Preparing Her Heart as Well as Her Mind

At church the other night, I was snapping a couple pictures of the children playing a game.  It was a simple race and stack game.   I took this picture of Laura, stacking cups.  She was racing against her father, where he clearly seemed to have the advantage.  Notice the perfectly stacked red cups... that was him.  But, she was following his lead.

It dawned on me that time is going by fast.  Laura is nearly twelve.  Seasons go by fast.  This is supposed to be her last year in the children's group with her father and I.  Soon, she'll be a teenager.  It seemed like just yesterday her sisters were young, and those days seemed to stretch out endlessly before me.  Little did I realize how fast this life goes by.

I heard life equated to a ball of yarn.  At the beginning, it seems to take a while to unravel that yarn from the ball.  As the ball gets smaller, it doesn't take as long to unravel the ball. The same seems to be true with life.  As a child, the days seemed endless.  I thought I would never become an adult.  Now, as I watch my children grow, it seems like it is going so fast and I just want to slow time down. 

God spoke to my heart here and told me that we only have a certain amount of time to touch the lives of our children.  We need to be sure of what we are touching their lives for... the temporary or eternity.  I want to make sure I touch their lives for eternity.

Rebecca Avery summed it up pretty well in her Teaching Tips and Techniques book:

     "It is the concept of infinite eternity and finite time that instills within me a sense of urgency in teaching my children.  Because my influence and time is limited, I must teach every lesson the best I can.  I must create and provide every experience for my children that I can.  But more importantly, I must be certain my children know the voice of Jesus.  For only He will continue the formation of the soft heart of my child when I am no longer in a position to influence the child."

It is so easy to become distracted, to become wrapped up in academics.  The world sees things very differently, and Christians are often an oddity.  Homeschoolers do well academically and on standardized tests, and that can easily become the focus.  It's been a great defense to naysayers that try to impose restrictions on homeschoolers.  However, as a Christian that desires not only a closer relationship with God for myself but for my children, academics alone won't get me there. 

And yet, it isn't a contradiction.  Often, I have felt that it was, like I had to decide between academics and Christ.  I have tried add Christ to our homeschool.  I have found programs that added Christ to our homeschool.  I've even found programs where the Bible was used extensively, and individual time in the Bible was stressed.  But still, the Bible wasn't the beginning of everything.  It wasn't the foundation.

Robin Sampson's book, Heart of Wisdom, talks extensively about this very topic.  Are we giving our children an education based on God's Word, or are we giving them  the same education as the public schools with the Bible added?  Are we starting with God's Word, or is it something just sprinkled throughout our learning?

With my limited time, I want to reach my eleven year old.  She loved Christ. Her heart is tender.  Will she stand when she reached those times of testing?  Will she handle the teenage years when so many seem to fall away?  Will she handle the tragedies that come her way?  Will she follow the calling on her life under obedience of Christ?  Will she take the easy path? 

I feel a burden to prepare her.  I feel a burden to prepare my little one, only four, for a life of following Christ.  I have to follow that burden that Christ has placed on my heart in obedience.