Living in the present

Homeschool day 26 of 180

One thing I love and envy very much about my wife is that she is much better at living in the present than I. I am always focusing on some goal that is some place in the future. Jesus, in his “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 6:24 says “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” I love that verse, but struggle greatly with its implementation in my own life. It is funny because, in looking back over the last year, one of the great highlights was sitting down each night during the summer to listen to classical music and draw with Christian and Kelly. There was really no end goal in all of that other than spending some time with the kids. I think we need to find something exactly like that for during the school year. Not only for the kids sake, but for my own.

The reason I started thinking about this is that our homeschool can get too serious. It got to thinking about what I could do to get back to the enjoyment of learning. When I am enjoying myself, the kids really enjoy themselves more, too. Really, the quality of their homeschool life very much depends on my attitude as much as anything else. If I am busy thinking about what to do about the future or my own goals, our day-to-day homeschool efforts suffer. That is also true for my projects. If I think too much about something that will not happen for months or years, I will not get anything done today. Today I want to live in the moment. Hopefully, the whole family will benefit from that.