okay, as you know from my last post we have decided to homeschool Ava. I cannot tell you how at peace I have felt since that decision. It is like this large weight has been lifted and I am looking at Ava's future. So much, we or at least I am so "in the now" it is hard to look forward and WAIT but my decision to home school AVa is for her future, yes, I am not going to have as much time to myself and there are going to be days that I question, "What am I doing?" but honestly I feel like that now, nothing kicks your butt like parenting. Daily I struggle with things like, why is she so sassy?we don't allow that?are they watching to much TV(always a yes), why does she blantenly ignore me when I call her name?UGH!!!there were days that I was glad she got on the bus just so I didn't have to deal with it(I am ashamed to admit) Well ,everyday I get a message from Insight for Living and today was the following devotion: as usual God just knows when you need Him to reveal something to you and re affirm that you are doing the right thing.
October 20, 2009

Take It Easy
by Charles R. Swindoll

Proverbs 22:6 " Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it."

Maybe it's because I just had another birthday. Maybe it's because I'm a granddad several times over. Or maybe it's because of a struggling young seminarian I met recently who wishes he had been higher on his parents' priority list than, say, fifth or sixth. He was hurried and ignored through childhood, then tolerated and misunderstood through adolescence, and finally expected to "be a man" without having been taught how.

My words are dedicated to all of you who have the opportunity to make an investment in a growing child so that he or she might someday be whole and healthy, secure and mature. Granted, yours is a tough job. Relentless and thankless . . . at least for now. But nobody is better qualified to shape the thinking, to answer the questions, to assist during the struggles, to calm the fears, to administer the discipline, to know the innermost heart, or to love and affirm the life of your offspring than you.

When it comes to "training up the child in the way he should go," you've got the inside lane, Mom and Dad. So---take it easy! Remember (as Anne Ortlund puts it) "children are wet cement." They take the shape of your mold. They're learning even when you don't think they're watching. And those little guys and gals are plenty smart. They hear tone as well as terms. They read looks as well as books. They figure out motives, even those you think you can hide. They are not fooled, not in the long haul.

The two most important tools of parenting are time and touch. Believe me, both are essential. If you and I hope to release from our nest fairly capable and relatively stable people who can soar and make it on their own, we'll need to pay the price of saying no to many of our own wants and needs in order to interact with our young . . . and we'll have to keep breaking down the distance that only naturally forms as our little people grow up.

Time and touch. Listen to your boys and girls, look them in the eye, put your arms around them, hug them close, tell them how valuable they are. Don't hold back. Take the time to do it. Reach. Touch.

When you are tempted to get involved in some energy-draining, time-consuming opportunity that will only increase the distance between you and yours, ask yourself hard questions like, "Could my time be better spent at home?" and "Won't there be similar opportunities in the years to come?" Then turn your attention to your boy or girl. Hold nothing back as you renew acquaintances.

Take it easy!

The two most important tools of parenting are time and touch.

Excerpted from Day by Day with Charles Swindoll, Copyright © 2000 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. (Thomas Nelson Publishers). All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.