Keep the Faith, Baby

Ten and a half years ago when we started homeschooling, there was lots of pessimistic encouragement in the form of “It’s worth a try; you can’t mess up kindergarten.” In other words, never fear, for if (or when) you fail at this endeavor, the schools are still waiting to take your children and they could undo anything horrible that you did. 

Now, as my youngest enters high school, I find less people with encouraging words – even those who homeschool themselves. There is this idea that high school should be hard and not only should I not be able to teach most of it, but my kids must be missing something. I’ve heard moms say, “Aren’t you freaking out? Aren’t you worried? Aren’t you afraid?” 

I check in with my kids pretty regularly – I mean, I see them pretty much all day, every day, and we do talk about stuff. I ask them if they are still happy homeschooling. (They are.) In fact, they’d be highly offended if I wanted to switch venues at this point. They would think I was pretty hypocritical and wonder if I still loved them as much as I did when they were little. (I do.) 

Do I ever have fears and uncertainties? Of course. Who wouldn’t? We can’t know the future. We can’t know what we might have “missed,” by definition, until we run into problems. So far, we haven’t. But, I do know God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He knows the future. And He is the one who set us down this path. And I trust that He knows what He is doing, even when I don’t. 

A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps. 

Proverbs 16:9

We are trying some new things this year. My kids have started earning college credits through examination. If they continue to do well, we’ll ditch more and more high school and keep on this path. I find that they are meeting the challenges that are set before them. When they hit a roadblock, we’ll stop and look for the way around or through it. 

I don’t know about you, but I was public schooled and ran into confusing situations and roadblocks and followed divergent paths and somehow I still got into (and graduated) college (and my college was the infamous UCF which stands for “U Can’t Finish”). Amazingly, those career goals (public school teacher) that I set for myself didn’t materialize, but God had uniquely prepared me to do what my future really held: wife, mother, homeschooler. So, fear or no fear, I’ll go down this road as far as God leads and as long as He is holding my hand.