It’s a good time to talk about plans. Your homeschool plans, I mean. Because… well…
…are things going as planned for your homeschool year?
[ahem]
Yeah. Didn’t think so.
First of all, if you’re new to homeschooling, you should know: the first weeks never go as planned.
This is to be expected.
It’s normal every year, even if you’ve been homeschooling for approximately 4,356 years. 🙋🏼♀️
And those homeschool plans that you made, before this school year began? They were guesses. Important guesses! Good guesses. Educated guesses. And you needed to make them.
But they were still guesses.
How do I know this?
Well… in September of 2019, did you make your homeschool plan with Covid in mind?
Right. Me neither.
See, when we’re planning for a school year, we’re making all kinds of guesses. We’re guessing about…
- how quickly our child will master a concept
- how long it will take them to finish an assignment
- how many times everyone will get sick
- how much sleep we’ll get
- how often the dishwasher or the dryer will break
We’re making guesses about how much schoolwork we can get done, how many read-alouds we’ll be able to finish, and whether there will be any major family crises.
We’re making guesses about big life events and tiny day-to-day minutia.
Because none of us actually knows what tomorrow (or, in fact, this afternoon) holds.
This isn’t a problem, actually.
It’s just a fact.
We don’t need to see the future. We don’t need to know what’s coming around the bend.
That’s what grace is for.
And when we keep this fact in mind—this fact that our best-laid plans are just educated guesses, it helps us keep homeschool plans in their place.
We breathe a little easier when things don’t go as planned (and they won’t, in case you hadn’t noticed yet! 😅), because we understand that wasn’t the point of the plans in the first place.
Those plans were just a compass.
An incredibly helpful compass, I might add. Very, very helpful in pointing you in the right direction.
But not perfect. And planning, at its best, is just educated guessing.
That’s good news, because it helps us remember that no matter what is around the bend, the grace we need will arrive the very moment we need it.
So look up from your phone (or your computer, or however you’re reading this right now) just for a second.
Smile at the mess. The chaos. The kids running amok.
Smile at the unfinished assignments on the kitchen table, the sink overflowing with dishes, the 6 loads of laundry piled on the sofa.
Smile at this messy, unpredictable life.
It might not be going according to your plan, but I can assure you: it’s going according to His. And He’s giving you exactly the grace you need for these kids, this situation, and this moment.
Your plans were guesses. His grace is a fact.
I hope you have a gloriously unpredictable and grace-filled day.
P.S. Want more like this through the school year? Come on over to RAR Premium, because I send a boost like this every single Monday in the Circle with Sarah podcast.
It’s Premium Homeschool Coaching that will help you teach from rest and enjoy the journey just a little bit more. Promise. 😘
