I am starting to prepare  for the upcoming school year. I always try to evaluate what works and what could be altered.  I started out rather "by the book" when I began homeschooling but over the years we have become much more relaxed. 

This year instead of focusing on curriculum and other educational tools, my mind has been trying to formulate a different kind of plan. A plan of less planning. It is easier to accomplish things when I have a plan. As I grow in my understanding of God's will for our lives, I feel led to spend even more time on character training than before. This has always been an important part of our schoolwork, but I feel God leading us to have a year focused on teaching servitude.

Clearly our culture places value on being busy but  what does the Bible say about this? ( I will get back to this later) It is disheartening to see how people want to help others, be there for friends, volunteer etc. but often are so overloaded with committments that there is barely time to quickly pray before collapsing each night.

i surely have been guilt of this myself. Over the past few years I have been trying to work on this, slowing weaning out the things that are time stealers from our family life. There are so many good things vying for our time, but are they all truly beneficial? It saddens me to think of opportunities I have missed to be available for people, always trying to fit everything in that "needs" to be done.

So, teaching servitude will be a goal we will purposefully choose this year. Life is not about me, not about my children etc.  Struggling to narrow this down further, I happened to open my Bible to this verse, totally unplanned, that is one I will cling to this year...

Phillipians 2:3-4

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interest of others."

If all of our time is always planned and precommitted, there is no time left to just be.

Be available to people, cirucmstances and needs that come into our lives. Will we falter? Sure, but I believe this is so important we will keep getting up and trying again. One day at a time, right?