Stepping Out to do What?!?!

I am a huge advocate of home schooling. I have always said that if my child was not thriving or if the school systems in our area were not good, then I would definitely home school. With that said, Hunter has had a great year at school and we are districted into one of the best elementary schools in our school system, so I thought I was smooth sailing as far as not having to home school. Heck, we intentionally bought a house in this zone so that we would be in one of the “good” schools. For the record, I have had absolutely NO complaints about Hunter’s school.

God started laying home schooling on my heart and once God places something on my heart, He makes sure that I am listening.  I will go ahead and admit that I kept pushing against Him by saying, “Hunter is doing great, we are in the “good” school, his teachers are Christians, people will think we are weird, I am not patient enough, I still want my social life, etc etc etc.”

But, for all my pushing against Him, He started pushing on me even harder.  For all the excuses I came up with, He gave me reasons why they were invalid.  I am a firm believer that when it is in God’s will, then it will happen. God’s will will… period.

About a month ago, after church, the Lord just kept laying it on me… up to this point, I had not even told Chad what had been going through my mind/ heart. I finally asked him to start praying about it too. I will go ahead and say that he was a bit skeptical. He has always been proud to be a product of the public school system. And, let me just add here, that I see absolutely nothing wrong with public school. There is an unnecessary segregation between the public school, private school, Christian school, and home school world. What works for one family may not work for another. Anyway, back to what I was saying… Chad immediately brought up socialization- which had always been in my mind as well. Will home schooling make our kids weird/ different? The past year, the Lord had been dealing with both us on living radically, stepping up to be different, following Jesus’ lead and staying on the narrow path. After prayer, we both realized that regardless of if we home school or not, our prayer for our kids is that they in fact are different- that they stand out.

I have realized that my time with my kids is but a small window. I think it is very important to be in the world and not of the world. Though, at times I would love to keep them in a bubble- I know that we are called to GO into the world. Recently though, Jesus has made it clear to us that before we go into the world, we must be covered in the WORD. For our family, sending our kids to school 7 hours a day where the name of Jesus is not spoken and then coming home for a few hours before doing the next activity or going to bed is just not enough. Even Jesus was 12 years old before He really went out into the world.

My panic attack begins when I start thinking in the long term. And every time I get past next year, I hear the Lord just saying, “be obedient now! Don’t worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself (Matthew 6:34)” It may be that this next year will allow us to realign and we may send Hunter and Ashton off to public school for 2013-2014 school year. If that is case, then great! I will know that I was obedient in what God told me to do this year. I also might add that I am prayerful that He will not call me to do this throughout their entire schooling… just for good measure and to put it into writing- PLEASE LORD, NO!

But I can say with a certain amount of confidence that we will be home schooling Hunter next year. Ashton and Shepherd will also have little lessons 3 or 4 days a week. Ashton will do a Christian pre-school 3 mornings a week (from 9 to 1). I think that will allow me to concentrate on getting the hang of teaching again (since I have been out of the classroom for 3 years now and I have never taught elementary age kids.)

What started out as dread has turned to a bit of fear to a bit of anxiousness to a true excitement. I fully believe this is where God wants our family to be next year.

I would ask that you would pray for us as we move into this new phase. I am excited but I know that I basically have just accepted a full time job where payment will hopefully be eternal.

Ok, I am going to hit PUBLISH now.  I feel like there is not turning back once I do that... Deep Breath...