A Homeschool Mother's Prayer

I remember the night before we started kindergarten with Isaiah, I was a nervous wreck.  I didn't sleep.  I couldn't eat.  I could barely breathe.  The weight of my child's education rested on my chest, making itself quite comfortable.  It lived there for weeks before I felt I could move under it again.

Today I decided to bust out our curriculum for this coming school year to figure out what all I needed to get.  (If you're wondering, we use My Father's World.)  As I sat in the living room floor with the books scattered about my feet, I began to feel that familiar shortness of breath in my chest and butterflies in my stomach.  It was as though I hadn't spent a year of my life doing this already.  All my experience went out the window, and anxiety began to overtake me again.  Could I really do this?  

In that moment, it felt like too much.

Rather than face this fear alone and crumble under the pressure, I want to start this school year off prayerfully, not just for us, but for all the homeschool families we know.  This year, I will be praying for...

Peace. I want to be comforted to know that this is still the right choice for my family.
Love.  I want to know I'm doing this out of love for God and love for my children- and for no other reasons.
Humility. I want to rely on the wisdom found in scripture, not on my own plans and ideas of how I should go about our daily lives.
Joy. I want this experience to bring joy to my family, not frustration.
Wisdom. And please, God, lots of it.
Patients. I really really really really need this.  Really.
Faithfulness. It is so simple to skip a day...skip a week....skip 4 weeks when you have a baby...such a big prayer this year will be that God impress the importance of this on my heart, not because faithfulness to math is important, but to help teach my children that faithfulness in His word is necessary.
Obedience. I want to show my children the importance of not just reading God's word but also doing what it says.

I'm sure there will be so much more as time goes on, but to begin, this is where my heart needs to be focused.