Blogger Friend School Assignment 1

Assignment: Take time this week to write about YOU and your feelings of trials and triumphs with homeschooling. Touch on when you first heard about the concept of home schooling and whether you tip-toed into the idea or just jumped in and never looked back. Share your schooling as a child and how you compare it to what your goals are for your children.

Hmm...well, in all honesty my first thoughts of homeschooling families were along the lines of "they're crazy to spend all that time with their kids" "she must be super-mom" "that's nice for THEM but I look forward to some free-time for ME when my kids are school-aged"....thank God for His gentle guidance and my great change of heart and mind towards my children!!! My husband and I decided to homeschool when our oldest was approaching preschool. Largely our decision was influenced by researching homeschooling as well as the history of the public school movement. We truly believed that we needed to live out Deuteronomy 6 and raise our children with a vastly richer Biblical foundation than they would get by attending school even a Christian private school.

When I look back at the education I had, it's pretty similar to most people's I would guess. I attended public school all my life (as did DH). I didn't have any ENORMOUSLY terrible things happen to me there, nor did my husband. However, I did learn to live my life in a godless vacuum. What do I mean? I learned that we were not to SPEAK OF, nor PRAY TO, nor READ ABOUT God in school. I practiced this very well. I would go to church on Sunday and go to youth group during the week. I knew who the other Christian kids were and they knew who I was, but that was about it. I learned to LEARN in the absence of God, all my subjects were strictly learned without mention of God. Now most people will argue that this only matters in Science due to Creation/Evolution etc. I argue that that belief is a LIE. ALL of life should be viewed through the lens of Scripture: Literature, Poetry, Science, History etc. Even math! If there is no God then there is no Absolute. If there is no Absolute then even math is meaningless because on what basis do we claim that 2+2 is ALWAYS 4 unless we have absolute truth? I have learned in my adulthood how little History I actually ever learned in school and how much damage has been done to the history taught in school through revisionist teaching.

When the time came to make a decision for our children the choice was clear. God had taken my once arrogant and selfish heart "I'm looking forward to the ME time when they go off to school" to who I am now, a woman who still struggles with selfishness, but views my calling as a wife and mother as the noblest of all callings. A woman who has embraced the vision of my husband to see all of our children grow in the discipline and admonition of the Lord and who dreams of one day seeing the fruit of this labor in the lives of my grandchildren.

The verse I cling to is: "Do not grow weary in well doing, for in due season you shall reap if you faint not." What a glorious promise!