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Jeremiah and I have had a good school week. We've worked hard nearly every morning on his basic readiness skills. And Jerry doesn't even seem to mind that he is the only one doing school while his siblings are on their summer vacation. Of course he has no concept of summer vacation, but he is aware that they are not doing school. I am schooling Jerry through the summer because I am worried about how far he might regress if we don't. He still has difficulties in retaining new information without constant repetition. I am anxious to hear what they say at his developmental evaluation on July 1st at Children's Medical Services. I am praying that they will give me new insight as to how to best teach Jerry in a way that he will get the most out of what he is learning.
I have to switch gears here now and tell you about something that has been heavy on my heart for the last month or so now. You know how you believe you’re going somewhere for a certain reason you have come up with and, then when you get there, you discover that God has you there for an entirely different reason altogether? I thought I was going to the FPEA home school convention for my third year in a row to buy my children’s curriculum. I was there for the fellowship with my friends, there for a little recouping and regrouping without my children after a very long school year. I was there for some encouragement and even there to sell a few of my own books in the vendor hall. That's not why God had me there though.
God had me there to hear a particular speaker's message on May 23rd that will forever change the way I home school my children, especially Jeremiah. The speaker was R.C. Sproul Jr. and the title of the workshop was “The Three G’s”. In a nutshell, R.C. maintains that the “goal of education is discipleship; the goal of seeing your children bear fruit, grow in grace, and become more like Christ". He challenged us to find the words school, curriculum, or even education in the concordances of our Bibles. Guess what we found? Nothing! Our children need to be taught who God is, what God has done for them, and what God requires of them. In answering the last question, we need to direct our children to the One whom God required everything from and He delivered...our Savior Jesus Christ. And those concepts are found in the Bible.
I walked away from the workshop encouraged, yes…but also a little discouraged. Not in what was said or R.C., but in myself and what my goal of home educating my children had been for the last six years. I felt so convicted by R.C.’s message! It was as though he were speaking directly to me. Now he didn’t say that SAT and other test scores were completely unimportant. He didn’t say that we shouldn’t be concerned with what’s in the curriculum we’re using to teach our children. But if our goal as parents and educators is to educate our children well so that they can get a good job and make a lot of money someday, then our priorities are all screwed up! And I’ll be the first to admit that with three boys who will someday need to be providers of their families, that’s always been on the forefront of my mind.
But if we only want for them what every other parent in the world wants for their children, then why do we choose to home school them? Yes, I want my children to be smart enough someday to earn a living to provide for themselves and their families, but don’t I want them to know who their Savior is and have a personally relationship with Him more? Should being a missionary who lives in a thatched-roof hut in the jungles of South America depending on a monthly support check from parishioners back home be seen as any less prestigious than a lawyer or a doctor? On the contrary! And I have some friends who are doctors and lawyers and use their God-gifted skills for the Lord’s glory so please don’t misunderstand me.
Now my children would love for me to scrap all of those language arts and math books at this point, but that would be going from one extreme to the other. Instead, I am reorganizing my priorities with them, more specifically with Jeremiah. I have been so focused on Jeremiah meeting his IEP goals that I have neglected how to teach him in a way that will help him meet his ISP…independent spiritual plan goals. Because of the way Jeremiah sees things and communicates with us, the way he will learn about God and who He is will be different from my other children as well.
Though they are discovering new truths about their Savior everyday, as we all should be, my three oldest children are assured of their salvation in Christ and do have an active personal relationship with Him. And that's my new goal for Jeremiah. I will share with you all soon how I feel God is preparing me to do just that, but I want to tell you now about something that happened last night.
I have to go back to Wednesday night when our television stopped working. When we turned it on, we had sound, but only one thin line of picture right across the middle of the screen. We'd seen this coming because we'd gotten a preview of the problem before. Usually, we just turned the TV off and on a few times and the picture would restore itself. There was no resurrecting it this time though. It was shot for sure. After a little research we discovered that it was the bulb and about $185 for the part alone. And the TV's not even that old! Needless to say, we decided it would be wiser to just buy a new set.
I went to dinner last night with my girlfriend I used to work with (back in the day when my job duties consisted of filing, typing, and answering phones). During the course of our visit and conversation, I told her about our plans for a new TV. She told me that her and her husband had a television that was just a few years old, but they'd upgraded to a flat screen HDTV and had no need for their other set. It was just sitting on the floor of their office with its remote and instruction manual. She invited us to come over and look at the TV to see if we would be interested in it and if it would fit in our entertainment cabinet.
At this point, it probably could have been a 12" black and white set with no remote and we would have taken it. Now we're not huge TV people. In fact, during the week, ours doesn't usually even go on until around 3 pm or so...after school, swimming, field trips, or whatever. And there are times when the kids would rather read, play in their rooms, or just listen to Christian radio. They are by no means TV zombies. But around 3 or so, when I'm trying to switch gears and start figuring out dinner and prepare for John getting home from work, it's nice to have them stop moving for an hour or two and just sit in front of it peacefully! I will never hide the fact that I sometimes use the TV for my own selfish desires and purposes. Survival mode moms!! We live in apartments where saying, "go outside and play" is not an option!
Anyway, after Cracker Barrel, we headed to Lois' house to look at the TV. And it was perfect. Same size as our old one and like new! Praise God! Gary was not home for the evening yet and Lois had been unsuccessful in reaching him via cell phone and so she told me that she would call me later in the evening to me know whether or not we could have the TV, and for free, as she did not feel she could make that decision for him. So we left and headed for home.
Now Jeremiah, who only knew we had just gone to look at a TV did not understand why we were leaving without it when we had told him our plans to get a new one. He got in his seatbelt in the van and just broke down into tears. We explained to him that Lois would call us later and that maybe we would get it tomorrow (today) and he did stifle the sniffles just a bit. Almost to the apartment, Jeremiah piped up over the radio, "Mommy, can we pray for to get the TV?"
Absolutely! Now we pray a lot around here...and out loud. We pray for good parking spaces when it's raining and we have to grocery shop. We pray for nice weather to go swimming and for countless boo boos of course. I am also on our church's prayer chain and so get the calls weekly for fellow brothers and sisters with more significant emergency prayer requests. I try to include the kids in praying for those needs as much as possible too.
So we turned down the radio and I began to pray, "Dear Jesus, we know it's just a TV, but we pray right now"....RING (my cell phone that I'm ignoring because we're praying...blasted technology...can't live with it, can't live without it). Back to praying, "We just pray father that when Miss Lois talks to Gary he would say that we can have their old TV...." RING (again). This time I take a peek at the caller ID. It's Lois. "Amen", I promptly end our prayer time with as I answer my phone. "Hi Tara. Gary just called and he said of course you guys can have the TV. Are you home yet? Can you come back and get it?"
How's that for a quick answer to prayer. I got off the phone and told the kids what Lois had told me and they cheered. I said, "See how Jesus answers us when we pray to Him Jerry?" What a lesson. He was so excited. He exclaimed, "Thank you Jesus!" I just love how God will use whatever it takes to teach the simplest of His truths. I still need to reorganize my priorities for educating Jeremiah, but I also need to stop worrying about how I will teach my little man who takes "Jesus living in your heart" literally the truths found in Scripture...and how he can have a personal relationship with someone he cannot physically see. My job, and John's, as his parents, is to pray for God to do the work in Jerry. And we have been.
Thank you Jesus for using a broken TV to begin that work in progress. You are so faithful to us and your grace is amazingly abundant in our lives. AMEN!
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Jun. 15, 2008 - I stand beside you..