You can’t pour out love if you haven’t been filled

For me, the homeschooling year begins in April.

We are sent a request to complete our registrations and start planning for September. There are book lists, music classes, budgets, government requirements; we have to check off all the boxes, and this includes a fun little chart called the “student learning plan.”

On this plan we fill out our curriculum for the year, explaining our method for fulfilling fine arts and physical education credits. That is all objective enough, but then we must answer the questions about our children’s talents, challenges, hopes, and dreams. This one always makes me groan a little. I don’t want to be too skeptical, but I’m pretty sure kids in the “system” don’t fill out this kind of info every single year. And I guess I’m not sure the point of it. Who’s reading it? And what are they doing about it? 

That being said, we happen to be blessed with the world’s best homeschooling consultant, so I have no doubt she reads the answers and smiles to herself thinking about all of the unique individuals under her watch and how she can make suggestions based on the answers. Regardless, I still find it a chore.

Some years I take liberties: “Isaac dreams of one day being a knight with a sports car.”

Or I simply write the truth, dictating my kindergarten child’s answer: “When Madalen grows up she says she wants to be a princess, or a nun, and eat ice cream every day.”

Sometimes the “Family Goals” part gets me thinking. What are my goals? Well, I want us to love and respect one another, to grow fully as humans in an ongoing state of wonder and awe, and, ultimately, to approach the throne of God together.

But what I honestly want to write on the goals chart is to simply make it through another day without wanting to throttle anyone. (That’s harder than it sounds. Not actually throttling someone is one thing. Not wanting to throttle them is another.) Eventually I move on to the more beautiful objectives, as mentioned.

However, those beautiful objectives, the ones Catholic families are made for, require a source. The love, respect, awe, and wonder need to come from somewhere, someone.

There are those days when I feel like my children are six thirsty cups, and I am an empty jug. On those days, I cannot give them what I do not have.

Ultimately our source is He Who Gives Drink to the Thirsty. But the children in our charge look first to us, their parents, to give them refreshment. And when I am not refreshed, they’re out of luck. And thirsty children can only go so long before eventually moving on to other (toxic) sources.

I, for one, can admit that there are days in my life when devotion and personal prayer aren’t getting priority places on the goals list. We say our usual morning prayers and Rosary, but maybe instead of really lifting my heart and mind to God I’m thinking about which box needs to be checked off once we finish. Maybe I’m at Mass, but I’m not really thinking of Christ on the cross as I receive him. I’m letting myself dry out. 

Those times of prayer and adoration do more than just give an example to our ever-watching children, they give us the grace we need to simply love them, and love is a requirement for throttle-free family life.

I have watched mothers, whom I know to be diligent in their prayer lives, and I am witness to the fact that, with their prayer, comes not only the grace to love, but also wisdom, patience, goodness, and strength. They’ve become a jug that is overflowing.

So, as I spend the next few weeks making my school schedules, buying pencils, and stuffing books into already crowded shelves, I will make note of the priority goal: knowing, loving, and serving God with my whole heart, my whole mind, and all my strength.

And when I have intentionally and physically worked toward that goal with prayer, Scripture, and good works, then I will hopefully be better prepared to lead my children to their ultimate objective: asking for and receiving living waters from the Source of sources. I will be filled and pour-able.

“But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:14)