Photo credit: Lillian Rachel

Conversations about homeschooling, hundreds of them!- around coffee tables and the same questions over and over again (and I’ve wondered if there is a book out there entitled, “Questions to Ask a Homeschool Mom and her Children” that everyone has already read), and the looks, and the trying to persuade you to quit (for your children’s sake, and your own sanity), and the words: socialization, find-time-for-yourself, tolerance, really? have all been present every time. And of course I learned the correct answer to each of those questions, actually I had two kind of answers for each question: the simple, for the lady waiting on line in the supermarket or for the couple across our table in a business banquet; and the long one, for the moms that were also waiting with me for the gymnastic training or music lessons to be over.

And people asked all these questions and many looked down at us, and kept their eyes on us (even though they pretended not to be spying into our lives) because they were, in a certain way, expecting us to fail in this life experiment. So let me take a minute to answer the real question behind all those hundreds questions: Why did you start doing this?  To have smarter kids? No way. To have well socialized kids? Nope. So that they would not be “contaminated by the world.” Probably you haven’t realized that sin dwells in the heart of a lovely child, of a dad, of a mom; there is absolutely no need to look for it outside your own home. Or maybe you homeschooled your kids to keep them from all heart-breaking stories? No, no.  The reason to  start  -and persevere- on this journey has to be one that is so strong that becomes part of who you are. And what reason is strong enough to make us wake up early every morning, and help us keep pressing on when our heart faints and the tears run, and we know we have failed, and we just don’t know what lies ahead, but this: to bring up our children in the Covenant of God? Yes, yes! This is the real, strong reason behind the many books on the table, and the planners, and the board on the wall, and the mold growing in the cream-cheese in fridge (on purpose, of course). All these rhythms of life have become ours because we wanted -each day- to feed our children’s souls with God’s Word and hundreds of stories and we wanted to teach them to see the stars, and the ocean, and the Greeks, and the Aztecs, and Reubens, and Frida Khalo all through the light of the Scriptures. All through one lens: Truth. We wanted to live the daily, beautiful, God-given life together under God’s grace, under His Covenant.

And we are grateful, so incredibly grateful for the work of the Spirit in each one of our children and for the many ways in which He has faithfully kept them in His Covenant. We rejoice in our loving God and in His ways. We can proclaim with a loud voice: God is indeed faithful! He delights to keep His covenant. He is a God that loves to save children, families, and bless the generations of the righteous.

It’s already summer and this one will be different. We’ll pack the suitcases of two of our children who will be moving  2626.54 miles away from home, and I already miss them but to know that they are walking in the Covenant of Grace is enough to make my heart swell with gladness and rest assured that God will finish what He started in them -in us, in me-

“Wisdom is an ambitious woman. In Proverbs 8 she describes how she’s a catch. The knowledge to get power, wealth, competence and circumspection is hers, yet she delights to teach from her home. When Jesus says, Wisdom is vindicated by her children, his statement assumes that Wisdom is a homeschooling mom.” Dr. Michael Collender

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky