A New Start for Momma with the New School Year

I love Back-to-School time, don't you?The smell of fresh pencils, new crayons, and fresh starts hangs in the air like the smell after a spring rain.And it doesn't help that my kiddos are always so stinkin' cute on our first day of school!  They are so sweet and always let me take loads of photos of them in their cute little outfits.  I am very thankful for a little girl who actually still wanted to wear her outfit from last year that still fit (can she stay little forever, please?).It's so easy to usher this time of year through like all of the other times (after all, we're all a tad bit sick of the heat by now and are just waiting for the coolness of Autumn, can I get an amen?) but I think it is such a great time to have a restart.  A pause, a change, a reversal of what we don't like going on in our lives and a time for things to start new in a fresh direction.I have always felt like this.  When I was a kid I was a super nerd (fitting as now I'm super busy!) and would ponder and think and obsess over what "theme" my school supplies would be for the year.  After all, the image you're setting out for the world as a fourth grader is super important stuff.  Ha.I remember one year I wanted to be super traditional in the mindset that that would somehow project a super serious study ethic onto myself...I insisted on a plaid fabric trapper keeper, straight yellow pencils (no designs, gasp!), and the plainest backpack we could find.  I was going to nail school to the wall.Then there was the one year I was going to be the Punky Brewster of Mrs. Grass' third grade class.  Kids would want to be me.  All unicorns, all glitter, all the time.  Bring it on Lisa Frank.  Bring. It. On.Obviously this whole "new school year, new me" thing has been with me for a while.  I love starting a new routine, a new schedule, with new, sometimes over inflated, expectations for myself.  Some I am amazing at.  Some I completely miss.  And that's okay.  It's a time to tweak what works, to learn more about myself and to understand what I truly love in life.  It's also a good time for me to set goals for myself as a mother, a wife, a friend, a sister.What goals are you making this year?Want to know mine?

1. Read my Bible

The legit bible.  Not someone's take on the bible. Not instagram quotes about the bible but the fleshed out, living word, Bible. If you don't have a bible you love, maybe it's time for a new one.  My parent's bought me a bible once in college.  I wanted to love that thing so bad...but in the end the chapter I was in and the book of the bible were printed all the way half way into the page, making it wonky and almost impossible to thumb through to find what I was looking for.  In the end a new bible can sometimes solve problems like this, put you more at ease in the book, and help jumpstart you into a fresh start.  Here's one that I love.

2. Take Better Care of Me

About the time that school was getting to let out in the spring I noticed, gee I've let my self care slide big time.  I acknowledged it but didn't really know how to change. Thankfully at the beginning of the summer I had a dear friend, Heather, smack some sense into me and pretty much drag me into a Pilates class.  In that class I finally got it...it's okay to take time for myself to say, you know what?  I am worthy of this.  I deserve this.  I need this.  Since then I've continued going when I can to classes, I've taken up educating myself on things that are important to me (like family time, healthful eating and how to work at a marriage), bought myself flowers, and made time for me to just be me.It feels great and I plan on making sure I carve time out of our school schedule to be sure I have time for things that matter to me. Some days I have more time than on other days but even if it's just five minutes to pick up a book, fling myself on the bed and read, I try to make a mental note that I am taking a small break to unwind and have me time.  It really does help and makes me feel more gratitude towards our life.

3. Stop Being Lazy

In my taking better care of me time I've been reading the book Hoodwinked: Ten Myths Moms Believe & Why We All Need to Knock It Off by Karen Ehman & Ruth Schwenk.    In this book it really takes the time to explain about laziness well.  First of all it describes the act of possessing wisdom not only as the ability to have information but in turn the ability to rightly use that information. In other words, skilled living.  If I have the information needed to keep a house but am not doing so, am not being skilled in my ability to live then therefore I am lacking in the wisdom department.It has been such an eye opening book!It also went to talk about the second chapter of Titus which, girl, you know I love since my very blog's name came from that verse!  Preach!

“Bid the older women similarly to be reverent and devout in their deportment as becomes those engaged in sacred service, not slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to give good counsel and be teachers of what is right and noble.So that they will wisely train the young women to be sane and sober of mind and to love their husbands and their children,To be self-controlled, chaste, homemakers, good-natured, adapting, and subordinating themselves to their husbands, that the word of God may not be exposed to reproach. ”

— Titus 2:3-5

The book discusses how the passage calls us to be homemakers or "keepers of the home".  It doesn't matter whether you work or are a stay at home mom, the fact of the matter is that God has called us to manage homes and those things which have been placed in our charge.  Being busy at home means not being busy and idle.  Not just pittering about the house all day without seeing anything being accomplished.  Instead we are to take care of our homes and families.  Truth!How many times I get behind on things because I am looking at Pinterest or browsing a magazine, rather than staying diligent in my house work.  How many times I have felt discouragement and the feeling of confidence in myself lacking because I have let me chores slide and I find myself in a pit of never-ending drudgery.Well enough is enough.  The banishment of laziness will begin now!We're looking forward to our new school year.  We are doing the homeschool program, Classical Conversations again this year.  Emma is moving up to the Challange A Program and Cal will be in Foundations and Essentials.  Each year brings new challenges and new opportunities with our cute crew and we pray you'll have a great year too!

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Comment below what goals you have this year...I'd love to be praying for you!