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Good morning! I just wanted to revisit a question that I had last school year since we are now beginning another. We started our school year the first Monday in August. We are doing Beyond for 1st grade with my daughter and Little Hands for Pre-K with my son. We have had such a smooth start to our year! We loved HOD last year and this year is looking great too!

HOD truly makes our homeschooling so much easier. However, I still struggle with outside activities and trying to decide what things to be involved in outside of our school time . Most of the extracurricular activities around our town start in September. And, our nominating committee at church is getting positions together for next year. This is only our second year homeschooling, so I am still trying to figure all of this out and try to decide where the Lord wants us to spend our time.

We have been light so far on the extracurricular things, since my kids are so young still. We are in a homeschool group for fun events only (park days once a week, occasional party or field trip) and my daughter has taken a one night a week ballet class. We have been very busy at church. Last year, my husband was a deacon and the Sunday School director. I was a preschool Sunday School teacher, on the preschool committee, and the VBS director. We also volunteered for several outreach events (Fall Festival, Christmas party, visitation, etc.), basically anything that came up during the year. This was actually a lighter year than usual for us because I knew that we would be homeschooling.

Here is the struggle for me (and my husband, who works full time and is in seminary school). We have both always been really involved at church, in just about every area. We were pretty busy last year. Well, now we are in our second years of seminary and homeschooling. We both feel like God is leading us to simplify, but not sure how. We both feel like seminary school and homeschooling should be our top priorities for now. But, it is hard going from being really busy at church to taking on quieter roles. I actually feel guilty at times about it. Our goals this year are to do more ministry things as a family (a lot of things that we were involved in last year separated us) and focus on just ministry in every day life.

So, I just wanted to see what it looks like in your homes, and how you handle extracurricular things and church activities. How do you balance all of this out? Making priorities? Ministry work? Extracurricular things? Having time for family and housework, etc? I do NOT want to be in this busyness trap that the world is in right now. I just want to live a simpler life and really make serving God our main priority.

Blessings,
Christy

My dh are quite involved in our church as well. We also have a small church, with fewer people doing most of the work type of thing. We are shepherds, and not sheep. It can be hard to cut back.

We have 3 girls. 11yo, 8yo, and 5yo. Grades are 6th, 2nd/3rd, and K.

This is what we do, and some of our thoughts behind it.

We do not do any city sponsored activities (i.s. sports). Most of these events require church days for practices and games, so it's not an option for us due to that.

My dh heads up a Thursday night bible club for ages 6-12 yo. Our children are involved in that. I am there to help him, and we have one other helper. We only have about 6-12 children that attend each week. Most times it is 6 children. It's a small one-on-one study group, and wonderful. Quality, not quantity, in regards to how many attend. We only have 2 homeschooling families at our church. The others have their children in sports, etc., on that night and they opt not to come.

Then my dh is Superintendent of our Sunday School. We don't have a Pastor. My dh's role is just making sure that part of the church services functions smoothly, being a go between with the teachers for their needs, etc. Organizing any Sunday School events.

I have a Bible Study I do with a few homeschooling mom friends on Friday afternoons. All of the children are there, and they play. This lasts about 1 1/2 hours, maybe 2 hours if we go long.

This year is our first year joining a homeschooling co-op. It will be on Tuesday mornings, from 8:45am-1pm. Three classes, and lunch. This is mainly to allow my children to meet new friends, and have a few enrichment type classes.

Outside of that, we do nothing else.

Sometimes when you are always so involved, it might not be giving others a chance to use their gifts since there isn't opportunity for them. It's not bad to sit back and let someone else take the reigns, to let our children see us in a serving role and not always taking the lead.

There is also something nice about being quiet, and not so busy all the time. For my girls, the more we do, the more they expect/demand, and the more stressed I get from running around and not being at home to take care of those duties. I don't like it when they get that way. They don't need to be entertained all the time.

Less is more for us. I am even worried about being able to complete everything in a timely manner with the addition of the co-op this year.

Tab

Tabitha wrote:
Sometimes when you are always so involved, it might not be giving others a chance to use their gifts since there isn't opportunity for them. It's not bad to sit back and let someone else take the reigns, to let our children see us in a serving role and not always taking the lead.

There is also something nice about being quiet, and not so busy all the time. For my girls, the more we do, the more they expect/demand, and the more stressed I get from running around and not being at home to take care of those duties. I don't like it when they get that way. They don't need to be entertained all the time.

I agree.

You mentioned some very nice activities to be involved with and there is nothing wrong with any one of those activities. But it does sound like too much, at least for my family. How about instead of being in charge of VBS, you could be a helper this year? That still leaves you involved, but is a lot less time and stress. Maybe you could find a person who would be willing to team teach Sunday School with you (such as one month on and one month off) I would also encourage your DH to choose either deacon or SS director. Each of those jobs (at our church at least) requires a very large time commitment in order to fully do the job. I think if one man tried to do both at our church, it would burn him out, or he'd only be doing each job partially. (We attend a church of 200.) As far as all those other events you mentioned that pop up throughout the year, is there a way you could pick your favorites that involve the family and then be willing to sit out on the rest?

I know how it feels to have that guilty feeling, but trust me, you get over it fast once you see how it affects your family time. My kids were so happy that I was done being our MOPS coordinator that they wanted to celebrate with a family night that they planned here at our house. Sure we still have our busy seasons like this summer when VBS and creating my brother's wedding invitations happened to fall in the same time frame. But my kids knew that it was only for a short time (we had 2 crazy weeks) and then things would be back to normal. Just remember that God has called you to raise and train your children (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) and you can't do that if you are too busy to be with them.

This is our first year "officially" homeschooling (meaning we have to actually report to the school board) and we are also very involved in our church. One of the things we have done is to try not to get involved in too much at church that would require us to be there on days we wouldn't be there as a family anyway. DH and I both love youth ministry and are very involved with the youth group at our church. We lead the middle school youth on Wednesday nights and on Sunday nights DH helps with a youth Bible study and I work with the high schoolers in AWANA. DS is involved in children's choir on Sunday nights while we are teaching and then in his AWANA class on Wednesday nights while we teach. Since we would be at church during those times anyway for DS it makes sense for us to find a place to serve during those times. There are many other programs at church that we choose not to be involved in simply because of the extra time commitments it would take - neither of us are involved in any committees or groups that meet on nights other than Sunday or Wednesday. Our church does have sports programs throughout the year but DS wants to try Karate so we told him he had to choose one of the other. He chose karate. The only other outside activity I have is a women's bible study on Monday mornings. Several of the ladies who attend are homeschool moms so DS loves to go and play with their kiddos while I get some great time in the word. I've had several people asking me to be a part of a homeschool co-op that meets on Tuesday mornings but I know there is no way I could do that and my bible study and I refuse to give my Bible study up. It really refreshes me for the week ahead. I absolutely love it and the women I have come to know through it. I think what to be involved in is a very personal choice because different families are naturally more inclined to more or less activities depending on if you are social butterflies or more of a homebody. Right now I feel pretty full and can't see us taking on any more than we have right now, but others may look at our schedule and think we're hardly doing anything. You just have to work out what feels right to you and your husband. Pray about it and God will lead you where he wants you. Maybe instead of being the teacher and having to plan a lesson and put alot of extra time into a class, you could be an assistant who just needs to show up and help the teacher out. I know in our children's dept they love to have parents come in just to help with crowd control and to be a runner if needed.

i think simplify is good. i am involved in a smaller way in children's ministry this way as i am homeschooling more and pregnant. My husband is involved minimally, as well. We do try to help out in special events that does not take away from the family. I have to remember there are seasons in our lives when we are able to help out more and sometimes less. Our church isn't huge but it has enough people that it shouldn't be the same people doing everything all the time. Unfortunately that does happen , and then that is even more of a time when we want to jump in . BUT we have to pray about where God really wants us to minister. Even at this time my husband needs ministering from his wife and not me being involved and gone all the time and running myself ragged.
i'd say pray about where God wants you most and let it go. God will raise up people to fill needs where He sees fit.
We also did ballet last year and will do gymnastics instead i day a week. My son is involved in cub scouts 1 night a week with my hubby. We go to church together on Wed and Sun. once a month i have mom time. and then we get together for park days and other extracurricular stuff as they come up. We try not to have to much going on on a regular basis or it gets to be too much. Right now my husband has been really reiterating the need for family time.

I love reading LIttle House in the Big Woods to my 1st grader,right now. it is really causing me to reflect on the simple way of life even if some things were harder back then. Things were just simpler. I am looking at what was important back then.
That was just my little extra 2 cents :0

PS. i know this sounds sad but we are lucky if we get the dishes and laundry done and living area vacuumed. yes, we clean toilets and kitchen floor and but not so much on a regular basis. More of "as needed". i think we just have more clutter than anything and that is what makes it hard to clean. My husband has alot of the clutter and he is slowly working on that. there is more to it than that, though...
Anyway, i jsut had to let go of having my house spic and span all the time. I wouldn't get any sleep if it was.

Think about this: When you are saying yes to one activity, you are saying no to something else, whether it be another activity or time with your family, etc. I read that on this board a while ago and I think that's a good thought process. I don't know how to link a post, but it was titled something like "am i taking on too much other stuff?"??? IDK, but it was a good one...look for it if you have time.

On another note, Motivated Moms helps me to get stuff done around the house...it's nice that I am slowly getting my clutter under control. The routine cleaning tasks are in a rotation, so that everything just gets done. It also just gets me moving and doing stuff instead of staring in the computer sometimes.

Thanks, ladies, for all of your encouraging words! As far as church goes, I think that my husband and I have decided to sign up to be greeters once a month, nursery duty once a month, and then we will volunteer for things as they come up throughout the year like: fall festivals, Christmas activities, outreach activities (inviting folks to church, sharing meals in our home with others, visitation, cards of encouragement, taking meals to folks), VBS, etc, as we feel led. And, we can do all of these things as a family . We are still praying about whether or not to help out with the Wednesday night youth. I think that for right now in this season of our lives, simple is better, and we will just be in quieter, serving positions instead of leadership positions.

As for extracurricular things, we are going to keep doing the homeschool group stuff like park days one afternoon a week from 1-3. We are also going to do one night a week ballet thru December (for 7 year old daughter) and then we will probably drop that and do homeschool tennis lessons one afternoon a week for a couple of months in the spring (with 7 year old daughter and 5 year old son both). This should keep us at home 4 nights a week in the fall and 5 nights a week in the spring.

I feel like God has led us to this point in our lives and that we need to make seminary, homeschooling and training our kiddos up in Him our top priorities for now. I'm sure that one of these days, my hubby will be done with seminary and will wind up the ministry full time, the kiddos will be a little more independent in their schoolwork, and we will be able to get back into a little more . But, for now, I am at peace with our decision to simplify and am going to try to slow down and enjoy each day of it.

Blessings,
Christy

wonderful thread! i am in a constant struggle with myself over how to spend my time. with each changing of the season, i have to re-evaluate my commitments. a few years ago, i received a free copy of a book from MOPS that i tossed aside for months, but eventually i was led to pick it up and start reading. the book was BREATHE: CREATING SPACE FOR GOD IN A HECTIC LIFE by Keri Wyatt Kent. it helped me to stop the self-destructive pattern of guilt, and allowed me to focus my energy toward what God has intended for me.