Keep a Quiet Heart

I picked up Keep a Quiet Heart by Elizabeth Elliot this morning, and the first page hit me like a ton of bricks; so naturally I came straight to you all. As mothers, as homeschoolers, as anyone with work about them that busies their days, we can so easily become burdened by the interruptions that distract, frustrate, and beset our plans. But let us not forget that we are not the center of it all. "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails" (Proverbs 19:21). Rejoice in it. Thank God for it. Embrace it. And keep a quiet heart about it.

Do Not Rush. Trust. And Keep a Quiet Heart.

I think I find most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over ones' work. Then one can feel that perhaps one's true work--one's work for God--consists in doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one's day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day--the part one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned work; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it.

Annie Keary, 1825-1879