I come from a long line of publicly educated families. Many have been teachers, principles or administrative staff. Naturally I felt pulled to do something along those lines as I became a mother, imagining what would become of me in the middle of Motherhood. Would I be a stay at home mom forever? At the time, I assumed I would do as my own mother and put my kids into school at the set date for VPK’ers and pick up an administrative role in the school system. God had other plans. These new plans would make me very uncomfortable and have me questioning my sanity.
Although I did put my first three children in VPK, I slowly started to realize the fuzzy feeling I was getting every time I dropped them off, wasn't good butterflies, but sad ones. The kind that deep down, your soul knows they should be with you. At such young ages, children long for assurance. For safety. For understanding. And although I want to believe that every teacher on the planet could provide this for each of my children and give it the way I could, I knew that just wasn’t possible.
With every passing “grade” my children graduated into, I felt them slipping away. The vision I had for their learning was fading slowly. The carefully crafted education I had in mind, the sacred moments I would miss and the innocence protected and kept within the home. The list could go on of things that I felt strongly were calling out to me to grab ahold of, but I continued to walk away from. How long would I allow my conscience to go ignored?
One day, as I sat at the top of our stairway in Nokomis, I plainly told my husband that I didn’t want to continue on with our life like this. The day in and day out of frantic running around, dressing the children through tired eyes and exhaustion at the crack of dawn, rushing through morning traffic just to beat the 15 minute window of tardiness,etc.. Our family also values sports, so toting them to school, then to their sport and back home just in time to rush through homework and swallow dinner was becoming the end of me and I could see it draining the life out of our home as well. Everyone was tired.
I knew the time had come for me to get a grip on what mattered most to me. Honestly, a selfish part of me wanted to keep things the way they were. Because it meant that I could have a break during the day, keep my house clean, and do what I wanted with my life. Mind you, I still had littles at home at this time, so not exactly everything I wanted to do, but you catch my drift. Still, the pull lingered on and on until my pretty life started to look like someone else’s vision entirely. I had to stomp on the brakes.
Homeschooling was scary for me. Quite frankly, I felt underqualified, irritated, and anxious. During the plandemic, I homeschooled out of force, but in short I was pregnant, nursing a baby, and homeschooling at the time. What came of this was a purely wretched time for me. I was very unhealthy, insomniac was the word defining my days, I was a walking zombie, leaving very little energy for me to serve them well. So I took a rest and that turned into three and a half years of recovering until I could see again.
After a few years of healing, I was on the stairs, considering our life. It took a lot of honesty for me to admit to my husband what my soul really longed for. Because, from the surface we had the perfect life. The kids were in school, we had a nanny at our disposal, cleaning teams to take care of the house, and I was the admin for my husband’s new company, juggling a lot. Still, within all the buzzing, I could see my children being swallowed up in the vortex of busyness. So busy that we were finishing homework at 9PM, while they ate dinner and shed a few tears. We were all breaking.
Homeschooling, although a bit of a trauma for me, became a new wind. This coming wind felt light and easy this time around. It came with waves of tenderness and the art of slowness. Suddenly, within a few months, the stairway conversation turned into a 4 acre homestead, 17 chickens, a Great Pyrenees Mountain dog, and a brand new life for us. What once was, no longer was.
And it's as easy as that. I surrendered to the call. Although fear is a crafty lingerer, I set my eyes before the Lord and all of His promises. His promises to keep me and protect me, to offer me peace for my anxiety, to bless our home as we raise them in the way they should go, to breathe on me as I inhale his faithfulness, to receive the fulness of being held when I am weary, to hang on his kind shoulder while I cry tears of frustrations and in turn reap joy another day. This is what faith looks like. For me.
I am not and cannot be the essence of a perfect homeschooling mother. But, who is measuring me? Instagram? Family? Or, shall I look before the Lamb for His instructions and stand in awe that He has already equipped me to do more than I believed I could. I am taking the steps and moving day by day, putting one foot in front of the other. Not because I am surviving, but because I have been called. And it was never promised to be a gentle road, without hurdles or afflictions. But, in all of your standing, stand.
This letter you are reading is a call. As a homeschool mother, you have been called to rise above the rest. You have taken on every possible role that is usually employed and given a paycheck for. You have chosen the path less traveled and I am here to stand with you. Don’t forsake the call. Do not doubt the call. You are strong enough, good enough, educated enough, and equipped. All there is left to do is to do. It’s as easy as that.
Many blessings and peace I pray for each of you on this journey. We are in this together! I pray this article has given you encouragement to press on.
Letters from D.
