Homeschooling was once described to me as being a heavy part-time job. It isn’t. It is a full-time focus. Homeschooling is a balancing act of teaching, curriculum planning, cooking, cleaning, laundry, carpooling, and maintaining a marriage.
How we care for our marriages is a big lesson for our children, too.
My husband and I went through a stretching season over the past few years. Due to my faith, I knew I had to pour into my marriage. I felt like homeschooling was taking all my time and energy. There was a need to reassess the balance in our home. My priorities needed to shift.
That really is the key to maintaining equilibrium in family life: we must be intentional to pull it back into balance when we feel it veering into disorder. If you do anything as a mom, work hard at noticing when balance is lacking. Then, work to reel it back in.
Time spent on our marriages should be a foundational focus for our families. It is part of our role as homeschool moms to nurture our marriages while also managing our parenting and homemaking responsibilities. It is a lesson—a big one—that we teach our children through our example.
When it comes to bringing my marriage back into focus, I dove into resources. Every morning, I start my day with coffee and my Bible. After my first cup, I read a chapter of Biblical wisdom. It’s remarkable how much life application really does exist in the Bible.
My first step to focus on my role as a wife was to feed my soul with the Word of Truth. It’s like doing internal bodybuilding. We focus on filling our cup so that we can pour out. That is how we rest in Jesus.
I want to share a few resources I listened to and read through to fill my cup while focusing on rebalancing, so that in turn I could pour more energy into my marriage.
4 Resources for Building Up Your Marriage Amidst the Demands of Homeschooling
These will encourage you in your role as a spouse. They encourage, teach, and give you action steps to take that are not complicated. Doing what we need to do to nourish our marriages is not tricky, but it is important.
You and Me Forever
If you want practical, modern life application of biblical marriage advice, You and Me Forever: Marriage In Light of Eternity is a great choice. It is a small book that packs big faith-based tell-it-like-it-is truth.
Each chapter includes the author’s perspective and his wife’s thoughts. It is a wonderful book for a husband and wife to work through together. The book will help you work through improving your marriage in digestible chunks.
Love Dare
Such an emotional book and movie, The Love Dare is medicine for a weary marriage. I watched the movie, Fireproof, which is based on the book, when my husband was on a year-long deployment. It brings back so many emotions!
The Love Dare presents concrete action steps you can take to pour into your spouse, so they feel seen and loved. I read through this a couple of years ago during a stressful time in our lives. It helped refocus my mindset on what I could do to strengthen our marriage.
Military Homeschool Podcast
To reinforce marriage values, and specifically life as a military homeschooling mama, I found a podcast that shared helpful encouragement. The Military Homeschool podcast is perfectly tuned in to military homeschooling families. You can tell by the name!
One of the episodes covered military marriage and homeschooling. It is a good reinforcement for staying energized as a military homeschooler.
If you are a podcast-listener, tune in to it. Even non-military families will gain from the homeschool encouragement.
Journey of A Military Wife Devotional Series
For military families and Christian mamas, the Journey of A Military Wife devotional series hits the mark. It is cup-filling, digestible encouragement for every day. I cannot recommend this series enough.
There is a book for each season of military life from new military spouses, to seasoned spouses, and spouses in the season of preparing for their servicemember’s retirement. The books are written by a former military spouse, someone who has walked in our shoes.
From stories of Sarah following by Abraham’s side as he was called to follow God, to stories of Abigail, the marriage lessons are so applicable to our military lives.
As a military spouse, it can feel like I do not control a thing about our life. And, most days that is true. Ultimately, God is in control. He leads us where we need to go when we are devoted to following Him. Writing about this series makes me want to read through it all over again!
Marriage Is Part of The Homeschooling Lessons
There are many factors involved in raising children. We cannot neglect our marriages in the process of homeschooling our children.
Our marriage and our home environment will teach our children more about life than any academic exercise. We lead by example. Homeschool moms can let their cups run dry, but go to the well. Refill and refocus. Your marriage is important. It is part of the homeschool experience too.