Luke 8:15 (New Living Translation)
For the last 13 years or so, my family has been on a journey, on a path not like any that those in my family had traveled before. Minus one year when we were out of the country, we have educated our children at home. At the end of this coming academic year, Lord willing, we'll send out our first graduate, and then four more over the next 6 years.
Over the last weekend, I had the blessing of attending the Texas Home School Coalition Southwest Convention and Family Conference. At this point in the passage, I don't really need to hear about curriculum choices or scheduling suggestions or teaching tips. No. At this point, all I really need to do is to remember why.
Why did we choose home schooling all those years ago, when our now high school senior was not even school-aged, when her younger sisters had not even been born, when we should have been thinking preschool and Mom's Day Out and Montessori methods?
And why do we choose home schooling today, when there are options in front of us, and when being responsible for the education of 5 curious and uniquely different youths seems impossibly overwhelming, and perhaps we should be thinking weighted GPA's and varsity athletics and show choir and marching band?
Back then and still now it was and is the wisdom and promise of Deuteronomy 11:18-21 that impresses us:
You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth.
Because now, 2/3 of the way through this journey, we know all too well that time with these blessings is short. We know that there is no foolproof formula for success, and we know that we cannot of ourselves prevent rebellion or heartbreak. But we have 13 years now of walking along the way. We have had the joy of making memories. We've memorized poems and Scripture. We've built castles and cooked medieval feasts. We've displaced liquids and we've dissected frogs, squeamishly, down to the very last egg in that female's ovary. We've prayed for far-away people groups and we've read about far-away lands. We've served lunch to our home bound neighbors in sun and rain and snow. We've spelled list after list of words and transitioned from block print to cursive to keyboarding and declined Latin verbs and sang multiplication tables and deciphered the Periodic Table. We've shared sweet fellowship in music and athletics and co-ops. And we've done it all together, as a family.
Together as a family- which means that besides all that, we've worked through a boat-load of sin; which means that we are STILL, even today, learning what repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation and GRACE mean, in very practical, very real, ways. And in all those efforts, whether academic or spiritual, we have been planting seeds in soil long prepared. Now, as the fruit begins to ripen and the harvest we have prayed for is just a short time away, we still hear and study God's Word, and cling to it, and patiently wait.
I know that none of that makes much sense when looked at through the lens of traditional American education. Our route has been different than many would expect, different than my own experience. My students will never be on the honor roll. They won't have varsity letters on a jacket. They probably won't even go to a prom. Maybe by worldly standards they will have missed out.
I'm not worried. I am confident that God uses those whose hearts are fully His. As my kids have grown and matured, past the rough places of their hearts we see young people who are curious, who know how to work hard, who look to serve others, who seek after the Lord. And though I have regrets in parenting, having educated my kids at home is not yet one of them. By His grace, we'll continue to sow seeds for His Kingdom. And until He shows our family otherwise, we'll continue to do that while educating our kids primarily at home.
(photo: an olive tree near ripe, reminding me of Psalm 128)
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