"How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!" Psalm 139:17
One should never, ever discard a completely random thought that comes out of nowhere. And I say that because I JUST had one that I never would have acted on. Well, I still haven't acted on it, but the wheels are turning at a rapid, rapid pace. It was a thought that I'd never, ever considered or thought on before.
I was thinking on our school year. It's not begun like I intended. We simply haven't the finances to purchase everything I need, but we're making do just fine for the time being. The biggest issue is that our History studies are on hold because I just don't have the materials we need, and this has been weighing on me heavily. I have a good portion of Zander's materials that I've been piecing together, but still need a fair bit. I need everything for Abigail, however. For her, I have been planning to tackle the first year of a two-year course on World History. However, the particular materials I need this year are pricey- we're talking hundreds of dollars worth of books. I've just been hoping that in a month or two I could begin piecing her core together. But even that has left me with issues- the course is a 36 week course, so I was trying to figure out how our future was going to look beginning a core a good 10 weeks or so into our school year, and then having to squeeze another 36 weeks on top of that for the second year of the course. It makes my head spin thinking about it.
Except that the company I purchase materials from has a different option for studying World History at Abigail's age that I'd never even remotely considered. They offer a one-year World History course as well. I've always completely discarded this option because I hate the thought of missing out on an entire year's worth of books and material by doing a condensed version of the history. Only, as it turns out, this one year course is actually not quite as it seemed. It wasn't created to be a condensed version of two years worth of material- it was created thoughtfully, to give a good picture of world history all on its own.
I've never looked at this option before, but today, for some reason, God totally dropped this random thought into my head to check it out. I've checked. And suddenly I'm excited about it! There are numerous reasons, but here's a few of them. One, is that if I pick up this particular core I can plan to still use it over a two year time period- which makes starting the materials late a perfectly good thing. I won't have to worry about leaving it half finished at the end of the school year, because we'll just finish it next year! On top of that, if I plan to do roughly half of it this school year, then I only actually need to purchase half of the materials. This is huge, financially speaking. And even better? This one-year version of World History uses materials that I already have on hand from Zander's study of World History. Abigail's never seen these books herself! And since I already have them, ta-da! Even less will be needed to purchase her material.
This can only be an answer from God, truly. For the first time in a few weeks, I'm excited about school. We started last week with what we have, and while it's meeting our needs, it wasn't what I wanted. However, now I can forge ahead with a plan in place! I've been wanting to do a month long government/election study, but couldn't figure out how to squeeze it in and then get to our history studies. This new plan will fit right in place. We can work on our government studies, and hopefully when we finish up, I'll have enough materials to commence the history work.
God is so good! And His thoughts are so precious. Thank you Lord, for a timely answer and the encouragement today.
