What have 23 years of homeschooling taught me about God and his kingdom ways?
Have you heard the saying: The teacher always learns the most? No one finds that more true than the homeschooling mom. She’s learning how to meet the physical, emotional, spiritual, and educational needs of her growing children; the content to teach all the subjects; time management skills on steroids; and training the kids to keep their space neat, cook, learn school content, and treat others well. She’s drinking from a firehose most days.
The youngest of our four children graduated from homeschool in spring of 2023. I’ve had some time to reflect on our 33 years of homeschooling. Seeing the kids do well and make adult choices and succeed in life is very fulfilling. It makes all those years of sacrificing, scrimping, lost hours of sleep, and tearful ‘parent/teacher’ conferences worth it.
I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned about God along the way.
You’ll never get it all done, so do what you can. Triage the tasks. Delegate what you can and be satisfied with how a 10 year old child cleans the toilet. Getting it all done is not the goal. Having a safe, loving, encouraging home is the goal. God doesn’t expect perfection, just persistence.
The whole world is a classroom! Everywhere we go there are people who know more than we do. There are things we’ve never seen before. There are opportunities to do something extra. If we go into the world with an expectation of learning, we will never be disappointed. God created a beautiful world to reveal himself to us.
Education is a lifelong pursuit. Every homeschooling mom I’ve ever talked with worries that they are doing enough. Are we teaching the right information? Have we chosen the right curriculum? Am I challenging my children enough? Too much? I was talking to Paul once about this and he said (as a career chemistry teacher in our local high school): “If they can read, write, do math and are curious, they can learn anything they need to at the right time.” This was incredibly reassuring to me and I have shared it with many a fretting mom. We are simply the launch pad, the foundation. Where they go and what they do with it will take a lifetime to discover. God always has more of himself and his plan to give us.
We are all created differently. This is one that I’m sure I knew before homeschooling. But working with 4 uniquely different individuals helped me to really KNOW it. Each of my kids has different strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and disabilities. Learning to appreciate each of them and teach them in ways to use the strengths to build up the weaknesses was an adventure, for sure! Now, when I look at others, I try to remember that we are all unique creations of a loving God with unique experiences and stories. God works with you differently than He has worked with me.
Patience is key. When the kids are fighting and the house is a wreck and they bulk at their assignments and hubby is away and you don’t have enough sleep and there’s no menu plan and you need a shower and the litter box reeks and laundry needs done, patience is key. Patience with yourself. Patience with the kids. Patience with the situation. Sometimes the best thing to do is to ditch any semblance of a plan you had for the day and get outside. Take a deep breath. Say a prayer. God is infinitely patient with us and our mistakes.
His timing is not my timing. There’s no one more optimistic than a homeschooling mom in August. She has her curriculum, a schedule, and a vision of harmonious children actively engaged in learning. After a few years I realized that I needed to have a plan in place to start the year and that I needed to be flexible in it’s implementation. Usually somewhere about mid September we settled into the pattern for the year. God’s timing is perfect, mine is flawed.
Love covers a multitude of offences. When we freely forgive one another we bring heaven to earth. A key practice to making a family strong is learning to forgive as we learn together. Homeschooling gave so many opportunities to practice this godly habit. God forgives us freely, as we ask, to maintain the relationship.
It’s never too late. Despite all the guides and expert advice, we all learn things at different rates. Are there patterns, of course! But just because someone doesn’t learn to read at age 5 or do long division by age 9 doesn’t mean all hope is lost. For one of my kids, it was Sr. year when grammar made sense. For another, it was Sr. year when meeting deadlines became important. But it’s never too late. God may be trying to teach us something for years until it finally settles in our hearts as truth to live by. God is always available, regardless of the hour.
God is in everything. Devotions, sure. Gratitude journals, of course! History, when taught correctly. Language Arts, in subtle but powerful ways. Science, again, when taught correctly. Math, if you’re looking for it. Health, music, art, phys. ed., He’s everywhere! It was really fun to be free to teach our kids from the Christian worldview and show them how God’s fingerprints are all over! God is in all and through all and above all.
The family unit is where Kingdom principles are formed. I often told the kids that they practice obeying us so that when they are grown they know how to obey God. They learn to share with siblings so that they can cooperate with others. They follow our plans and schedules so that they can enjoy an organized life as adults. The family is the best representation of God’s kingdom that we have.
Each of these brief paragraphs could be expanded with a multitude of examples from our life as homeschoolers but this gives you a glimpse. God reveals himself to each of us in ways which we understand and relate to. This is part of my story and I am grateful for all that God has shown me about himself and his kingdom from those beautiful years.
