I find myself in the same spot I wrote this one year ago. I’m at our family cabin in the mountains enjoying some peace and quiet while the girls are with my parents at a local zoo. It is quiet besides the occasional chirp of a bird and the slow drizzle of rain. It’s the perfect atmosphere to think about my 2014 Homeschool Goals. There are just two, but these two are pretty big.

1. Find moments to be still before the Lord in the midst of the chaos of the day.

During my college days I can remember constantly finding moments here and there to just be still before the Lord. I would arrive on campus early for my class and, if the weather permitted, I would sit in my car with the windows rolled down and just be still before the Lord. I’d pray about whatever was on my heart at the time. I would sometimes even write in my journal! This was the time before smartphones when you get a down moment in the day and, like a reflex, you reach for your smartphone to kill the time before the next event of the day begins. While I limit what I do have on my phone (I don’t have Facebook on my phone – best decision ever!), I am guilty of this and I want to be conscious of not always reaching for my phone when I have a moment of peace. I should be going to the Lord to re-fill for the next event, not always checking email or reading blogs in my Feedly.

As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, quiet moments in my day are rare, especially now that one of my children no longer naps! But there are moments I could steal from the chaos of the day to be still before the Lord and pray and even remember and refocus on why I am doing what I am doing during this season of my life.

As I begin this new school year I want to consciously chose to be still before the Lord throughout my day. And, you know, this can even be done in the midst of all the chaos when the girls are running around playing, and arguing non-stop, and I am sitting there folding a load of laundry. I can take my mind to the quiet places with the Lord and remember what He has done, remember His faithfulness and love towards me, a sinner. Remember the Big Picture of life and that moments are fleeting and I only have now. Just thinking upon those things will give me more strength than perusing my smartphone will.

2. Continue to allow the Lord to work on my heart concerning self-control.

One of my struggles as a parent is loosing my patience with my children. To some, that might surprise you, because I’ve been told before that I have the patience of Job. Come be a fly on my wall at the end of a day where I have spent every waking moment battling with my strong-willed daughter, cleaning up their relentless table messes after eating, and refereeing their playtimes that feel more like war-times, and you might possibly see me lose my temper with them. Yelling. Screaming. I’ve done it all.

I hate it when it happens. Hate it more than anything! I love my girls with all my heart; they are my world. After I’ve lost my temper with them I always feel like poop. I tell myself they are just little and still learning how to navigate this world and I need to be more patient with them. At the same time, I am human and I reach my limits and can only take so much in one 24 hour period and I feel powerless to stop the boiling of my blood that makes me flip my lid and lose it with them. If you are a mother, I am sure you know exactly what I mean.

There was an instance recently that opened my eyes to the root of this problem for me. It was after naptime and I had gotten the girls up from nap. During naptime I had been working on plans for the new school year and wasn’t quite finished with what I was working on by the time naptime was over and it was time to get everyone up. So, I decided to put on a show for the girls to watch while I finished up what I had been working on.

That sounded like the perfect plan! The girls would be interested in the show and I could sit on the couch and finish. Except Sweet Pea wasn’t interested in watching a show and, of course, wanted to be all up in my business. I needed to think and not be interrupted constantly by my 2-year-old. And, for crying out loud, there was a show on! Why can’t she just watch the 30 minute show and let me do my thing?? Blood was starting to boil at this point. I walked away from my work area for literally two minutes and heard Little Bug shriek, “Sweet Pea spilled your water Mama!!!!”

I came running because I knew my planning book, papers and a bunch of other school planning stuff was laid out on the coffee table in the living room right beside my glass of water. And, sure enough, my water had spilt and my planning book had been hit by the tsunami of water. The planning book that I had just printed pages for the night before and laid out on my bedroom floor only to have the dog walk all over many of the pages with her wet paws! I had reprinted them all that night and now, here they were, again, ruined.

And this would be when I flipped my lid. I screamed and yelled and went to my bedroom to cool off declaring to Dave that the girls were his responsibility because I had had it.

I hated that things could escalate to this and I desperately wanted to figure out how to stop this reaction within myself. It was there, as I was again feeling like poop and regretting every word I had yelled to my precious babies, that I realized something for the first time.

The majority of the time that I do not react to my children with patience I am wanting to do something and they are stopping me from doing what I want to do. In short, I am being selfish.

Motherhood is living sacrificially and there is a time for everything. I wasn’t wrong to try to finish the work I was doing by putting a show on for my children, but when it became apparent that Sweet Pea needed me to focus on her and not my work, I should have packed it all up right then and there. Instead, because I kept trying to do what I wanted to do, I let her frustration rise, which only made my frustrations rise which resulted in a blow up of anger on my part.

I am certainly not saying that I need to be at my children’s beck and call for every little thing to the point that I am more slave than Mommy. Instead there are moments when I can focus on what I want to do in the day and there are moments when the best thing for me to do is to just put away my work, stop the cleaning and focus on my children. This doesn’t mean I am always 100% focused on my children when they are awake! I believe it is important to teach them to be patient too. However, as their mother, it is my responsibility to use the wisdom God has given me to know when they need my full attention and when I can choose to work on something apart from them.

That’s sometimes a hard call for Mommy’s to make. At least it is for me. Some mornings I can easily get a cleaning chore done while they are happily playing together. Other mornings, I could start on a chore only to need to stop it mid-way because one of my girls just needs me for whatever reason. The challenge for me comes from the fact that once I get started on something, I want to finish it! I hate leaving something undone even if I know I will get back to it later. Out of necessity I’ve had to become better at leaving a project unfinished or I’d never do anything since I only have small chunks of time to work on things in between taking care of my children.

This year I am praying for wisdom to know the difference. To know when my child needs to learn patience and to know when I need to exhibit self-control and stop what I am doing to take care of my child before frustrations rise from both sides.

To read my 2013 Goals for Mom click here.

- Elaine