How much do I care about homeschooling?

We're starting a new season in our lives.  It's not that I didn't know it was coming.  It's that I didn't know what it would look like.  After taking the ACT and the TABE, we decided our oldest would be best suited to go to technical school for training in welding.  It's what he wanted anyway.  But that's not necessarily why I'm writing.  I'm writing about all the feelings I went through to come to that decision.

Part of the problem I had was the unspoken expectations home-school families have put upon one another.  It's not as if someone sat me down and said "Your kids need to be ready to dual-enroll as soon as possible at the community college and work toward their AA."  But that's what "everyone" seemed to be working toward at a feverish pitch.  Classes and co-ops designed to prepare our kids for things we couldn't do ourselves.  Curriculum is piled upon our kids to keep them "busy" as they grow toward adulthood. 

We quiz veteran mothers to find out their secrets.  We beg them to tell us exactly what they did to prepare their child so well that they were dual enrolled by the day they turn 15 and finished their AA in 18 months.  Surely if we follow their formula, our kids will do just as well.  There's nothing your kid can do that my kid cannot after all.  When we return home we plea with our spouse saying "Surely this is what we need.  At the next home school curriculum fair we will buy this and only this because it's a sure thing."  In truth, no veteran mother has ever said "A+B= child who blows the bell curve every time!”  They all say the same thing:  It has nothing to do with what I did.  "We used what curriculum we had and did our best."  And if they have faith, "God produced this result."

At the end of the day, I must say, I felt like a failure.  The results I'm seeing aren't what I expected; therefore, I think I'm a failure.  So much of who I am is wrapped up in homeschooling our kids.  It's what we've always wanted.  That was the plan: home school our kids and pray they grow into productive God fearing adults.  We didn't know what to expect them to do.  We knew we had to teach reading, writing and math.  We teach them reading through history and literature books.  They learn to write by copying great writing and creatively writing on their own.  Math is fantastic to me, but a worksheet for them.  Science is a natural process of exploring the world around them - and reading about it.  But I felt like a failure not because we had spent so much time and effort on those skills, but because someone sneaked into our homes and told us what success looked like; we didn't measure up.

To you, beautiful family full of hopes and dreams, what your children become is not up to you.  Our God is greater than your imagination.  Your child is unique and precious in his sight and what he has in store is unfolding before your eyes and you don't even know it.  It's like when God answered Habakkuk:

Habakkuk 1:5 Revised Standard Version (RSV)

⁵ Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.

God is doing things in your child that you won't believe even if he told you.  That's why he doesn't always tell us.  He is in the business of loving our kids and we don't always understand.  Likewise, I could tell you exactly what we did and are doing with our kids, but it wouldn't do you any good.  At the end of the day, we did whatever we did, heartily as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23).

With that, I bid you adieu.