My Homeschool Education

I spent the morning moving between the kitchen table, little Ruthie by my side with an open first-grade book, and the sofa, under  a blanket and a stack of school papers. Peppered throughout these hours are a continual stream of “Where’s Hannah?” (unless she’s in my lap) and “Hey Joshie, could you try to be a little quieter during school, please?”.

And also snacks… lots of snacks for these growing boys.

There is much that could be said about home education, none of which I am particularly qualified to say. I do remember thinking, when it was just those two little boys and a toddling Annie, that this whole homeschooling thing doesn’t take up that much time. Three children and a lot of growing later and I realize that that time was just a phase given me as preparation for the years to come… the years that go frighteningly fast… the years that seem all too formidable when you are, in large part, in charge of the forming.

My life is drastically different from what it was those six or seven years ago. I have so much help with the day-to-day tasks (I still remember the tears of sheer, unutterable relief I held back on the day when I realized my children were old enough to wash dishes without my help). And yet, now that I spend my days teaching and managing a home rather than just trying to do every task with a toddler by my side, I am feeling more overwhelmed and under-qualified than ever. I think I have always been much more comfortable in the doing rather than the leading. But it is clearer than ever to me that these little (and not so little) ones and their upbringing is the duty and privilege with which I shall be filling my days for years to come.

Maybe it is because I have sons turning into young men and it feels, all the more so, like these are just days made up of a thousand moments all of which we can never do over again. Or maybe it’s just because I am getting older and with that time comes a bit of clarity of purpose, hopefully. In either case, about the only thing I know for sure is to pray and to put literally everything else aside and just be there; be all in it, every single day.

The one thing I will say is that I believe education is far more than books and spelling tests and multiplication speed drills, though we do those things and they are certainly good and useful. I see educating my children as preparing them for whatever God’s will is for them and their lives. So education is spiritual first – Christ and His Gospel is what their hearts really need – and, on our parts, a pretty major life duty.

And so I find myself sinking into it – surrendering, really – to these days and years, leaving very little mental or emotional space for anything else, and often leaving a trail of guilt with all of the things and relationships that inevitably go untended.

But it’s not like they frame it, those books or movies I saw growing up about the mother who feels like she’s given up everything for her family and now she’s quite miserable and needs to find herself somewhere “out there”. It’s actually been quite the opposite for me; a sort of great finding in what wasn’t really losing; a sort of filling in the emptying.

You might even say that the one being educated is me.