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Is Your Homeschool Ready to
By Deborah Wuehler,
Senior Editor
Spring showers sometimes bring . . .
storms. Remember the fresh, blooming “spring” of your homeschool experience? Then the storms came, the discouragement came, and you wondered if there
was a foundation under you after all.
Have you ever asked yourself, “What in
the world are we doing this thing for anyway?
Who talked us into this and what were we thinking?”
Or maybe you’ve said, “Isn’t there any other way?
Surely someone else could do this better.” Or, maybe
you’ve thought, “I just can’t do this any more!”
So many things can steal our courage to continue on. It stems from things like crazy schedules,
children that just don’t get it, household duties and
projects that never quite get done, misunderstanding
relatives, and the repeated challenge, “Why do you
homeschool?” The constant serving of our families,
our churches, and our communities brings fatigue,
and add any storm (sickness, finances, marital stress,
death) that hits your household, and you have a potential recipe for sinking sand. Any one of these
things can discourage us. We need God to breathe
courage into us.
In order to be encouraged and strengthened, we
must first go back and look at our foundation. Our
foundation reveals a lot about the strength of our
homeschools. Let’s think about our personal homeschool histories for a moment.
What prompted you to homeschool in the first
place? Was it a friend’s positive influence? Was it a
homeschooled child who impressed you? Was your
child not doing well in public school and you decided to bring him home? These all may have been catalysts that the Lord used to grab your attention. However, if these things are your foundation for homeschooling, then when the storms come, your homeschool may very well collapse. Consider carefully
this verse:
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of
mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a
wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell
not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall
be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon
the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell:
and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7: 24– 27)
Foundation
of Obedience
First and foremost the foundation, the laying of the concrete if you will, is obedience to God’s Word (“
Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them . . .”).
Rewards and blessings will flow naturally out of that obedience (in the form of more loving, family-oriented children who experience higher academic achievement and
walk in innocence and strength in regard to moral issues).
However, those rewards will not come if we do not stand
on the foundation of obedience.
If we are merely standing on a foundation of “
schooling,” such a foundation is shifting sand. Note, the foolish
man and the wise man were both laboring to build houses.
The only difference would be the foundation on which
each was laid: one on the shaky foundation of shifting sand
and the other on obedience to the very words of God. Both
men were working hard, and both were building, but when
the storms came, only one house, or homeschool, remained
standing.
“Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain
that build it . . . .” (Psalm 127: 1)
Pillars of Strength
If we have laid our foundation on obedience, we can add
to it some pillars of strength.
We gain strength by choosing to have our children at
home on the Biblical convictions that direct us to teach,
train, and protect them. These convictions will be the pillars that are raised on our foundation of obedience to God
and will strengthen our houses, our homeschools, when
those storms of life beat down on us. While thinking
through the question myself, I asked my oldest son why he
thought we were homeschooling. His answer was so en-
