Homeschooling definitely has its ups and downs. I'm looking forward to teaching Ruth the verse for next week from Proverbs:
Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor.
Granted, she is very diligent at the things she wants to do. She's managed to accept the facts at the dinner table, and she eats her crust first to save the yummy inside part for last. Somehow the concept hasn't transferred to schoolwork yet. I'm so eager for her to learn to be a model student that gets the tough stuff done first and saves the fun work for last. Somehow, it seems, we can spend WAY too much time on a short page unless I stand over her as a taskmaster. How does a person learn to keep doing the next thing, even if they don't want to do it? I am being consistent in forcing it, but it's not always fun.
The problem with this verse, though, is that it challenges my choices of time, too. If I don't want to end up a slave to the reactions and whims of the kids, I'd better make sure I'm showing due diligence in teaching them and managing the day. Some things are so easy to do, and others are so easy to put off until later. Take this blog for instance. Because I hate to write and because it feels so impersonal and because the internet is spotty, super-slow, and loses your work, and because I have to do it sometime when the kids aren't too needy, and because who knows who reads it anyway, and because our camera's broken....it's now been over 4 months since I last updated it. I've been really consistent with exercise and in having devotions with the kids, and have been horrible about the correspondence-aspect of our job.
I set out to write about how Ruth needs to learn diligence so that she can have a better kind of life, but have realized that I want to exercise more diligence in my own life, especially in areas that are less immediately rewarding.
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