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Rest begins with acceptance. Or, perhaps more accurately, with surrender. There will always be more you can do. You will never complete your tasks entirely, because just on the horizon is tomorrow, and tomorrow the to-do list starts anew. It is so exhausting—sometimes even demoralizing—to realize that our work in raising up and teaching our children is never really done. But we must remember that we were never intended to finish it.
The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination.4
Peace comes from recognizing that our real task is to wake up each day and get our marching orders from God. It comes from diligence to the work He hands us, but diligence infused with faith, with resting in God’s promises to guide and bless us.
The Greek historian Plutarch once wrote, “The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.”7
We are weary because we forget about grace. We act as though God’s showing up is the miracle. But guess what? God’s showing up is the given. Grace is a fact.
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.
The quality of study matters far more than the mere quantity of learning.
curriculum is not something you buy. It is far too robust to be purchased online or checked off on a set of lesson plans. It is a set of encounters that form the soul and shape the intellect.
They tell me to focus on relationships, to help my children preserve wonder and perceive truth, and to do each day’s work as diligently as I can.
Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land. So the little moments, Humble though they be, Make the mighty ages Of Eternity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love, Help to make earth happy Like the Heaven above.21
Rest, then, is not the absence of work or toil. It is the absence of anxiety or frenzy.
You step out of the boat. Amazingly, the waves do not overtake you. You feel the wind beating hard, threatening to overwhelm you; you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, hear the clarity of His voice as He bids you come. You do it. You are walking on water.
Our children are not projects. If, by the grace of God, we can manage to remember that our children are all made in His image—and more importantly, if we can treat them as such despite the mess and the chaos—then we will really be able to teach from rest.
