The life of words

Each year as I prepare to homeschool my children I am thoughtful and prayerful as to what they may need that year. I look for an overall theme that each child needs to learn or know for themselves and I look for an area of improvement for our family. When I first started this I thought it would be more of a list of subjects that they needed to study further but as I prayed for what to teach them and what to focus on my list was much less simplistic and much more deeply rooted than handwriting or math.

I heard things like...."He needs to know his needs are important. She needs to know what she has to say matters. She needs one on one time playing on the floor to facilitate guidance in her pretend play." The first year I started homeschooling my whole theme for the year was to "improve his confidence and to help him conquer his fear of trying something new." It changed the way I did everything. If I was losing patience and knew I was about to lose the spirit of learning then I stopped. It didn't matter that the lesson or the page wasn't done. What mattered was that I helped him gain confidence and if I was going to be backpedaling on that  then it wasn't worth that lesson in that particular moment.

Looking back on the years I saw how much it helped to have a general theme about how I wanted to approach each child throughout the year. It made our year more productive and more smooth sailing. Even though at the time it didn't always feel like it. ;)  After seeing this I got to thinking "Maybe I should do this for my life and not just their schooling" Instead of a long list of new year goals my main goal was to find a new year theme. Something that I could work on to improve myself and how I approach or see things in my life.

So I have been wanting to find a theme song. Something that can remind me of what I am working toward. I still hadn't thought of a theme though but as I was struggling through some things and I was praying about what to do the answer came very distinctly "Language". It was clear that in order for things to change in my life the way I wanted I needed to watch the way I talked. Specifically I needed to focus on the positive and to honor my loved ones by always speaking about them in an uplifting and honoring way. I was tempted to ask...."Okay but what can I DO? I mean what specifically?" I started to but I realized that, that question mostly came out of avoidance of doing the hard thing. Watching my tongue and my attitude moment by moment, day by day, week by week.

I thought back on the days that I wrote poetry more regularly and remembered how alive the words felt and how alive they made my emotions feel. I thought about how loved ones speak to me and how damaging it can be when they say words out of frustration or anger. I thought about the times that I have not watched my tongue in parenting my children and I have seen their eyes become dull and their faces sullen. It's like with one sentence I took the breath out of them and each moment that I make that mistake I vow to never do it again.

So my theme song this year is....Speak Life by TobyMac

I love how in his video he gives life to the words and shows the impact of words in our lives. I hope that this year I can "Speak Life" and welcome into my world an abundance of happiness and joy. I hope that I can bring light into my children's and my spouse's eyes and never diminish them again.