include the spontaneous.
We gardened. We walked. We explored. We went bowling. We shopped for just the right peach and found it! We cheered for our cross-country runner and our football player. We listened to their stories of integration in the south and their thoughts on racial inequality and segregation, and we talked about prejudices that have carried into our day. We worshiped together.
The only thing I took out of my “just the right time” closet was a puzzle that we did one evening (even though it wasn’t cold), and I was glad I had straightened things out in there so that I was able to find it without wasting any time.
After my parents had gone, I looked at our school plan. We were about a week behind, but I wouldn’t trade the education my children received for any amount of pages in their math books. When we focused on the people we were with today instead of the curriculum pages of tomorrow, everything fell into “just the right time.”
I hadn’t needed to save anything for “just the right time.” Just the right time came, and I enjoyed every moment.
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Love your thoughts and outlook!