I think my homeschool journey began about 16 years ago when I was still in college.  I had a psychology major with a journalism minor and dreamed of working with Focus on the Family someday.  I thought that was the highest calling to ministry, but then God started drawing me towards an education major.  I thought education was an even better ministry because then I'd have 25 - 30 students daily in my care.  I was so gung-ho. 

My husband and I married during my junior year of college and I was 6 months pregnant by the time graduation rolled around.  I knew from my experience of working in preschools that I wanted to stay home for the first year with our baby, but after that I'd have to get a teaching job.  So that's what I did. 

God provided good babysitters while I taught other people's children for 4 years, but He used those years of teaching to show me how important parents are.  As a teacher you get to see the good, bad and the ugly and I knew that I wanted to be home with my son instead of teaching other people's children each day.  I realized that my most important minsitry was that of wife and mother.

So I took a one year leave of absence (to make sure that we could make it on one income) and never looked back.  Of course most people just assumed that when my children got school age that I'd go back to teaching, but that wasn't God's plan.   As our oldest reached school age, my husband and I realized that the decision of where our child would go to school was HUGE.  The idea of him being away from us everyday and entrusting him to someone else's care just didn't seem right, but we didn't know much about homeschooling. 

We prayed and laid out our three options - public, private or homeschool.  For awhile it seemed like my husband and I were always favoring different options.  But then the Columbine school shootings happened.  We thought about hard it must be to be away from your child and unable to protect them.  Then our local newspaper featured a homeschool family and told their story of how their oldest was going on a scholarship to college.  I contacted the paper and got the number of that homeschool mom and called her with all of my questions.  She was so gracious and answered all of questions patiently and told me when the next support group meeting was coming up so that my husband and I could attend. 

She ended the conversation with "I can't wait to see what God is going to do in your family." and I think that was a light bulb moment for me.  I realized that it really was about God and our family, rather than just about sending him off on the yellow bus to "school"  So God began leading my husband towards homeschooling as well and we knew that He was calling us to something different.  Who would have thought a public school teacher would end up homeschooling her own?  Truthfully I now realize that more public school teachers are homeschooling their own children because they are learning about what real education is and just how hard it is for that to take place in a classroom.  And there are even more parents choosing to homeschool year after year. 

I'm just so thankful that God called my husband and me to homeschool.  It has helped us to have a wonderful relationship with each other and has drawn us even closer to God.  It's not always an easy journey, but I know that God has prepared the way for us and will carry us through it.