My ideal school day – and contentment

This past week I have spent online and in my small stash of curriculum realizing how much I don’t have with me in this particular country. Before I left my passport country I spent hours and hours putting together a homeschool curriculum for each child  for three years. I had a eclectic mix of resources from about 8 different publishers and had printed off early learning sheets for when we had limited printing and internet connections. This past year I left all of that in our home in South Sudan when we were forced to swiftly evacuate and have since been unable to return. One publisher (thanks to the work of a thoughtful friend who contacted them for me) sent me their curriculum again, a few things I bought again. However 90% of my “curriculum” for this year is sitting in a bookcase in Upper Nile State not being used as the year starts.

As I started planning for 2nd and 3rd grade I started to panic at trying to piece together without my “plan A” the upper grades and then to start to dwell on all I didn’t have. No library to check books out from, all the books I’d purchased spread over 3 countries…. no ability to do school in the morning (due to language) which meant trying to squeeze our studies into the hot  afternoon when we are all tired, no phonics program for my son which meant creating from my head, no language arts for the girls which means creating from scratch and our musical instrument in South Sudan making music planning feel like an exercise in futility. My friends you know what the icing on the cake was? No planner. I love writing in a carefully organized planner and yes I had brought mine with me from my passport country (3 actually one for each year…habits of a teacher!). Confession time… I cried a bit over a planner and lots of “less then ideals”. I was suppose to be planning but instead spent most time dwelling on what I didn’t have and then feeling that if I only had that (insert school resource here) the task would be less daunting, the year more manageable, and our studies more affective.

As you envision me sitting at my computer “planning” you are probably much  more observant to what was occurring in my heart then I was. I continued to “plan” school and thinking of all the things I didn’t have. There were so many reasons that I felt justified allowing me to live in the “if only’s” for school this year and I did just that… it didn’t even occur to me as I sat and tried to piece a plan together that I was struggling through a heart issue not a “lack of resources” crisis.

Are you ready for the great mercy in all of this? In the morning following crying over a planner I read this gem in Philippians:

Philippians 4:11-13 Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

You’d think that after reading that I would have understood the heart of the frustration, but instead I thought to myself joyfully, “I had done it, I had mastered contentment in this season, I was ok not knowing where we would live next year (at least for that morning), I knew how to get along when almost everything I owned was in another country inaccessible, and I was currently “suffering” through not having my curriculum which I didn’t want for financial gain but for the noble cause of educating my children.” I am sad to say I read that verse closed the passage and prayed for strength to “suffer through” this year of want in regards to educational resources.  I was so focused on what I perceived “the bigger issues” that I missed the everyday spirit of discontent robbing me of my joy.

This really would have been a tragic end to my homeschooling story, but God in his wisdom prodded me the next day as I read in in Psalms…

Psalm 34:10b Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

My pen stopped as I got ready to journal and I read it again,  not those who seek the Lord will “suffer through” not having the ideal home school resources. But instead “will lack no good thing”. I was lacking, “no good thing”.

Then grace abounded as I turned to my reading from Proverbs for the day:

Proverbs 19:23 The fear of the LORD leads to life;  then one rests content, untouched by trouble.

            A lack of curriculum hardly warrants “trouble” of epic proportions but I have to tell you about the deep conviction that marks this school year for me. You may have seen it rear its ugly head in the first sentence of this post, but I had no idea of the real heart issue at work. Instead of living a life of gratitude marked by Faith and Fear of the Lord I was living in the lie of “if only…” for so many of the day to day life thoughts.  I was not content with my portion for this season. My discontentment and life was marked by the “if onlys”. I was consumed by little thoughts such as,  “If only I could teach in the morning…”, “If only I had that resource…”, “If only I had a community to study with…”, “If only it wasn’t so hot…”, “If only our educational videos hadn’t been on that hard drive that crashed…..”. I truly believed that if all my “if only’s were met” THEN I could be content and happy with this year. I was believing the lie that something, or someone other the God could satisfy (in this case it was a day planner)…All the little “if onlys” have been robbing my today of resting in contentment and I hadn’t even noticed it was there.

God in His grace brought me Proverbs 19 that morning…contentment is untouched by troubles big OR SMALL, or by what I have, or don’t have in each season. Contentment is just as much about the little “inconveniences” that creep up every day as much as the big. The: “if only we didn’t live….”, “If only we had…..”, “If only my work…..”, “If only my kids were…..”, “If only I had more sleep…”, “If only I knew what was going to happen next…”. And Fear of the Lord is the start of resting content, of being in the moment, untouched by trouble and no longer slave to all the, “If onlys…”.

This year I am celebrating teaching a 2nd and 3rd grader, a kindergartener and a pre-schooler. I am celebrating schooling with the resources we’ve been given so generously, living life with my kids, and the grace that interrupted plans, and inaccessible day planners bring into recognizing what True contentment is.

…If only I could have understood this sooner…