Birth of a Journey

After our fourth son was born, we began to see changes in our other children. Alex was in Kindergarden, and didn't seem to be improving in his school work. It wasn't that he got a lot of things wrong, just that he wasn't learnining anything new. He would come home from school and say that all was fine, and that would be the end of it. It was just Kindergarden, but we expected him to be learning something, and it sure seemed like he wasn't.

Ted, on the other hand, at age 4, was a very needy student. He had severe vision trouble, a speech delay, no fine motor skills, ADD, ADHD, was in occupational therapy, speech therapy, under the care of a child psychologist, and generally had just about every other label you can think of. He hated the Early Childhood program at school, and would run from the classroom the minuite the teacher's back was turned. He escaped out the door several times to the point where the school would call the police to come and find him. He was such a problem that they didn't know what to do with him, and transfered him to 3 different schools in the course of less than one school year. It even happened at church. The volunteer in the church nursery at the time asked us to please not bring him back!

We knew they both had needs that weren't being met. It was about this time, my cousins children began to graduate from homeschool. They came to visit our relatives, and they were all so impressed that my other relatives all began homeschooling their own kids. So, we began to research homeschooling as well.

My father (who has his Doctorate degree in Educational Administration), found out we were looking into homeschooling and encouraged us in our decision.

He said" You know, in the last twenty years of being in education and working as a high school Principal, I have experienced not just drugs, sex and violence, but guns, grand theft auto, attempted murder, even threats on my own life. Now, ultimately the decision is yours, but I think you should keep your kids at home."

To this day, he is one of our biggest supporters in our home schooling. There was no looking back for us at this point, we decided that home schooling was our path. After all, scripture says "Parents, teach your children." That really spoke to me. Prov. 22:6 says "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is older he will not turn from it."

So, our home schooling began as an academic quest. We felt both of our children would benefit from individual attention that we could give them at home. However, I was convinced that we needed someone else to do it WITH us. It seemed like to big a task to undertake all alone. I recall asking others to join us, and of course, they were not interested. Well, we were right about one thing, we needed God's help.

My step sister loaned me a copy of a lecture on home schooling by Carol Joy Seid. She is a well known speaker and travels nation wide promoting home schooling. During her lecture she gives her testimony, and relates it to how home schooling increased her faith in God.

I remember listening to that tape and thinking, " Is that what this is all about Lord?" No one told me that what began as an academic quest would end up being a spiritual journey. We were looking for human intervention, not unlike Corrie Tenboom in "The Hiding Place" had done. What we needed to do was turn to God and daily seek his direction. As much as I had experienced God in the Sweet Spot, that was the one thing that I had never done. It's no wonder to me today, that that's part of the reason I couldn't stay in the Sweet Spot for any extended period of time.

Proverbs 34 says,"Blessed is the man who hearth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors."