All A Waste of Time....

So this last week, I spent an evening of prayer with some other CC moms in our community. It was so refreshing. We were honest and real, we didn't have our "We have it all together masks" on. We just spoke from the heart.

Here's what I learned...

If I do only one thing in homeschooling, what is it that I want my kids to learn? Is it their memory work? Their latin? Their presidents' song, or the timeline with motions? NO... none of that matters. 

All that matters to me is that they know Jesus because they have seen me live out a real authentic relationship with Him. I say this with a heartfelt prayer for all of us. I mean, yes of course we want them to have great minds and know this stuff so they can rock the SAT's one day, but what if they did just that and didn't come to a heart stopping, never ending, serve others love relationship with Him? What if, they didn't get the "why?" of what we do? Oh how my heart weeps at the thought of doing everything right, and getting this one thing wrong. 

Then lets just be honest and say, I will fail. I will fail miserably if they don't know the grace and love of our Lord. Not because the church didn't teach them, but because I didn't.

So from this post on and from that day on, I promised (to myself) I would start our school days not with a simple prayer, but with an act of knowing Jesus. 

The very next day I started the morning off with praise. I wanted them to learn to enter His presence by praise. So I played the cd, The Praise Baby Collection. It's a cd with adult praise music, but not words they can't comprehend, sung by children. It's beautiful and has special meaning to us- but they didn't know it. At that moment I felt convicted that I had been playing the CC cds more than I had played these songs. Was one more important than the other? Yes. 

Immediately, my son rolled back and laid himself on the ground (as to show a lack of attention). He placed his feet up in the air and kicked them in a "V". At first I was going to correct him and stop the CD and say, "Tony, you don't praise God that way," but the strangest thing happened. 

God silenced me and spoke to me quickly to allow me to say, "That's ok Tony, if you want to praise God that way, He doesn't care. He's just interested in our hearts, not our bodies." 

He immediately shot up and looked at me as if I had three heads. I'm sure he thought, "What in the world? My mom never allows me to do that and get away with it. " Immediately, Lucy did the exact thing (taking no time to miss the opportunity to act "irreverently"). 

But to my heart's delight we sang, we listened, and we worshiped. That day, as I prayed our prayer, I did nothing different than before. I just let them in on a part of my relationship with God. No special handouts, no puppets, no rules. Just authentic time with my Lord.

I'd love to say that they were perfect behaving children the rest of the day, and didn't fuss at all, but that wouldn't be true. We had a normal day as before, but this time, I felt like I started it right.

I want to hear how you do this. Let us come together to help each other. Let us learn from our accomplishments and mistakes, for this is where there is power in numbers, strength in community.  

Each week, I promise to post one thing about this- whether accomplished or failed, I want my attempts to be intentional and this blog helps me do that.What do you do to start yours off right? How do you show them your authentic heart for God? Please share, I'd love to hear how you incorporate this in. 

For this is the "why"- otherwise it's all a waste of time.

Many blessings-

Crecia