In my last post, I introduced the concept of a Mother’s Rule of Life — the ancient Benedictine practice of building an intentional framework for your days around prayer, work, family, and rest. If you haven’t read that one yet, it’s a good place to start.
But I know what happens when you read something like that. You think: that sounds beautiful. And then you close the tab and go back to your chaotic Tuesday.
So today I’m sharing my actual rule. Not an idealized version. Not the schedule I’d have if I lived alone in a monastery. The one I actually try to live — as a homeschooling mom, a business owner, and a woman still growing into all of it.
I hope it gives you something concrete to work from.
A Note Before We Start
A Rule of Life is not a perfect day. It’s a map — and some days you follow it closely, and some days the kids are sick or a client needs something urgent or you just didn’t sleep well and the whole thing goes sideways.
That’s okay. The rule exists so you have something to return to. Not something to feel guilty about. Follow it as best you can but have grace built in.
My Mother’s Rule of Life: The Full Example
Pillar One: Prayer and Interior Life
My day begins at 6am, before the girls are up. That hour is mine — and honestly, it’s the hinge the whole day turns on. I make coffee, sit down, and enter what I think of as my quiet hour.
I pray the daily mother’s prayer from my Mother Love prayer book and ideally the Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, which has become one of my favorite discoveries on this road toward the Church. I have the Word on Fire subscription and it’s so helpful to have to do prayers with my girls as well without being on my phone. There’s something deeply grounding about praying the same psalms that monks and sisters and priests are praying at the same hour around the world.
After prayer, I read — either from the Bible, usually something in the tradition of Lectio Divina, a slow and receptive kind of reading where the goal isn’t to consume information but to let a passage settle. Or from a spiritual work or two that I’m studying. I’ve been working through writers like Jacques Philippe and Thomas Merton, and this unhurried morning reading has shaped me more than almost anything else I’ve done in the last two years. I love reading the christian classics a bit at a time and about the lives of Saints.
Then I journal. Not a productivity journal — no goals or intentions or gratitude lists. Just whatever is on my mind. A place to process, to notice, to pray in written form. I usually will write down something from my reading that stood out to me and then pray for something in relation to that, along with daily gratitude and any specific prayer requests that are on my heart.
That’s it. One hour. Prayer, reading, writing. It doesn’t require anything elaborate. It just requires getting up before everyone else and protecting the time.
In the evenings, I pray the night prayers from my Mother Love prayer book and Compline — Night Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours — before bed. It’s brief and beautiful and a good way to close the day with intention rather than just falling asleep to whatever I was scrolling. After that I will usually read from a spiritual work on my kindle. I’ll create a post soon with some of my favorites!
Pillar Two: Family and Home
The girls (5 and 8) wake up around 7am. We don’t rush into school. There’s a slow morning first — breakfast, some time to wake up gently, space for the day to begin without pressure. I’ve found that a slow morning actually makes the school hours go better. When we rush, everything downstream feels harder.
After breakfast, we gather for our morning prayers together and a Bible story. This is a short anchor point for the whole family — nothing elaborate, just a few minutes of orienting the day toward something beyond the to-do list.
Then comes read-aloud time, which is one of my favorite parts of our school day. The girls play or draw while I read. It’s unhurried and warm and one of the things I hope they remember.
After read-aloud, we move into focused schoolwork — math, writing, spelling, the subjects that require real attention. By this point in the morning, they’re ready for it.
During lunch, we do literature — we listen to an audiobook — which transitions naturally into quiet reading time. Everyone reads or looks at books independently for a 30 minutes to an hour. My youngest will often listen to an audiobook on her Yoto player during that time while playing with legos, etc. My oldest can do 30 minutes of reading from a physical book and then 30 minutes of audiobook if she would like.
Afternoons are free or structured depending on the day — piano lessons, art, time outside. And evenings are for typically family time. If there is a need to build in a workblock at that time it’s usually after my husband is home from work and he is spending some time with the girls. I have to be flexible with this as somedays I just need a bit of extra time and that’s okay!
Pillar Three: Work and Vocation
I run a Showit website template shop, which means my work is creative, strategic, and largely self-directed — which is both a gift and a challenge. No one tells me what to do or when. My rule does that instead.
I have two primary work blocks built into the day. The first is mid-morning, after schoolwork wraps up and before lunch. This is my best creative window — I use it for design work, writing, and anything that requires real focus.
The second block is after lunch, during the girls’ quiet reading time. This one is better suited to lighter tasks — emails, admin, social media, planning. My brain is less sharp in the afternoon, so I stop fighting that and just work with it.
Neither block is particularly long. But they’re consistent, protected, and enough. Having two predictable windows means I’m not scrambling to find time — I know exactly when work happens, which makes it easier to be fully present everywhere else.
Pillar Four: Rest and Renewal
This is the pillar I had to learn to take seriously. Rest always felt like something I’d get to eventually — when the work was done, when the house was clean, when things were caught up. Which meant it never really happened.
What restores me is pretty simple: being outside, moving slowly, reading for pleasure, and having stretches of quiet. Gardening is probably my purest form of rest — there’s something about working with your hands in the dirt that quiets everything else. A walk does the same thing. So does an hour with a good book that has nothing to do with business or spirituality — just a story.
My rule protects at least one of these things most days. Not as a reward. As a necessity.
And Sunday is Sunday. We try to keep it genuinely restful — Mass, a slow afternoon, no work. The liturgical tradition of Sabbath isn’t just a nice idea; it’s been one of the most countercultural and freeing commitments I’ve made.
My Daily Homeschool Mom Schedule (Hour by Hour)
- 6:00 am— Quiet hour: Mother’s Daily Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio Divina reading or spiritual work, journaling
- 7:00 am— Girls wake up, slow morning, breakfast
- 8:00 am— Morning prayers together, Bible story
- 8:30 am— Read-aloud while girls play or draw
- 9:00 am— Focused schoolwork (math, writing, spelling)
- 10:30 am – Daily Walk Together / Mom Workout
- 11:00 am— Work block — creative and strategic tasks
- 12:00 pm— Lunch together, literature read-aloud
- 1:00 pm— Quiet reading time + work block — admin, email, planning
- 2:30 pm— Free time, extras (piano, art, outside)
- Evening— Family time, no work typically, Night prayers before bed
Now, this is an “ideal” day but typically we have something else thrown in such as park days (usually in the afternoon or morning 2x a week), errands and library runs, and we usually go to daily mass on Fridays. The goal is to have a baseline that you can always return to.
What I’m Still Figuring Out
I want to be honest here: this rule is not something I arrived at fully formed. It’s something I’ve built slowly, adjusted repeatedly, and am still refining.
The quiet hour is the most protected part of my day — I rarely let that slip. The work blocks are solid. The school rhythms feel good.
Rest is still the hardest. I know it’s in my rule. I know it matters. And I still sometimes fill a quiet afternoon with something productive instead of something restorative. It’s a slow unlearning.
I’m also learning to let the liturgical seasons actually shape my work calendar — to plan a gentler Advent, a quieter Lent, a more celebratory Easter season. I’m getting better at this, but it’s a practice, not an achievement.
How to Create Your Own Mother’s Rule of Life
I’m not sharing this so you can copy it. I’m sharing it so you can see that a real rule — one that holds prayer, school, work, and rest together in a single day — is actually possible. It doesn’t require a perfect life. It just requires intention.
Your quiet hour might be at a different time. Your school day might look completely different. Your rest might be running or baking or sitting on the porch. That’s exactly right. A Rule of Life is personal by design.
The question isn’t: can I copy her schedule? The question is: what does faithfulness look like in my actual life, in this actual season?
Start there. Write it down. Live it imperfectly and return to it gently.
That is the whole practice.
Ready to write your own? Go back to [my last post] for the four pillars framework, grab a notebook, and start with just one area. You don’t need to have it all figured out to begin.
