Posted in Our Homeschool Beginnings

I first wanted to explain "why" these are "Chronicles from Holland" by including the poem by Emily Perl Kingsley, a favorite of many parents of special needs children. I then wanted to start this blog with remembering "why" we began this homeschooling journey.

Picture it...April 2001.  :-)

We were fairly happy with the school system, or so we thought. I began working in the special education department of my children's school when my youngest son, Dylan, started Kindergarten. I thought it was the perfect job, I would always be home when my kids were. God had other plans.  My clasroom being 2 doors down from Zack's,  I got to see what most parents don't get to see...what happens when parents aren't there.

I learned that my son's CDC (comprehensive development class) was glorified day care. I don't mean to insinuate that there aren't good teachers, because there are. I have met a couple. There were a couple of educational assistants that were very good to Zack and we are still friends with to this day. But I soon found that it was just a JOB to them. For some reason they weren't as bent on seeing Zack succeed as I was.  Who knew??? 

Without going into every horrific detail of all the incidents that happened, suffice it to say that God allowed things to get bad for Zack AND Dylan at school. It could have been going on all along for Zack and God just opened our eyes and allowed us to see. He had been calling us to home school for a couple years and we were ignoring that call. We were too scared. We were scared we could not make it on one income, and scared we could not meet Zack's needs. (YES...I sometimes forget that it is our Heavenly Father who meets all our needs abundantly and we are just blessed enough to be used by Him!)

Kurt and I had been praying for some time over this homeschooling thing that kept coming up. We were looking for God to just remove all our fears and pave the way so it could be smooth sailing.  I don't know where I thought we were to take a "step of faith". One particular day around March 2001 things were really bad for the boys in school. That evening Kurt and I knelt by the bed, both with heavy hearts and in tears, and asked God that if He was sure this was what He wanted us to do, then please "hit us in the head with a 2x4" so we would know. (Were we crazy or what???) The very next day we came home from school and checked the mail. In the mailbox was a catalog...a homeschooling catalog addressed to us! I opened the catalog and inside was a letter congratulating us on making the decision to home educate our children!!!!!!!  I called Kurt at work sobbing and telling him God just hit us with the 2x4!  He simply said "I guess that's it, turn in your notice."  To this day we don't know how we got on this compnay's mailing list. We never told anyone that we were even praying about homeschooling because we didn't want to be influenced one way or the other. However, when anyone asks what made us decide to homeschool-we always say that God sent us a letter!