Ep 10 | Learning to Love Rightly
Pursuing the good life means asking, over and over again, “Am I loving the right things at the right time and in the right way?”
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Hello there. You probably know me well enough by now to know I can’t say anything in less than five minutes. Well, not anything about classical education. I can, in five minutes or less, say that the podcast and Common Mom videos are on a brief break until November.
There isn’t a life-altering story behind this. No children ignored. No house in disarray. No brink of mental anguish. Instead, I suppose it’s a rather common story: a mom over-fills her margin time with too many good things and finds herself acting more like a machine than a person and feeling a little empty. Have you ever felt a little empty? What I’m saying? We’re mother-teachers. I’m comfortable guessing you have. It happens. But when it does, we have to ask ourselves what needs to be done to love well.
You see, our children are not the only ones learning to love the right things at the right time and in the right way. If you’ve come through the classical wardrobe in the last few years, you are learning that you need to learn to love rightly too. And all of this learning to love happens in the particulars, the little decisions, the time spent in kitchens, on trails, while reading, while working. Our loves are formed and changed and ordered by what we repeatedly think and do.
And I am one who is learning not to ignore the limitations of personhood, not to act like a machine when I am, in fact, a person. It’s been funny, actually, when I told a couple of my close friends that there wouldn’t be a podcast this week. One said, “Oh good. You’ve been too tired. This is smart.” Another said my best work comes from an overflow of my life, not the bottom of the barrel. And another, high-fived me.
For someone who struggles to not do, it’s hard to recognize that I can’t always check it all off. It’s hard to recognize that I’m not God and that sometimes not doing is a matter of obedience.
Of course, doing is also a matter of obedience and I’m not here to encourage everyone to not do the things before them this week. I am here to say that in this pursuit of the humanizing life, the good life, we will have to ask ourselves over and over again what should or shouldn’t be done as we learn to love the right things at the right time and in the right way.
Because, depending on the season, the week, the day, there might need to be some reordering.
Which reminds me of a Parents’ Review article I read earlier this week:
In these days of strain and stress we need to conserve our energies for the really essential things, and it is well worthwhile for a mother to give earnest consideration to the question "What shall I do, what leave undone, that I may make my home the abode of peace and joy that it should be ?"
Honestly, that about sums it up. What shall I do? What to leave undone? How will I choose, this day, to love rightly? To love well?
May your homes be abodes of peace and joy this month.
I’ll see you in November.
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