It’s just about time for the new school year to start (for those following a more traditional school year). In fact, exactly one week from today (the day you’re reading this) is our first day of tenth grade and sixth grade. High school and middle school! Yikes! Where did the time go?

When I was younger, say twenty years ago, and imagining my life in the future, I used to picture myself with some well-behaved, well-dressed grade-school aged children—one holding each hand with maybe another one or so trailing along. I pictured myself as a stay-at-home mom with a spotless mansion and a hot dinner on the table each night when my high-powered executive husband came home from work at five on the dot.

Close your eyes. Okay, finish the paragraph first. Let your mind go back ten or twenty years. Bring to mind the picture you had in your head of where you would be now. What would your house look like? What would your family look like? Would you work outside the home? Now, close your eyes just for a minute and imagine all of that.

Did your long-ago imagined life match up to today’s reality? Mine didn’t, either. After all, I never pictured having teenagers in the house. I certainly never envisioned the “Honey, there’s a problem at the office and I can’t leave yet” phone calls. I never even thought to worry about money or to worry about what kind of education my children would be getting. I had never even heard of homeschooling twenty years ago.

So, maybe I should forget about all the daydreams, let alone all the planning. After all, if nothing’s going to turn out the way I dreamed or planned why bother?

Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no revelation [vision, direction], the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the law” (NKJV, bracketed words added by me). Okay, but how does this apply to homeschoolers? The most obvious application is to have a plan—for each day, each week, each month, or each year. I’m not trying to insist that everyone plan the same way I do or to the same level that I do, but I am asserting that everyone should have some kind of a plan.

Let me just list a few important reasons to have a plan, any plan:

• A plan is the roadmap to your final destination.

• A plan ensures that you make—and meet—goals.

• A plan gives you a sense of accomplishment as you work through it.

• A plan helps your children to be in the same car, on the same trip, not just on the same map.

• A plan makes sure that you don’t forget to teach something important, like how to write in cursive.

So, what do you do when your dreams end up being pipe dreams? What do you do when your plan gets messed up? You punch in “detour” on your GPS system. You take a look at your dreams and plans and see how realistic they were. You take another look and see if maybe God’s dreams for you are even better than what your dreams were. Pray through your plans and rewrite them if necessary. If it’s just a matter of doing two history lessons tomorrow because you needed extra time on a math lesson today, don’t sweat it. Yes, I’m preaching to myself here! Perhaps the most important thing to remember here is to let God direct our steps. “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9, NJKV). To me, that admonition can be summed up in one word: balance.

So, go ahead and make your lessons plans for the upcoming year. I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time making lessons plans already and it’s only the middle of July as I write this. Let me just give you one more example of how life doesn’t always go the way we planned it. This was not the article I intended to write for this month’s Heart of the Matter post. I planned to write about getting ready for the new school year with practical tips and advice. As I was typing along, minding my own business, this is what happened! It must be what I needed to learn right now. I pray it will help you, too. However, I will give you some links to old posts on my blog if you would like some more practical school planning pointers.

Click here to learn what mid-range planning is and how to do it. Learn how to use your summer time to maximize your planning for the fall. Here is what to do with that nifty, unused teacher’s planner you bought last year (hard copy or software).

Planning is good! BUT, be prepared to have God reroute your GPS along the homeschooling journey.

Bethany has been married for 16 years, homeschooling for 9 years, and organizing forever. She homeschools her two girls, grade 6 and grade 10, in North Carolina. She is also a partner in Codex Publishing, publisher of The Tutor and classic book reprints. When she isn’t homeschooling or driving the family taxi, Bethany enjoys reading, music, church activities, editing, writing, history, and keeping up with friends.