This past Monday, I had a sweet friend visit whose daughter was playing with Joy. She, like me, has a lot of older kids above her last child, who is Joy's friend. We were talking about homeschooling, and she said, "You know, I wish I could get young moms not to waste their time worrying so much. Now that one of my children has received his doctorate and another a Masters, I know that the homeschooling lifestyle is enough."

 

We talked some more about the importance of just having our children with us, discipling them in the moments of their lives, and allowing them to know our love and hear our hearts for Jesus. I have always believed that our wholehearted learning lifestyle was more important to my children's development than any educational methodology or material. The family and the home is God's design for living and learning, and it will work if we learn the lifestyle.

 

Later in the day, Joel opened a letter and let out an exicted whoop. The letter was from Seattle Pacific University, which he visited recently, offering him a Presidential Scholarship that would cover a big percentage of his college costs. It was a confirmation of a prayer about attending that college next fall. How grateful we are to see the Lord opening doors for him. In the same way, we've been encouraged to see Sarah blossoming as a writer, a thinker, and a woman of beauty and creativity. She  did so well on her SAT's , but it has had little to do with the wonderful person she has become.

 

But when I look back on their homeschooling, I will be the first to admit that their education had lots of holes in it. We didn't finish every workbook, rarely got every year of math done, and failed to study some subjects that I thought I needed to cover after hearing so many idealistic talks at homeschooling fairs. And yet, my home was a great environment to grow active minds, good consciences, useful life skills, and refined appetites for great things in life. The atmosphere was always alive with he Bible, great music and art, great stories, classic literature, engaging books, challenging articles from selected periodicals and online sources, and lots and lots of great meals and hot tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. And many of those things went with us on the road when we would travel. Every day of their lives, my children breathed in the enriched oxygen of a wholehearted living and learning atmosphere.

 

Our home has always been full of love for one another, passion for Christ, and commitment to close family relationships. There are always interruptions (for us, seventeen moves, asthma, floods, fussy children, and much more), but we kept to our goals of providing a regular diet of all the things we valued the most, and believed would make our children wholehearted followers of God. And despite the holes, despite the interruptions, and even despite my own limitations as a mother, God has used His design to accomplish His purposes in my children. My confidence is not in what workbook to buy, or whether I'm doing all the right things, but rather it is in God and His design for my home and family. And that is why I don't worry.