Grading

I love being my kids' first teacher! At least, most of the time. ;) I enjoy seeing the new information "click" in their growing brains. I delight in all the things that "click" for me as I prepare for, and instruct them. I don't even mind writing lesson plans (although it's not my favorite). But I hate grading. Grading is the bane of my teaching existence! I would almost rather vomit than grade papers (and I HATE to vomit! =P ). So I am perpetually behind...

But even for a homeschool mom, grading is necessary. Although I am aware of a lot of what they know and haven't quite got yet, there are still things I miss. If I were to stack up the papers that need to be graded from this year, the pile would be near mountainous. And the longer I put it off, the taller my paper mountain grows. And just today, as I attempted to climb said mountain, I realized that I am actually cheating my Crew when I DON'T grade their papers. They need to see what they're doing wrong, or don't know, to motivate them to work a bit harder. They need to see where they are doing well to encourage them to keep trucking-- even when it's boring! ;)

And then I thought about sin. Do you know that sin is inevitable? This side of death, or Christ's return, we will all have sin. We will struggle with sin. We will, many times, fail in our battle against sin. We will see deeper and deeper into the sin that has corrupted our souls. And we could try to ignore it. I know that I do sometimes. Honestly, sometimes facing my sin is about as pleasant as vomiting. But if I ignore my sin, it will grow. And the more it grows, the more it will negatively impact the people around me. So I encourage you, Reader (and myself). Fight your sin. And I'll fight my sin of laziness with regard to grading! ;)

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Romans 6:11-18