The Problem with Matins

When things started falling apart last September, and bedtimes got messed up, and the parents were talking and worrying, our schedule did not fare too well. When Gary got the secular job and was no longer home in the evenings, the schedule took another hit. Then we started house-hunting and packing and moving and unpacking, and all semblance of a schedule (even meal-time) was shot to pieces.

Now I'm unpacked. Now it's time for the start of a fresh new schoolyear. Now it's time to get back to a schedule ... at least a schedule of mealtime, prayers, and bedtime, but probably not a rigid schedule of math and spelling from 9:25 to 10:40 daily. If we usually go to Matins each day at church, and if we usually go to chapel each afternoon at church, that will definitely provide some outside force for a schedule.

But the thing I worry about is what happens when there's no school and thus no prayer services, like, say, during Christmas break or on Saturdays, or next summer for three months straight. Will we just skip prayers? Will we become lazy as to providing our own schedule and our own discipline, so that when the outside discipline isn't there, we ain't got none left? I wonder how we will handle that.