Both my husband and I grew up in church off and on. Truthfully, it was usually more off than on. My husband's father eventually fully committed his life to Christ and was called to become a Pastor. By then my husband was a grown man and it was tough to accept at first that his father was different... even in a good way. For me, I have a grandmother that used to be an evangelist. She loves Jesus with a deep. abiding love. It stands strong through thick and thin. She took me and my sisters to church when she could. She would read to us Bible stories and talk to us about God. Yet, I walked away. The influence of the world and not having stable Christian parents was too much. I just couldn't trust God as a teen.
Fast forward fifteen plus years and my husband and I were at rock bottom. We were going through impossible circumstances. We blamed each other and fought all the time. My husband called his dad for advice, then talked to his dad's pastor. Next thing I know my husband has gone back to church, found a faith he'd only glimpsed as a child, and was acquiring something deep within him that I knew I wanted for myself. It took time for me, but the power of God's call was too strong. I'm kind of an all or nothing girl, and this time there was no playing around. I gave my life to Christ as well.
How this has affected us as a family cannot be described in words. My youngest, Megan, will never know the mom and dad that the older children remember. She won't ever remember or know the angry, bitter people with the somewhat wild lifestyles. The older girls do, however, know the transforming power of God because they have seen it with their own eyes and experienced it in their own home and lives.
My husband and I were talking last week about our lives, our ministries, homeschooling, and our families. During the middle of it all, my husband really understood. He got it. The directions God has led us may not truly benefit us. We are being obedient so that our children, and their children, can have a legacy of faith. The legacy that should have been their from my grandmother and my husband's father was almost obliterated by the devil and the one generation that went it's own way. We are re-establishing it for our children. We are training our children in Biblical values. God is using us to fix, to redeem the path where we strayed and even where our parents strayed.
Why did God lead us to homeschooling? God knows that the pressure of public schooling is high, and that we were in the world a very long time. He knows that our children are susceptible to the same pressures and temptations that we failed to endure. He wants us to raise our children away from some of that, so that we might establish the correct patterns in our own lives and in the lives of our children. As I teach my children, I learn much about the Lord I serve and a Biblical worldview. I learn as I teach, and I grow with them. It isn't just for my children that I homeschool. It is for me and for my husband and for our own growth in the Lord.
I read most of the books my children read. I learn with them in history and science from a Christian point of view. I read the Christian stories that touch hearts and lives for Christ. Stories like The Green Little Frog, biographies like George Mueller, events like the Great Awakening; none of these were in my public schooled text books. Reading about them now has inspired a deep longing to know more. I have independently read about the Christian roots in our country's formation. I have drawn closer to God in the process.
There are many reasons God calls families to teach their children at home. The government wants to fight homeschoolers. They are using many methods to try to get homeschooling families to cooperate: Mandatory testing, core standards for everyone, even free programs that use the public school curriculum. However, they are often surprised by the tenacity of homeschoolers to fight these options. On one income, they will struggle but refuse funding from the government. Why? They don't want the government to tell them how to educate their own children. Government officials don't get it. Most of the homeschooling movement has been driven by Christian families. There are families that don't homeschool for these reasons, but a large percentage absolutely does. All the attacks on homeschooling is looked at as persecution for Christ, and that we will endure. We will fight for our right to homeschool no matter what, because when you are called by God to do something, obedience comes first, even if it means defying those that want to take away our rights. To us, those rights are God-given, and that is more important than the opinions of a few that want to control us.
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