We ought to measure our actual lot, and to fulfill it; to be with all our strength that which our lot requires and allows. What is beyond it, is no calling of ours. How much peace, quiet, confidence, and strength, would people attain, if they would go by this plain rule.
Henry Edward Manning

I realized as I was slowly plowing through all of the homeschooling lists, books, and curriculum for the upcoming year that a lot was left undone in the previous one. And, in looking at all of what I had in front of me, it looked like I was going to do that again. What is it about starting a new school year and making crazy goals like assigning all of the literature that such-n-such catelog says is needful for the 4th grade?

I know what it is. It is the fear of missing a key piece, a chunk of importance in the the academic lives of my children. As an example, I can’t wrap my head around teaching Latin to my children even though it is very popular to do so nowadays and there are lots of great curriculum out there to help me do it. It’s not that I don’t think it would be useful, but adding that would be as adding too liberal a heaping of salt to the soup pot. But……..what if they miss it?

Well, I guess they would just miss it. It would just become another unrealized goal this time next year, and you know what? That’s all right! My time has NOT been wasted in spending time with our children teaching them other things. It is not as if we were doing nothing while the last third of the spelling workbook lay untouched.

I’m realizing that though teaching my 5yo to read is extremely important, it takes a backseat to establishing a tight relationship and molding her character to be obedience, pleasant, and kind. Teaching my 9yo that completing an English assignment with perseverance is a worthy goal, but if it’s accomplished by my nagging all he’s really learned is how to get browbeat, not how to diagram a sentence.

Planning for the homeschool year is important. But let us not do so at the expense of cultivating what really matters. Let us ask God for His goals for our children, and chase after those. And then, perhaps, even Latin will find room in our lives.

Deuteronomy 10:12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul…