Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakable Peace

by Sarah Mackenzie

“The most important thing a homeschooling mother can do is to teach from a state of rest.”

Our souls are restless, anxiously wondering if something else out there might be just a little bit better—if maybe there is another way or another curriculum that might prove to be superior to what we are doing now. We choose anxiety as our guide instead of humbly submitting to God and letting Him guide us.

We are called to work. That part we have down, more or less. We homeschooling mothers are quite adept at spinning our wheels, working dawn to dusk to make sure our children have everything they need.

diligent student, then, takes delight, eagerly and with great zeal, in what he loves.

We bring our basket—whatever talents, skills, abilities we have—and

We recognize all the small moments throughout our day for what they are—the makings of a cathedral of timeless beauty, the planting of seeds that will bear fruit in their season.

Even if we realize that something needs to be shaved off the syllabus in order to retain peace in the home, we don’t know how to do the shaving. We’ve got to have clear vision in order to make the hard decisions of what to pare back.

Realize that when you are reading aloud from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, you are not just doing literature. If you read it slowly, enjoying it, taking time to contemplate the ideas and discuss them with your kids, you are taking on history, geography, writing, vocabulary, theology, and philosophy as well. This isn’t dabbling; it’s wrestling.

In fact, if a student grows to truly love an art (such as math), he is more likely to continue his study of math (or history, language, or literature) . . . in his free time. You know this. I know this. But we’ve got to start living it.

After a six-week term, we have a week off. During that time, I consider each of my children and each part of their curriculum.

How about at the end of the day? When you sneak into your child’s bedroom to drop one more kiss on her cheek as she sleeps, will you wish you had gotten to a few more loads of laundry? Decluttered one more closet? Run just a few more errands? Or will you wish you had stopped to stare into her eyes, to pull her onto your lap and talk about something she’s thinking about? Will you wish you had wasted a perfectly good five minutes listening to her ramble on about what she found under a rock while she was playing outside?