Why Do We Home School? Part 1

Part 1: Obedience To The Lord Jesus

My husband and I both went to and graduated from public school. I never knew home schooling existed until we moved to Oregon in 1998. My first thought was “Are you crazy?!” We had a toddler and a newborn at the time. Home schooling just seemed like another thing that was hard and would keep me from sleeping at night.

Even though home educating was foreign to our thinking, my husband, Karl, and I were always of the mindset to be open to what God wanted for our children individually. We truly wanted the best for our family and our children. We understood that only God knew what was the very best.

We adopted a mindset that we would pray over each academic year one at a time and not make any blanket decisions or assumptions.

In the meantime, God was working in my life to soften my heart towards home education. I used to think “I would NEVER home school our kids.” Two years later the thought was, “I hope God never asks me to home school.” To “If God asked me to home school, I would do it but I wouldn’t like it.” To “I guess I could do it.” Eventually my heart was, “I think I would really like to do this.”

The point is: I wasn’t always open to home education. But, I had a mindset that I wanted to obey God. He changed my heart about schooling only after I had changed my mind about obeying no matter what.

I can say confidently that we are educating our children at home because God has shown us that for this season of our life it is His very best for us both as a family and our children individually.