Our Education Path

I love that we have choices. I love that we have been able to steer our education journey along several different philosophies and found positives in each one.

This is OUR story, based on our prayers and our answers.  We don’t claim to know what’s best for anyone else. This is what we chose, based on the Word and its direction for us.  This is our testimony, not because our path was the best path, but because the One who chose our path for us is the best at choosing.

Our boys were all born in the fall and their birthdays make them late to school.  Meaning, they fall right after the cutoff for starting school, so they end up waiting another year to begin school.  Owen (our oldest) was very ready in terms of his academic understanding.  He knew all his letters, he could count all the way to forever, his vocabulary was broad, and his mind was sharp.  I probably could have pushed for an earlier start, but as I’d heard so many moms before me say they wished they hadn’t, I listened to advice.

• Listen to advice.  You’ll get a lot of it, and you’ll get conflicting advice.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen.  I listened most closely to the moms who had a good relationship with God, and a good relationship with their teenage kids.  They gave me solid advice and I am thankful.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, ⁴ and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, ⁵ to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.  Titus 2:3-5

I had never been a proponent for Pre-school, and I truly thought I’d never enroll my kids into something so seemingly unnecessary.  I looked at my growing boy though and his eagerness to be with other kids and learning.

“I want something for him,” I thought.  So we looked at pre-school and found a school at a local church that offered what he needed.  Monday through Friday we brought him to “school” for half a day.  It was just like kindergarten when I was little and allowed him to get a nap in the afternoons which he still needed at five years old.  I loved that school.  His teacher reminded me of my teachers from so many years ago, the staff appreciated our situation, our family, and our desire for Owen to be inundated with wholesome, godly truth, not just entertained for a few hours.  He was being given reinforcement of the things we were teaching at home, and we felt blessed.  I remember well the morning I dropped him off and heard from God about what to do next.  I was driving out through the church parking lot, nearing the road and God reminded me about the bread and the fish. 

Years previous to having kids, or even marriage, I had been sitting in my office reading my Bible.  I read the story of Jesus feeding the crowd of 5,000 with some borrowed bread and fish.  As I finished the very familiar story in Mark chapter 6, I heard a nudge from the Holy Spirit to read the passage again.  I shrugged and read it again.  Again I heard, “read it again.”  I read it again and I finally saw it.  This was more than a great story of Jesus performing a miracle, the loaves and fish were also an analogy for the Word and souls.  It became clear to me that just as Jesus had distributed the bread before the fish, God wanted me to be full of His Word, before I sought for lost souls. When God brought that to mind again, years later, I knew He meant for me to apply the lesson to how I educated my children.

I had been leaning toward sending my kids to public school.  That’s what I had done as a kid, and I saw the benefit it had on me.  I saw the purpose it had in winning souls.  I was able to invite kids to church, I was able to pray for and with my peers when there was a need, I was given opportunities to share my faith because I was in the middle of the lost.  It made sense to me to put my little light-bearers into the place that needed light.  God was showing me that He had a better way.

I needed to put my kids in a Bible rich environment.  I was so confident in this direction I immediately began the process of enrolling Owen in the private school that his pre-school was a part of.  I really didn’t care what it cost.  I had heard from the Holy Spirit.

• Listen to the Holy Spirit.  I know for some that sounds impossible, but it is not.  He wants to speak to you.  He longs to see you walk in His ways.  He is not holding back, He just hasn’t been given a path to your ear.  How does that path form?  The Word.  Be in it, stay in it, then stay in it some more.  If you want direction, show Him your reverence for Him by your obedience to His Word.  Let your strongest convictions and moral aptitude be formed by what you find in His Word.  He will lead you.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  2 Timothy 3:16-17

Our choice to place Owen, and subsequently Ivan and Aron, into private school went very well for us.  I felt confident in the teachers, the education, and the relationships.  My boys were in a good place, and then things changed. 

Kris, as an entrepreneur, was often faced with situations in business that were unexpected and required risk or sacrifice to overcome.  We had come to a moment of sacrifice.  In order to grow a new business, we were going to be saying goodbye to part of our income.  This meant we would need to either supplement that income, or change our spending.  We could put the boys in public school, or find another way to pay for private school.  I was willing to get a job and use that income for their schooling, but it wasn’t what either of us wanted.  The overwhelming feeling I had was to be involved with their education. My heart was still about the business of shaping and influencing their hearts.  I could not spend even more time and focus away from them, just so they could be in the school we liked. 

My proposal to Kris was to take a leap of faith into a prospect I had never before considered myself capable of.  I wanted to home-school.  We did the research, made plans, prayed and listened, and knew that it was time to make the change.  I would challenge myself to think differently once again, and educate my boys from home.

• Be obedient.  Sometimes the path looks like it’s leading straight into a brick wall.  Keep walking.  Don’t be so sure of what you’ve known in the past, that you miss what God wants to teach you in the future.  God moves brick walls, steers paths around them, and shows us how to plow through them.  Stay on the path He shows you, until He tells you what to do. Once you know what He has said, don’t keep checking back for better looking options, just trust and obey.  He will not disappoint you.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.  John 15:14-15

Homeschooling was the adventure in parenting I didn’t know I wanted.  I learned so much about them. I learned more about what made them tick and what drove them.  I learned how to accommodate them with the atmosphere that worked for them, and how to step back and let them learn from any seat in the house.  It was hard work, but it was rewarding work, and I felt a great satisfaction in how well they responded, and how peaceful I felt in doing it.

At that point they were in 2^nd grade, 4^th grade, and 6^th grade.  I home-schooled all three of them for two years, and then allowed a very tall 8^th grade Owen to explore the territory of public school.  He loved it.  I was happy for him. 

This was the goal.  Not to keep him eating “loaves” at home the rest of his life, but to send him out “fishing”.  He has done so well and has been navigating high school for the past couple years.  He is about to start his junior year with another new twist.  Our community has grown quickly here just outside of Nashville, and our schools have endured a deluge of new students.  A new high school is being finished as I type, and is preparing to take in new students in two weeks.  Owen will be a part of the first junior class to attend Green Hill High School in Mt. Juliet. 

Around the time Owen started his freshman year, I was hearing rumblings of discontent from my youngest.  He is a social and competitive soul who misses classrooms full of people.  Homeschool tutorials and co-ops offered much in the way of student interaction for him, and he was fully content with the situation once we had enrolled in those options. We probably could have finished our education happily there.  But, God had other plans. 

As I assessed my own desires, and the boy’s distinct needs, I realized God was now directing us to put them all in the “fishing boat”.  Ivan was already educating himself in science far beyond my capacity to challenge him (or let him know that he was mistaken about something).  I would listen to his passionate verbal essay on why crystals formed in some solution and think, “he needs a real science teacher.”  He needed someone who could listen with understanding and then challenge him even further.  I knew that wasn’t me anymore.  I was seeing God gently pushing us toward public school, and I knew by the end of 2018, that the 2019-2020 school year would be our last homeschool year. 

I didn’t know that our decision to put them in public school would come in the midst of a pandemic.  So many families are walking in the opposite direction from us.  Taking their kids out of public school and the perceived danger of being so close to others when a virus is still claiming victims and those who are in classrooms will be expected to cover their faces with masks.  I don’t blame them at all.  I believe many of them have heard from God about what is best for their students.  It is not abnormal for God to tell one person to walk through a fire and tell another to influence the fire starters.  I don’t think His direction is always all inclusive. 

I have not, even for a moment, questioned our decision to send them to public school.  I question what it will be like, how hard it will be to learn, and how distracting all the political grumblings will be around them, but I know where they are supposed to be, and that brings me great peace.

• Remain in His peace.  Don’t let the distractions and the overwhelming evidence of worldly caution pull you from the enthralling height of His perspective.  He knows what is ahead, and He isn’t concerned about what the world is concerned about.  He has a plan, He has a purpose, and He has a consecrated rest that will cradle your anxious soul.  When you know where He has told you to be, don’t let any other logic, especially fear, drown out the confidence He gives you.  Remain in His peace.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep;
    for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.   Psalm 4:8

And so we find ourselves: somewhat excited, somewhat apprehensive, and fully surrendered.  Whatever tomorrow holds, we have security in Him.  I am about the business of preparing their hearts for what is ahead. Anxious young people, angry people, people who need the hope and security of Christ. I am praying that they will go in to the hallways and be a light. I’m praying they will practice what they learned from the Word, and offer it to the souls they encounter.

And for all of us, whether our path is marked with sorrow, or joy, it is still firmly tamped by his own feet, and warmly lit by His love, and we are honored to walk in His steps.