Clearing the decks

We finally finished our first week of school yesterday afternoon. Finally because I had only intended to work a 4 day week and have Friday - Waitangi day off down at the lake.

But the way things worked out we needed a couple more days to work out that I wasn't going to spend this year rescheduling every month or so. (Or maybe I needed to see that I could be a happy rested home-school mum, or a stressed home-school mum who had home-group at her house with baking for supper and lead worship in the second service at church each week.)

I have so enjoyed getting my life under control during the holidays, seeing myself relax, my kids happy, and spending the first part of the week enjoying working with them and teaching them. Truly there were enough hours in the day to run the house, teach and have fun. We finally have heaps of fun relaxed happy pictures of my middle child! My kids are playing with each other more and having less power struggles in doing so!! This summer was good!

Playing catch up on Friday and Sat brought its own stress. Stress that went fairly soon if I could enjoy coming beside the kids and working with them, but sat around if I worried about what else I had to do, or why we weren't relaxing and recharging the batteries for the next week.

Enough stress to tell me that if I added in a weekly evening commitment for home-group and several hours of evening or school time preparation for worship well the glue that held our family together would definitely disintegrate. Which isn't my idea of fun. (I've spent enough years stressed out to realize that any chance to avoid this should be grabbed with both hands.). Add in that both Tony and I want to work on being more hospitable and enjoying the Sunday lunch with guests thing and I could see disaster on the horizon.

So my beloved made the phone calls that were needed to say that I couldn't do those things that term. Which may or may not mean this year. In the freedom that followed I can see that almost all of them put our family's need on the back burner, not always for a positive trade off. Given that leading worship used to be the thing that put a spring in my step its interesting to see the relief that I currently feel in having that commitment drop from my shoulders.

So now we have clear decks to see what God has in store for our family this year...