Urgent Need: As the back-to-school season begins, families are facing mounting pressure—tough choices, cultural confusion, and strained relationships.
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Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6
Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Homeschooling is not the easy road. But then, neither is parenting.
Our family began homeschooling when our daughters were five years and 18 months old. At first, I extended our existing efforts to homeschooling. I read to them a lot, taught them basic skills, and introduced them to God’s Word. The girls learned the alphabet, colors, and shapes. They loved the attention, and I loved having a more directed plan for our days.
The first months of kindergarten came and went in a mostly happy blur. I felt a little concerned when my oldest daughter didn’t learn to read by the middle of the school year. I mean, everything I’d heard promised if I read to her every day (I had) and taught her phonics (I had), she’d be reading by the third week of school (she wasn’t).
What was taking so long?
Wise friends assured me that she would learn. “Be patient,” they said. “Every child learns at a different pace.”
But we weren’t talking about everyone. This was my daughter. The one I was responsible for. The one whose entire future would be determined by whether she learned to read.
For the first time, I realized homeschooling wasn’t all Legos and cupcakes. Some of it was hard work.
Some days, she cried.
Other days, I cried.
Occasionally, we both cried.
In time (hers, not mine), my daughter learned to read. So well, in fact, that she read Voltaire for fun in ninth grade. Despite being an auditory learner and, therefore, a terrible speller, she learned to read and write so proficiently she earned a perfect score on the verbal portion of the SAT. Today she works as a speechwriter for a high-level government official. Imagine that.
How long did it take you to discover that homeschooling is hard? A month? A week? A day?
Homeschooling is hard work. But so is parenting kids in private school and public school. No educational choice allows us to escape hard. If you’re in a difficult season right now, here are four truths to encourage you.
Until I understood God was working in and through me to homeschool my children, I assumed success was all up to me. If I chose the right”curriculum, my children would learn. Enrolling them in swimming instead of debate or debate instead of swimming, so they’d earn college scholarships. If I allowed or didn’t allow them to take part in youth group activities, they’d be stronger Christians.
Many days/weeks/months/years I trusted my intellect to guide me in making decisions. Or I relied on the advice of others. I homeschooled in my strength without tapping into the power and wisdom God offered me. This mindset brought me to the end of myself. I had no wisdom to draw from and no energy or desire to homeschool another day.
So, I cried out to God.
“Lord,” I prayed. “I’ve been trying to do this on my own. Instead of seeking your power and insight every day, I’ve been relying on myself. I realize now that I can’t do this alone. I need you. Forgive my independence. Work in my heart. Work in my children’s hearts. Give me the wisdom and ability I don’t have right now. Amen.”
I prayed that prayer almost every day thereafter. Homeschooling didn’t automatically become easier. Not every challenge resolved. But God continually reminded me we weren’t alone. He gave us the power to do what we needed to.
When you’re in the middle of a challenging season, you assume homeschooling will always be hard. But it isn’t. Each year includes subjects that everyone loves, making learning easier. Homeschooling is both hard and fun—like raising children.
There are some gray days with the sunshine. You may feel as though you’re dragging your children and their textbooks up Pike’s Peak. Will they ever learn to read, memorize their multiplication tables, stop picking their nose?
I recently grew impatient when a website took more than five seconds to load. Five seconds. Microwaves, fast internet, and Amazon Prime have eroded our ability to wait. We forget it takes time to reap a harvest.
Unlike baby rattlesnakes, whose mothers abandon them at birth, our children need our care and instruction for almost two decades. Longer, but they won’t admit it. They need consistent repetition and reinforcement.
Faith seeds, especially, take time to sprout. I often grew fearful for my girls. Would they place their faith in Christ? Once they had, when would I see spiritual growth? Would the Word of God I tried to hide in their hearts bear fruit?
A wise counselor once told me, “Your job is to plant the seeds. Only God can make them grow. Trust Him.”
He was right. In time, many of the faith lessons I taught my girls have become their own. God is a faithful Father and Gardener. He’s growing them—and me—in His perfect timing.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 commands, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
For many, homeschooling is one way God calls us to disciple our children. The ability to infuse our children’s education with biblical principles and teach them to process the world through a biblical worldview is part of God’s calling to raise our children in faith. We must take this calling seriously. If He’s called us to homeschool, we must obey and trust Him with the results.
Remember, when He calls us, He commits to provide everything we need to fulfill our calling (Philippians 4:13). We can trust Him, especially when it gets hard.
Life in the rearview is usually clearer than through the windshield. We have the ability to see more objectively when we look back on past events than when we’re in the messy middle.
The Bible tells us there’s wisdom in the aged, which is why He commanded the “older women to teach the younger women” in Titus 2:4-5. In the spirit of Titus 2, I want to share, as an older woman to younger women, what I’ve seen through the rearview mirror—the perspective you can’t see yet.
Some of you may have snorted at this point. Maybe given me an eye roll, too. It doesn’t take long to grow weary of the endless mundane chores that characterize a young mother’s days. Diapers—so many diapers. Meals—you can’t be hungry again. Dishes—do they ever stop? Laundry—how can one child go through three sets of clothing before lunchtime? Seriously.
Nothing about the day-to-day mom life seems like great work. But it is. Trust me.
Right now, you are loving and caring for helpless human beings. They wouldn’t live two days without you. They owe you their very life. Scary isn’t it? Because on bad days, when you feel like if you hear Mommy one more time you’re going to explode, you think about running away and never coming back.
But you don’t. You get up every morning and several times during the night to care for them. You feed them, clothe them, and love them. Every single day.
And it matters.
Don’t ever disparage your role as a mother. You are doing a great work.
You’re parenting an eternal soul. A living person who will one day grow up to take their place in the world. That little boy who loves science may one day crack the code on birth defects. That bright-eyed girl who patches up disputes between her siblings may one day broker a peace accord between warring nations.
They won’t be children forever.
When they grow up, whether they’re the president of the United States or a janitor at the local Christian school, their life matters. Even more significant, they’ll take their place in eternity. God created them for a purpose, and you’re part of this purpose.
William Ross Wallace famously said, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” There’s a reason God chose you—not someone else—to raise your children. He handpicked you to nurture and shape human beings, created in Christ Jesus for good works.
In their most formative years, you can teach them kindness, gentleness, and self-control. To love God, each other, and the world. By your words and your example, you can create a safe environment where they can grow strong—physically, mentally, and spiritually.
When the world thinks about satisfying work, it’s easy to think about brokering a deal to merge two Fortune 500 companies or performing a life-saving heart transplant. The satisfaction of a clean countertop or a kid who can count by fives to one hundred pales in comparison.
But you know what? Speaking as someone who has more life behind than in front of me, the accomplishments I’m most satisfied with are the ones that relate to kingdom work—serving my family, serving my husband, serving my church.
In my post-homeschooling, empty nest life, I’ve received industry awards and peer recognition as an author. These accolades are wonderful, but their joy fades quickly.
You know what makes me deep-down-inside satisfied? Knowing I mothered two girls all the way to adulthood. That I, with God and my husband’s help, raised them in the faith. That I persevered through homeschooling, especially when it was hard.
I pray my girls will love God all their lives, but if they don’t, I have the comfort of knowing I did what God called me to do. I can’t compel them, though the force of my will or the power of my personality, to love God. But I can set a place at His table and invite them to feast from His goodness.
In my lifetime, professional success has been rewarding, but nothing is more satisfying than the work I’ve done for God through my family.
Whether you realize it or not, you’re doing the most satisfying work.
Some of you regret it now. You watch your college friends take intriguing professional jobs and you envy them. They dress in stylish business clothes while you pull on a t-shirt, because you know, within an hour, it’ll be smeared with oatmeal, snot, or worse. Your friends share their latest job promotion on social media or post pictures of a conference in Paris they attended, and suddenly, the cute pic of you pushing your toddler on the backyard swing doesn’t look as cute.
They finished college and you finished birthing classes.
The world makes everything but mothering look sparkly for a reason. Remember that hand that rocks the cradle? Satan doesn’t want it to rule the world. He wants to rule the world by convincing its occupants that joy is found in power, prestige, and wealth. In accolades and big houses. Not in teaching toddlers to pray and pointing little kids to Jesus.
If your heart is sold out to God, and you desire to please Him above all else, know this—God has given you a privilege and a responsibility that makes corporate America look like detention hall.
In twenty years, if you still want to, you can finish that college degree. You can take a job in corporate America, write that novel, travel to Paris. Who knows, God might call you to write a book or travel overseas while your kids are still young. But if you have to wait, you’ll look back on these years with satisfaction.
We spend the first twenty years of our lives as children and young adults. We spend the next twenty or so raising our families. If we live to the normal lifespan of eighty, this leaves forty more years to explore jobs, ministries, and hobbies. In the throes of child raising and educating, twenty years seem like an eternity. In the rearview mirror, they whoosh by.
Trust me, you’ll never regret putting your children ahead of your career.
As a young woman, I saw mothering as a noble, self-sacrificial role, and I was right. And choosing to homeschool? Let’s just crawl up on that Romans 12 altar and die to ourselves for our children’s sake.
Wrong.
Sorta.
Mothering is noble. And sacrificial. But God’s purpose for our mothering isn’t to pour ourselves into our children until we’re empty, then throw us away. God brings children into our life as part of His plan to conform us to His image.
When children came, I discovered marriage had been Christian Character Kindergarten and I’d advanced to the doctoral program.
But you know what?
Every time I served when I didn’t feel like serving, gave when I didn’t feel like giving, and cared for them when I’d have rather cared for myself, I became kinder. Gentler. More patient.
Parenting became the tool in God’s hand to forge Christ’s character in me. And this is a good thing. A really good thing.
The day in and day out of parenting and, later, homeschooling taught me to rely on Him for wisdom and strength. It trained me in self-discipline and challenged my tendency to be lazy. It drove me to my knees in prayer and revealed how self-sufficient I’d been.
In the fullness of time, when I completed my homeschooling calling, I had a deep well of life experience and decades of walking with God to draw from. This has made my second career as a writer richer, fuller, and more successful. I’ve watched other moms reenter the workplace after their children left home and experience incredible fruitfulness.
When people ask where I was educated, I tell them I was homeschooled—and I was—right alongside my daughters. I received degrees from a public high school and college, but my greatest education, academically, emotionally, and spiritually, came through homeschooling.
Galatians 6:9 became my homeschooling life verse: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” At the end of my labor, there would be a reward. I didn’t know what the reward was, but if God promised it, it would be good.
I hoped my children would know and love God. That they’d grow up with a self-image based on what the Word says, not what the world says. I hoped they’d gain the knowledge and skill they needed to become independent adults. And become image bearers of Christ in the church and society. Deep down inside, in the words of Proverbs 31:18, I dreamed one day my “children [would] arise and call [me] blessed.”
When my children walked across stage and received their diplomas, I discovered an even greater reward—joyful satisfaction. Knowing I obeyed God when He called me to homeschool—even when it was hard—made everything worth it.
your kids don’t know the answer to, “What grade are you in?”
you can take a family trip off-season and not miss out on schoolwork
every year, you add a new bookshelf to your collection
you care more about the point of an experiment than the mess it’s making
morning and afternoon breaks are for sibling playtime
lunch time is family time.
snack time is part of a child’s chemistry experiment
character matters, regardless of the academic subject
you and your kids can read the Bible and pray during the day
your kids are motivated to get their schoolwork done so they can play
your kids have more time for after-school activities and friends because their schoolwork is done
you have time to study your children, to know what they need and how best to deliver that knowledge to them
you relearn math, history, and English, and find it fascinating
“ [Your child] requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.” —Charlotte Mason
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And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
