Its hard to believe that it
was one year ago that I said goodbye to my seventh graders at Nascar Speedpark
and hopped in the car to head to my first home school conference. I remember at
the time feeling excited and a little sad, but mostly scared to death. I’ll
never forget my first experience at the book fair. I had been told by many that
this could be an overwhelming encounter, but had ignored this advice thinking
that I would be able to handle it with ease. I mean, I love books! What could
be stressful about that? However, after talking to a few of the vendors who
were all absolutely certain that my children needed their curriculum and who
insisted that they would not learn a thing if we went in another direction, I
was completely overwhelmed. I mean, what if I made the wrong choice? What if I
chose something that wouldn’t work for them? What if they didn’t learn as much
at home with me as they would have at Southlake? What if I failed? What if they
hated homeschool? And on and on it went. Needless to say, I left the book fair
in tears that day.
I had unfortunately gone
into the conference with the voices of “nay-sayers” in my head. It still amazes
me how many people felt the need to voice their opinions (mostly uneducated and
negative) to me when they found out we were going to homeschool. I mean, why
would we take them out of a perfectly good Christian school? Why wouldn’t we
want them to be socialized like normal kids? Weren’t we afraid they would be
weird or different from everyone else? Weren’t we afraid that we were
sheltering them from the real world? Would they be able to function in a real
life setting if we didn’t expose them to school? How would they learn to
interact with others, especially those who are different than they are? Was I
sure that I was qualified to teach them every subject? And on and on it went.
What if, What if, WHAT IF?
Fortunately, the homeschool conference is a great place to be if you are
feeling unsure or uncertain of homeschool. All the “what ifs”…the “I
Fears”…that were running through my head were addressed that weekend. More than that, I came away with the
conviction that all of the worries, all of the fears, all of the doubts that I
was having were rooted in my wrong understanding of what school was all about
in the first place. Truly, is the purpose of schooling to educate children in
the various disciplines of academia, to prepare them to get into a good
college, so that they can get a good job and become a productive member of
society? I think most people would answer with a resounding, “Yes”. I mean,
what else is there? But what I started to see that weekend, and what the Lord
is showing me more and more as each day passes is, in fact, that there is SO.
MUCH. MORE.
There is so much more that I
don’t think that I have even begun to fully grasp it myself. What do I really
want for my children when all is said and done? The truth is I want so much
more for them than the typical “American Dream”. I want so much more for them
than a college education and a spouse and a couple of kids. I want so much more
for them than church attendance on Sundays and Wednesdays. I want so much more
for them than just being happy. Over and over again, I have found myself asking
the question, is this really what it looks like to truly follow Jesus? And over
and over again I feel that the answer is No. There is so much more.
What I really want is for them to be Christ
followers, true disciples. I want them to love Jesus with their whole hearts, taking
up their crosses and laying down their lives. I want them to experience the JOY
that comes from knowing that their hope is in a future yet to come instead of
trading it for a cheap substitute of happiness here on earth, which is fleeting
and circumstantial. I want them to see, to
really see, that their purpose here is not about them, but about God and
bringing Him glory. I want them to know that their relationship with the Lord
is not about church attendance or Bible knowledge. I want the purpose of their
schooling to be about preparing them to do His will, to bring Him praise, and
to serve Him faithfully. I mean, honestly, what else is there?
At the close of our first
year of homeschool, I can say that this year has been just as much (if not
more) about the Lord teaching me as it was about me teaching my kids. As I said
earlier, I have not completely grasped all of these things that I so
desperately want for my kids. I am so far from having this all figured out or
from knowing how to apply it to my life. The Lord is still teaching me, peeling
back the scales from my own eyes, giving me revelation of who He is, and what
my life should look like in response. And
I have such a long way to go. But my hope is that as He leads me, He will
enable me to lead my children. As He teaches me, He will show me how to teach
my children. As He instructs me in His ways, He will give me the grace to
instruct them in how to follow Him. And that He will do through me what is
impossible for me to do on my own.
Now, as I prepare to head to
my 2nd homeschool conference, I go with the revelation that this is
about so much more than I first thought. This is about the Lord working in our whole
family, to shape us into vessels that are truly useful to Him and His purposes.
It’s about weeding out the distractions and the false perceptions that we had
about what was important in this life. It’s about Him pruning my heart of all
the wickedness and self-centeredness that is there. It’s about the Lord showing
me that there is so much more to truly following Him than I thought before. So,
this time I go with a different set of thoughts in my head. Now I think, What
if they aren’t like everyone else? And I pray that they won’t be. I pray that
they will seem odd to the world around them. Strangers. Aliens. Pilgrims
passing through. I pray that they will get what I am only beginning to grasp.
That it will take root deep within their souls. That their lives will be so
much more. And that maybe, just maybe,
mine will too.
