It Helps to Remember

When February days seems a little bit blah...and the schedule feels a little too full...and too many dinners are prepared early, left on the stove, then eaten hastily when we rush in the door from a music rehearsal or lesson...and piles of dirty laundry tempt me to cancel school for the day, just so I can get far enough ahead that I'll know that we'll all have clean underwear and socks for the next week...and history lessons have lost their zest, and I'm abandoning the extra enrichment activities so we can make it to the end of the book...and some days are pleasant enough, but more days than I'd like have to be slogged through...it helps to remember that every February feels this way.

Every year in late winter, I find myself stretched by the time demands of extracurricular activities...but that doesn't mean those activities aren't worthwhile, or that they should be abandoned.  Every year as we see the end of the official school year approaching, though it's still a ways off, I feel the tension between devoting myself to homeschooling or devoting myself to homemaking...but that doesn't mean that I should raise my hands in surrender and give up either pursuit.

It helps to remember that swimming lessons will come to an end, as will choir rehearsals and violin lessons.  It helps to remember that before too long, we'll be back to our peaceful pattern of evenings at home without rushed, late suppers.  It helps to remember that, even when we do some educational stuff in the summer, it's totally different from our regular school schedule; and the break does us all good.  It helps to remember that there's a legitimate reason why I have a hard time keeping up with all the housekeeping things I'd like to be doing during the school year: school takes time, and even though our lifestyle of homeschooling takes much less time than a day away from home in a traditional school, it still takes time.  And sometimes that means that the homemaking projects I'd dearly love to do have to be pushed aside for a while and ignored, all because spelling lists and art analysis and science facts and Bible memorization rightfully take priority for a while.

I'm well aware that one thing that leads to mental weariness is unfinished projects.  I look around and see scores of things I started and didn't finish...or even in some cases, didn't even begin but wanted to and intended to.  It's so discouraging, and I tell myself, "I know it wouldn't really take that long to finish this particular project.  Why can't I seem to carve out the time or summon up the mental focus to complete this? What's wrong with me?"  At times like that, it helps to remember that it will get done.  Definitely not today, probably not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but eventually...the papers and books on the foosball table will indeed get sorted and put back into the homeschool closet where they were residing until I, in a spurt of energy, pulled them out to organize them...the CDs in the kitchen that are supposed to be nicely arranged in a big black case will finally be returned to order so that we can actually find particular CDs when we're looking for them...Tobin's room that has been in a state of chaos while being painted in preparation for Shav moving over into that room so the baby can have the nursery will be restored to pristine condition...and so forth.  It will all get done--maybe not in my preferred timetable; but one of these days, it will happen.  If it's truly important, it will get done.

It really does help me to remember these things.  So if you see me during the next few weeks and my lips are moving and I'm mumbling something under my breath, it just might be what I've written here.  I have to preach it to myself often, since my memory seems to be short these days!  :)  But when discouragement hovers over me like the dark cloud that follows Eeyore around, it helps to remember.