The Road that Led to Homeschool: Part 1

I love long drives in the country, but more than once I’ve started down a road and somewhere along the way realized it wasn’t taking me in the direction I wanted to go. And without knowledge of any sideroads or shortcuts to get me back on track, there was nothing I could do but turn completely around and go in the opposite direction.

Sometimes we have to do the same in life. Sometimes we set out with certain ideas and opinions and in time we begin to see how off-track we’ve really been. We can continue in the way we were going and convince ourselves it’ll work out in the end, but the only sensible thing to do is own up to our mistake and turn around. Eating crow like that is rarely fun, but it’s not so bad. Right now I’m doing it gladly! Never in my life have I been so happy to be wrong!

I said I would never homeschool–ever–and I said it lots of times to lots of people. And funnier still–every time I said it, I meant it!

Yet here I am just a few short years later, homeschooling my children and every day growing only more passionate in my decision to educate my children at home.

It sounds melodramatic, maybe even corny to say it, but homeschooling has changed my life. Or maybe not. Maybe my life has changed and so I’m homeschooling. I’m not sure, but whatever has happened, I know that my ideas and my assumptions and my preconceived notions have been so turned upside-down in the past couple of years that sometimes I hardly recognize myself! In an amazingly short amount of time I’ve gone from being practically anti-homeschool to being one of the biggest homeschooling advocates I know. And for an opinionated, hard-headed, anything-but-wishy-washy gal like myself, that’s a very big deal!

But before I hit you with all the reasons I now believe in the very education choice I once criticized, let me offer you my disclaimer. In nothing I say here am I trying to imply that I know what is best for anyone else. Every family is faced with different circumstances and unique challenges and every parent has to make the hard decisions about what educational choices will work best for themselves and for their children. I can’t pretend to know what is best for yours.

Neither am I trying to tell anyone what they’re capable of. God is the only true judge of a person’s abilities, strengths, and weaknesses and He alone knows and understands the kinds of limitations put upon each of us by these things and by the circumstances of our lives.

But all of that said, I know from personal experience how easy it is to throw out a rigid, adamant “NO” to homeschooling without ever giving the issue the slightest real, true, serious consideration.

I know that because I did it! I had a list of reasons why I would never and could never homeschool and nothing you or anybody else said was ever going to change my mind! I couldn’t do it. Period. And there was no sense talking about it further.

Honestly, God must’ve laughed at me. And then the future of our church’s small Christian school began to look uncertain and private schools in the area were out of reach financially and public school was simply not an option, (a subject God had already changed my mind about, but we’ll get to that later,) and I remember uttering a weak, almost unintentional prayer.

“God, if you want me to homeschool, you’re gonna have to change my heart.”

I’m not even sure I meant it when I prayed it, yet God in His goodness took hold of that pitiful prayer and a half-hearted desire to do the right thing and He started me down a road that has been paved with His purpose and drenched in His grace all along the way!

I am in awe of it. And I’ll let you in on some of the journey thus far…