Many of you have already settled into a new school year and many others are about to get rolling. Most of us have a few jitters about getting off to a good start. 

I just returned from a very long vacation, the first ever without kids along, and I am adjusting to responsibilities and routine. I have a crowd of thoughts clamoring to get on this page, but since you already have too much to do and to read to prepare, I will try to be brief this month.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, we wistfully muse, if we could carry the relaxation and rest of vacation into the hustle-bustle. It doesn’t have to be a dream. Certainly regular life is full and action- packed, but rest is something we have within ourselves and is not just a lessening of activity. Yes, it is important for you to cease from busyness and wind down in your evenings, and yes, the best way of entering a day with a restful heart is to give that first quiet bit of it to focusing on God, his word, and committing yourself and your day to Him. When the pressures of the day push down, we can then remember the prayers and words of that special time to refresh us, like taking a drink of water when we get parched, and we can look forward to letting everything come to a halt in the evening. Just as we rest from our normal burdens once a week, or on vacation once or twice each year, we need to build those times into each day, even if they are short.

I wanted to share about the books I read while away, but will spare you all my exuberance about so many and just mention one: Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn. I’ll save the review, but in reading her life, a few things stand out that resonate with our lives as busy moms and teachers. First, life was crazy, held unexpected difficulties, doubts, and disappointments. Betty was famous for coping by reminding herself to “do the next thing.” Nothing applies to us more than that for practical help. There is always too much to do, to learn, to prepare, to accomplish. Know what is important in the next hour and focus on that. Let the rest go. Trust God to give you time and energy for all the other things when their time comes. Each morning your most important thing is school. Keep it in its time and give yourself wholeheartedly to it. Another thing Betty taught younger women was that sometimes the next thing has to do with tomorrow. Some of today’s duties are making preparations for what will be needed tomorrow. When it comes to school, taking a few minutes daily to look over the timetable and books for tomorrow will make tomorrow’s lessons smoother, your sleep sweeter, and your stress level less.

Another gift I received during vacation was a visit from my cousin who brought me a box filled with the diaries of my great-grandmother. She was born in 1900 and began making daily entries in 1914. She continued these diaries till just a few months before her death in 1972. I have not had the chance to organize them and read through them yet, but had read much of them back when I was 16. I know that when I do, I will pick up on many nuances my teenage heart was ignorant about. My point in relating this to you is that they are very different from the kinds of journals most women keep today. To my young mind, they were an endless compilation of, “made two pies, stopped by Mrs. Robinson’s on the way to market, hung out the wash, had meatloaf for dinner.” Only occasionally, momentous events or a spill over from her heart was shared. I skimmed for those juicy bits when I was 16. I know she struggled with life crises and heartbreaks like the rest of us—I even know some of them, of course. Yet, what seems like mundane minutia is revelatory. For example, on December 31, 1932, at the deepest trench of the Depression, I read: “George earned $738 this year. God has been faithful.” Just because the dollar was worth more then doesn’t mean this wasn’t a challenge!

Most of all, the minutia reminds me that this is the stuff of most of our days—getting up, making meals, wiping noses, folding clothes, running errands, texts and kids’ squabbles and wearisome sameness. There was a lot more to my Grandma than what made it into those journals. Her life had much more impact than can be contained in a box of journals. But, she marked each day. Each one was important enough to receive a comment or a review of how her time was spent. The days had value. Each hour has value. Time is not alterable. We have to choose how to spend each hour.

Our children’s days have value too. Each one marks their life, what will become their source of memories, each line scrawled or read is populating their thinking for the future. Let’s encourage our hearts not to just “get through” the lessons. Let’s not wear ourselves out with worrying about the unknown future and frustrations in the present. Instead, as we do many of the same old things every day, let us realize that our words, our thoughts, our actions are a page of our life and we are writing on the diary of our children’s lives.

Today is the day. Value it. This is the day. The next thing is important. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”